Bondi hero Ahmed al Ahmed visits America, reveals he ‘didn’t think’ as he jumped on gunman

It was a moment of heroism, captured on video and viewed millions of times around the world. As two armed gunmen rained terror on a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Australia last month, Ahmed al Ahmed, an immigrant shop owner, sprang from behind a parked car and tackled one of the gunmen, seizing his rifle and saving an untold number of people before being shot five times.

In the coming days, as al Ahmed had surgery for the bullet wounds to his chest, shoulder and arm, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, the director of Chabad of Bondi and the organiser of the event on the beach, presided over funerals for many of the 15 people murdered.

They were two men from the same city, but from different worlds: a Muslim from Syria and a Hasidic rabbi from the Soviet Union, unknown to each other until an unspeakable tragedy brought them together.

This week, the duo travelled to New York to wrest a message of hope from the horrific event. The rabbi needed to visit Chabad’s world headquarters in Brooklyn, and he had invited al Ahmed to come along, with Chabad paying for the trip. They met for the first time in the Sydney airport. They had a 36-hour trip in front of them, including delays at several stops.

“It gave us time to really connect and get to know each other,” the rabbi said Wednesday afternoon in a bustling kosher cafe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Al Ahmed, accompanied by his cousin and a lawyer, sat with his arm in a sling, tired after an interview at CNN, hoping someone would finally bring him something to eat. In the hubbub of the day, he had not had any food. He also had no sensation in his left hand.

This is the journey of the modern global hero: jet-lagged and in pain, cobwebbed by painkillers, sleep-deprived and on an empty stomach.

Finally al Ahmed’s avocado toast arrived. A tricky thing to eat with one hand immobilised.

With it, al Ahmed’s spirits seemed to lift.

“I’m still feeling all right, OK, but the body comes to the point that it’s exhausted,” he said, gamely navigating a language that was not his.

On the day of the attack, Dec. 14, al Ahmed had gone to the beach with a friend, where they were looking for a place to get a cup of coffee. It was summer in Sydney, with temperatures topping 80 degrees. He saw people celebrating, hundreds of them, all of different ages.

“And they looked happy, always smiling,” he said. “I was happy that moment to come to Bondi, everything bright, people happy, nice, enjoying themselves.”

A security guard told them it was a “community festival” and invited them onto the beach. Then they heard gunshots and felt the bullets whizzing by their heads, al Ahmed said.

Al Ahmed, 44, had lived in Australia for more than 20 years. When he saw people being attacked on the beach, he said, he saw them not as Jews, but as fellow Australians.

“I’m defending my people,” he said. “It’s defending innocent people, whatever their religion.”

At that moment, he said, he felt he had been placed there by God, with a moral choice: whether to turn away or act on God’s intention.

“I didn’t think about anything,” he said. “I think only behind me, kids crying, woman screaming. I felt, I’m the one who has to save them.

“That’s the time I saw the terrorist turn behind the car, and I asked God, ‘Give me help.’”

When Ulman learned of al Ahmed’s actions, he began to think of a way they could work together. The attack on Bondi Beach had come after a rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia, fueled by opposition to Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. He went to the hospital where al Ahmed was taken, but he was sleeping, so they did not meet.

The rabbi presided over three funerals on the Wednesday after the Sunday massacre, including that of his son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who worked beside him at Chabad of Bondi. He had another three on Thursday and four on Friday.

In an era short on public heroism, the video of al Ahmed’s act — risking his life for total strangers — struck a chord. Donations poured into a GoFundMe campaign for him, reaching $2.65 million, including $99,999 from hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who has been active in opposing antisemitism. President Donald Trump called al Ahmed “a very, very brave person.”

Yet the video also produced a backlash. Though the response was overwhelmingly positive, some voices on social media called al Ahmed a “dog” or a “traitor” for risking his life to save Jews. At the same time, reports of Islamophobic incidents in Australia, mostly verbal or physical attacks against women in hijabs, skyrocketed, by one measure, increasing more than 700%.

Ulman invited al Ahmed to accompany him to New York, both to visit the Queens gravesite of the movement’s leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and to broadcast an image of unity after an outbreak of hate.

Ulman, who is an authority on Jewish law, said the message he had in mind was part of Jewish tradition, known as the seven laws of Noah, or the Noahide Laws, which are sometimes described as a bridge between Judaism and Islam. The laws include a duty to respect God, not to murder or steal, to practice sexual morality and establish courts of justice, as well as dietary restrictions.

The principles are “universal” rather than sectarian, the rabbi said, and essential “to make sure these things don’t happen again.” Asked about the overlap between the two faiths, al Ahmed said he did not talk about “politics.”

In the kosher cafe, al Ahmed was visibly starting to fade. He was due at a Chabad awards gala in Brooklyn that evening and then in Washington in the morning to meet with members of Congress. He welcomed the chance to see another culture, he said. But at that moment, the hero of Bondi Beach looked like he really needed some sleep.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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