EDITORIAL: Security failures before Bondi shootings emerge

With each passing day more about security failings before the slaughter at Bondi last year are coming to light.

What is emerging is cause for considerable alarm.

It has emerged both from the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion set up after two gunmen killed 15 people during last year’s Chanukah by the Sea celebrations at Bondi Beach, as well as media reports in recent days.

This week Sky News host Sharri Markson reported alleged gunmen Sajid and Naveed Akram slipped through the cracks between law enforcement and security agencies before the December 14 attack.

The alleged shooters had travelled to Uzbekistan — an entry way to terror hotspot Afghanistan — in late 2022 or early 2023.

Markson wrote that Australian Federal Police and Border Force were aware of the Akrams’ travel but did not pass the intelligence on to ASIO or NSW Police, which issued gun licences.

Sajid Akram was the subject of two National Security Hotline tip-offs — in 2007 and 2014. The first involved interest in explosive material. The second involved interest in Islamic State and potentially travel.

On Monday the royal commission heard the evidence of an official from the Jewish-run Community Security Group who emailed a threat assessment of Hanukkah events to the Eastern Suburbs Police Command on December 8.

“Please be advised of the following upcoming Jewish communal events in your police area command. We kindly request your assistance with any policing measures that your command may deem appropriate,” it read.

“The current security alert level for the NSW Jewish community is . . . high. A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish community is likely, and there is a high level of anti-Semitic vilification.” The email listed Jewish events set for the Hanukkah period in the region.

But the senior officer responsible for assigning police to the event told the commission on Tuesday initially that she wasn’t sure if she read it, and then said she didn’t.

“I couldn’t confidently say I’ve read it prior,” the massacre, she told the inquiry. “Whilst I didn’t read it, I don’t say that anything in it would have changed my thoughts.”

Ignoring warnings from the Jewish community raises the spectre of anti-Semitism in itself, coming as it did after two years of harassment, intimidation and firebombings of the Jewish community — some orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Then when it came to the pointy end of community safety, the organisation which knew better than anyone the dangers ahead, raised the alarm. And yet Bondi happened.

Of further concern, commissioner Virginia Bell told the hearing there had been an “undiluted level of hatred and bigotry” directed at members of the Jewish community who had given evidence to the inquiry.

The poisonous mindsets that came to the surface on that terrible day at Bondi have not disappeared. It is sadly and worryingly the case that the Australian community faces serious challenges.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.