Ben Mannes: From Brown University to Bondi Beach

The terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney and the Brown University shooting in Providence, Rhode Island, over the last weekend exposed deep gaps in security preparedness and policing, while underscoring the rapid normalization of antisemitism and extremist rhetoric in Western societies. These incidents did not occur in a vacuum; they unfolded against two decades of rising jihadist-inspired violence, mass immigration from Islamist-majority countries, and a political and cultural climate that often excuses or recasts anti-Jewish hatred as “anti-Zionism.”​​

Bondi Beach: Failures in Security and Police Response 

On Sunday evening, hundreds gathered on Sydney’s Bondi Beach for “Chanukkah by the Sea,” a public celebration marking the first night of the Jewish holiday of Chanukkah, when gunmen opened fire on the crowd, killing at least sixteen people and injuring dozens more. New South Wales police said two suspects were taken into custody — one later died — and confirmed the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident targeting the Jewish community.​

Authorities later revealed that at least one assailant was previously known to security agencies, yet no specific threat warning or heightened protective posture had been issued for the event, despite its clear symbolic value, the global spike in antisemitic attacks since the Israel–Hamas war, and prior jihadist plots against Jewish targets worldwide. The result was a large, open-air Jewish gathering with minimal hardening, limited perimeter security, and no visible, layered protection comparable to what Western cities routinely deploy for high‑profile political or cultural events.​

Brown University: Questions for Police

In Providence, a gunman dressed in black opened fire on the Brown University campus, killing at least two people and critically injuring several others. The killings triggered a shelter-in-place order as law enforcement searched for the attacker. Students reported confusion and delays as the university and city authorities struggled to coordinate alerts, leaving some unsure whether to shelter, evacuate, or continue normal activities as gunfire reports spread on social media. 

While large, complex campuses pose inherent challenges, the Brown shooting again raised hard questions: why has a well-funded, ivy-league university in the center of the state’s largest city, with its own police agency boasting “over 95 highly trained members” supported by the 450-member Providence Police Department, and a network of CCTV cameras, fail to deliver equally robust, rehearsed active-shooter responses that prioritize rapid interdiction and clear communication with students and staff? ​​

When asking this, look into the work and funds also spent at Brown to build vast DEI bureaucracies and protest/affinity group protocols following the pro-Palestine/Hamas protests immediately following the 10/7/23 attacks on Israel. 

Policing and Political Priorities

The contrast between the rapid deployment of resources to manage protests and “hate speech” controversies, and the comparatively reactive posture toward credible physical threats, has become stark in both New South Wales and many U.S. jurisdictions. In Sydney, Jewish community leaders have long pressed for stronger protection at synagogues and public celebrations, warning that a mix of online radicalization and imported Islamist ideology made such gatherings prime targets.​

Meanwhile, video and eyewitness criticism have circulated about the NSW Police response to Bondi Beach, showing the officers on scene “froze” instead of engaging the less-armed assailants. Senior police leadership strongly defended the actions of officers, affirming there was a swift and engaged response under extremely dangerous conditions. Independent reviews of the police conduct in this incident are expected as part of the formal post-incident investigation

In Providence and on college campuses nationwide, administrators have dedicated immense attention to crafting speech codes, bias-response teams, and negotiation channels with activist groups, but their campus security plans lag behind the evolving reality of politically and ideologically motivated violence. When politicians and police leadership treat public safety as secondary to optics and coalition management, the inevitable result is delayed interdiction, muddled messaging, and heightened casualty counts when attacks materialize.​

Root Cause: Rising Antisemitism and “Anti-Zionism”

Both the Bondi and Brown attacks come amid a documented surge in antisemitic incidents across Western democracies, particularly on and around university campuses. The Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents in the United States hit a record high in 2024, with a majority linked in some way to Israel or Zionism, and incidents on college campuses rising by 84 percent in a single year.​

While the ADL and other watchdogs distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and antisemitism, they note that chants praising Hamas “resistance,” calls for “intifada,” and slogans such as “From the river to the sea” are often deployed alongside harassment and intimidation of Jewish students. Groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have publicly celebrated Hamas’ October 7 massacre as a “historic win,” rhetoric that normalizes terror and creates a permissive atmosphere for more extreme actors who view Jewish communal events and campuses as soft targets.​ At Brown University, SJP was only expelled after the University was forced to pay $50M by the Trump Administration, and has since been inexplicably reinstated.

Immigration, Ideology, and Western Naivete

The last twenty years have seen repeated Islamist-inspired attacks across Europe and the broader West, from London to Paris, Brussels, and now Bondi Beach, many involving either recent migrants or second-generation residents steeped in transnational jihadist narratives. At the same time, political and media elites in many countries pursued ambitious immigration policies from Islamist-majority regions and championed a multiculturalism that often downplayed the incompatibility of hardline theocratic doctrines with secular, liberal norms.​

Rather than demanding clear assimilation to Western values, much of the establishment sought to build political coalitions with religiously conservative immigrant blocs, tolerating fundamentalist attitudes on women, sexuality, and Jews so long as they translated into reliable votes and an appearance of diversity. This has produced pockets of de facto parallel societies and ideological safe havens where anti-Western and antisemitic beliefs are protected under the veneer of cultural sensitivity, occasionally erupting into violence dramatic enough to capture global headlines.​

Naming and Shaming Radical Antisemites

The normalization of anti-Jewish hatred under the banner of “anti-Zionism” has also depended on the reluctance of politicians, media organizations, and others to directly name and ostracize those who endorse or excuse terror groups like Hamas. When academics, pundits or politicians describe the slaughter of civilians as “resistance” or refuse to condemn kidnappings and mass rape, they are not engaging in policy critique—they are endorsing a genocidal ideology that has never concealed its intent toward Jews.​

Communities that treat such voices as legitimate partners in coalition politics, or that allow them to dominate campus discourse without consequence, send a clear message to extremists: Jews are uniquely acceptable targets, and attacks on them will be met with equivocation and context‑seeking rather than unambiguous moral condemnation and hard security measures. In this environment, the leap from rhetorical dehumanization to physical violence becomes tragically predictable.​

Politicians’ Rhetoric and “Blood on Their Hands”

Finally, these attacks unfold in a broader political culture where hyperbolic, apocalyptic rhetoric has become routine—particularly from officials and activists who insist that nearly every opposed policy “will lead to thousands dying.” Debates over expiring Obamacare subsidies, border enforcement, or the introduction of merit-based criteria into DEI programs are frequently framed not as disagreements over governance, but as life‑or‑death struggles against “fascism,” “genocide,” or “white supremacy.”​

This climate does two things: it trivializes real atrocities, such as Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians and openly antisemitic terror attacks like Bondi, and it signals to unstable or fanatical individuals that violence against political opponents is not only justified, but morally necessary. When elected officials and media figures repeatedly declare that their adversaries are “killing people” simply by changing a regulation or enforcing immigration law, they help create the moral permission structure that pushes the most radical followers from online rage to real‑world bloodshed.​

In the end, what happened on Bondi Beach and at Brown University is not simply about individual gunmen or lone failures of policing. It is the downstream consequence of years of security complacency, willful blindness toward imported and homegrown extremist ideologies, and a political class that prefers incendiary narratives and fragile coalitions to sober, equal‑handed protection of every citizen — especially Jews, who have once again become the canaries in the coal mine of Western civilization.

Based in Philadelphia, A. Benjamin Mannes is a consultant and subject matter expert in security and criminal justice reform based on his own experiences on both sides of the criminal justice system. He is a corporate compliance executive who has served as a federal and municipal law enforcement officer, and as the former Director, Office of Investigations with the American Board of Internal Medicine. @PublicSafetySME