Australia honoured the victims on Sunday of a gun attack a week earlier on a seaside Hanukkah celebration, as the prime minister announced a review of the country\u2019s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n
The nation marked a day of reflection to honour the 15 people killed and the dozens wounded in the attack by two gunmen at Sydney\u2019s Bondi Beach. With security tight and flags at half-staff on government buildings, a minute of silence was held at 6:47pm (12:47pm PKT), the time the attack began.<\/p>\n
Television and radio networks paused for a minute\u2019s silence.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other leaders, attended a memorial event at Bondi Beach under a heavy police presence, including snipers on rooftops and police boats in the waters.<\/p>\n
Albanese was booed by the crowd on arrival and later when the speaker mentioned his name during the memorial. He sat in the front row wearing a kippah, the traditional Jewish cap.<\/p>\n
Albanese, under pressure from critics who say his centre-left government has not done enough to curb a surge in antisemitism since the start of the war in Gaza, was not scheduled to speak at the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have lost our innocence\u2026.last week took our innocence,\u201d David Ossip, the president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, said in a speech to start the proceedings.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike the grass here at Bondi was stained with blood, so, too, has our nation been stained. We have landed up in a dark place. But friends, Hanukkah teaches us that light can illuminate even the bleakest of places. A single act of courage, a single flame of hope, can give us direction and point the path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also present at the memorial was the father of Ahmed al Ahmed, hailed as the \u2018Bondi Hero\u2019 for wrestling a gun from one of the attackers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAhmed has asked me to pass on the following message to us all: \u2018The Lord is close to the broken-hearted. Today I stand with you, my brothers and sisters\u2019,\u201d Ossip said.<\/p>\n
Authorities invited Australians to light a candle on Sunday evening, the start of the eighth and final day of the Jewish festival of lights, \u201cas a quiet act of remembrance with family, friends or loved ones\u201d of the victims of the attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia honoured the victims on Sunday of a gun attack a week earlier on a seaside Hanukkah celebration, as the prime minister announced a review of the country\u2019s law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The nation marked a day of reflection to honour the 15 people killed and the dozens wounded in the attack by two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14365,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions\/14365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}