Bondi Beach is what ‘globalize the intifada’ looks like

Earlier this month, my wife and I were in Sydney, Australia, where we spent Shabbat with Chabad in Bondi Beach and joined Rabbi Yehoram Ulman at his home for lunch. Sitting across the table from us was the rabbi’s son-in-law and assistant rabbi of Chabad of Bondi, Rabbi Eli Schlanger.

Waking up this past Sunday to the news that Rabbi Schlanger and at least 14 others had been murdered during a Chanukah celebration in Sydney was heartbreaking. I met him only briefly but could see his passion and the light he exuded. In a March 2025 interview with Chabad.org, Rabbi Schlanger said that the best way to counter rising antisemitism was to “be more Jewish, act more Jewish, and appear more Jewish.” A video from last year shows Rabbi Schlanger dancing and encouraging people to show Jewish pride to combat antisemitism. Now he is a statistic, killed by a father-son duo inspired by ISIS ideology.

We were in Sydney because my wife was one of the U.S. representatives at a meeting of the J7 Task Force, a convening of the seven largest Jewish communities outside Israel: the United States, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia. The J7 had come together in Sydney to discuss rising antisemitism around the world and the recent sharp increase in antisemitism in Australia. (You can read more about their mission in the Australian Jewish News and JNS — google the publication’s name and J7.)

Until 2023, Australia had been largely unscathed by the global rise in antisemitism. Since the horrific Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, and its ensuing war with Israel, Australia has witnessed an explosive increase in antisemitic incidents. Between October 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024, authorities recorded 2,062 antisemitic incidents, a 300 percent increase from the approximately 500 incidents recorded during the same period the year before. Between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, authorities recorded 1,654 antisemitic incidents, a decrease from the year before but still about five times the annual average recorded in the decade before October 7.

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The Jewish community had been warning the government of this rise in antisemitism, but the warnings had fallen on deaf ears. In a report released earlier this month, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry noted a marked increase in graffiti calling to kill Jews. The ECAJ noted that the messaging appeared as a direct imperative, while in the past it had been seen instead as an expression of sentiment rather than a call to action. The ECAJ also warned of “increasing ideological alignment” between neo-Nazis, the anti-Israel left, and Islamists in their “common hatred of Jews/Zionists.” The ECAJ warned that these groups are “more active, more emboldened” in their “common hatred of Jews/Zionists.”

This past July, Jillian Segal, Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, created a multipoint framework for the government. Segal’s report recognized a “national crisis,” driven by online and offline ideologies. She warned that antisemitism was pervasive in cultural and academic institutions, particularly on campuses, noting a 2024 survey that found that more than 60 percent of Australian Jewish students who experienced antisemitism felt unsupported by their institutions. While noting that Australia had taken action to reform hate crime laws earlier in 2025, Segal called for multiple action points, including: creating a uniform definition of antisemitism across government agencies; consistent application of the IHRA definition of antisemitism across public institutions; mechanisms for education as well as institutional reform and accountability; better online governance and regulation; and increasing security investigations of antisemitic incidents and preventative measures.

The Australian government had not yet acted on Segal’s recommendations by the time of the Bondi attack, sparking outrage from the Australian Jewish community and abroad. Speaking to Jewish Insider, U.S. Representative Brad Schneider (D-IL), a co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, said that the attack was “not predicted” but “it was predictable.” He further lamented that “For too long, the Jewish community in Australia was saying to the authorities, saying to the government, ‘Antisemitism is a cancer eating away at the soul of the nation, and it’s going to result in the death of Jews in the land,’ and that’s what we saw on Sunday.”

On Thursday, days after Bondi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that the government would adopt and fully support Segal’s plan. Albanese acknowledged that the government could have done more to prevent the Bondi tragedy.

For more than two years we have watched anti-Israel protesters worldwide call to “globalize the intifada,” the Arabic word for “uprising.” The term intifada gained worldwide attention in the 1980s when the Palestine Liberation Organization launched the first Palestinian intifada against Israel. With the second intifada in the early 2000s, the word became synonymous with suicide bombings, shootings, rock throwing, and other acts of violence targeting Passover seders, pizzerias, discos, and buses. The term re-entered the public eye after Hamas’s 2023 terrorist attacks as anti-Israel protesters chanted for the globalization of the intifada. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made international headlines as a candidate by refusing to condemn the phrase, even as antisemitism watchdogs warned it is a call to murder. This past week, current New York City Mayor Eric Adams — and many other political leaders — explicitly recognized the phrase as a call to violence that directly resulted in the Bondi attack.

Just within the past year, we have seen horrifying headlines as individuals have taken it on themselves to globalize the intifada. On June 1, Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly shouted “Free Palestine!” “End Zionists!” and “They are killers!” as he threw two Molotov cocktails at a group of more than 30 people participating in a local walk in Boulder, Colorado, calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Soliman told police that he viewed “anyone supporting the exist (sic) of Israel on our land” to be “Zionist,” and he decided “to take his revenge from these people.” On May 21, Elias Rodriguez shot and killed Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim — who were soon to be engaged to each other — outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., during an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee. As he surrendered, Rodriguez told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.” In November, a mob gathered outside the Park East Synagogue in New York City, which was hosting an Israel real estate fair. The protesters chanted to “globalize the intifada” and “take another settler out.” On December 13, a day before the Bondi Beach massacre, a gunman fired 20 bullets into a Jewish home in Redlands, California. A doorbell camera recorded the assailant shouting “Fuck the Jews!” and other epithets as he attacked the home, which had been decorated for Chanukah. On December 15, eight Lubavitch young men on the New York City subway were harassed by two people shouting “fuck the Jews” and threatening to kill them.

This is what a globalized intifada looks like. We must recognize it for what it is: a call for violence against Jews. It is not enough to simply condemn the phrase or to pressure our legislators to label it hate speech. Not while a vocal subset of society equates the phrase with Palestinian liberation. There needs to be a public shift recognizing it as a form of hate speech. It must become as odious to the public as shouting the N word or calling for ethnic cleaning. Because that is exactly what it is: a call to ethnically cleanse Jews from Israel and from society.

Josh Lipowsky of Teaneck is a senior research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, where he focuses on antisemitism and Iran-sponsored terrorism. Follow him on X: @TheBigLipowsky.