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By Simon Crerar
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BONDI, AUSTRALIA — In the days after the terror attack at Bondi Beach, as flowers piled up outside the Pavilion and the names of the dead were still being spoken aloud for the first time, Australia’s Governor-General found herself returning to a single question.
“What does a nation look like,” Sam Mostyn asked, “when ordinary people are confronted with something they never imagined they would face?”
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Her Excellency the Honourable Sam Mostyn AC, The King’s representative in Australia, has spent the weeks since the December 14 massacre moving between hospitals, synagogues, surf clubs and private homes, listening to stories that resist easy categorisation.
There was terror, she said. But there was also something else — something she believes goes to the heart of Australian identity.
“In the days since I've had the absolute privilege of meeting and spending time with those that didn't think they would ever be heroes,” Mostyn told Newsweek at Bondi.
“They didn't ever expect to be involved in acts of heroism that are almost impossible to comprehend now, ordinary citizens finding themselves in something like a war zone, running toward danger to look after others.”
The Bondi Beach attack on December 14 — Australia’s deadliest antisemitic terror incident and the country’s worst mass-casualty attack in decades — has prompted national grief, political reckoning and a renewed debate about antisemitism.
One month on, with the surviving suspect charged with dozens of offenses including murder and terrorism, and a Royal Commission announced into the circumstances surrounding the attack, the country is still asking how such violence took root.
But alongside those questions is another, quieter reckoning: what the response to the attack revealed about the nature of Australian heroism, mateship and kinship — not as abstractions or mythology, but as instinct.
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In The Firing Line
On the evening of December 14, thousands had gathered at Bondi for Chanukah by the Sea, a family-friendly celebration marking the first night of the Jewish festival of lights. Among them was Jessica Chapnik Kahn, who had walked down to the beach with her five-year-old daughter, Shemi.
“She was saying [that] she was loving growing up, loving being five,” Kahn later recalled, “and that being older meant she was stronger and could do different things.”
Minutes later, Kahn heard what she realized to be a gunshot.
“It was such a party vibe. Party Central,” she said. “They think it’s fireworks. It’s not.”
As panic spread and bullets tore through the park, Kahn made a decision she would later struggle to fully comprehend: she pushed her daughter forward instead of pulling her back, trying to reach the open beach before realizing the distance was too great.
“The distance became so huge I thought we would be dead before we made it.”
She followed a crowd into a picnic area behind a low concrete wall and lay on top of her daughter, along with dozens of other parents shielding children with their bodies.
“There was a sense that if you moved a muscle or breathed wrong, that might cost you your life,” she recalled.
Kahn and her daughter survived. Fifteen others did not.
Putting Lives On The Line
What happened next — in the seconds and minutes after the first shots — is where the story of Bondi Beach shifts from horror to something harder to define.
Moments before the shooting began, Boris and Sofia Gurman, who had emigrated from Ukraine decades earlier, were walking along Campbell Parade – Bondi’s main drag – when a gunman emerged from a parked car carrying a long weapon.
Dashcam footage later showed Boris, a 69-year-old retired mechanic, tackling the attacker and attempting to disarm him. His wife Sofia, 61, rushed to his side.
Both were killed.
Their family later said: “We feel an overwhelming sense of pride in their bravery and selflessness. This encapsulates who Boris and Sofia were, people who instinctively tried to help others.”
At their funeral, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman described an “unimaginable situation in which we say goodbye to both at the same time.”
Outside, wrapped in an Israeli flag, mourner Sivan Karenheh struggled to reconcile what had happened with the life the Gurmans had sought in Australia.
“They immigrated from Ukraine to live the Australian dream, and my heart sinks knowing they came here feeling safe yet died defending our community,” she said. “They lived for us to walk free as Jews, and they died defending that.”
Among those who flew in for the funeral was Rabbi Avi Weiss, founder of a major New York synagogue and a veteran witness to antisemitic violence around the world — from Buenos Aires to Paris to Ground Zero.
“For one major purpose,” Weiss said of his journey, “to tell our brothers and sisters who are suffering so that they're not alone.”
“Not many people are ready to put their lives on the line to save others,” he added. “And that's precisely what they did.”
For Weiss, the attack was not an isolated rupture but part of a global pattern — one that demands moral clarity.
“The more one speaks out against antisemitism, the more protected we are, rather than rendered vulnerable,” he said.
Heroes Come in All Shapes and Forms
Heroism that day did not only wear a uniform, or follow a script.
A short distance away, Ahmed Al Ahmed, a 43-year-old Syrian-born tobacconist who had come to Bondi to meet a friend for coffee, heard gunfire and ran toward it.
Video footage later showed him crouching behind a car, then rushing the gunman from behind and wrestling the weapon from his hands. Moments later, he was shot multiple times by the attacker’s son.
Friends and neighbors in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire described Ahmed – a Muslim – as a quiet, hardworking father of two who rarely sought attention.
Those who know him say his instinct to act did not come from bravado or ideology, but from habit — the reflexive sense of responsibility forged by running a small business in a tightly knit community.
His shop, now shuttered, sits among cafés, pharmacies and takeaway restaurants where owners greet one another daily and look out for each other’s customers. In the days after the attack, flowers and handwritten notes accumulated outside, a wordless attempt by locals to reconcile the ordinariness of the man they knew with the scale of what he had done.
Up the street, Mohammed Islam, who runs Ahmed’s favorite curry restaurant, reflected on what the moment revealed about shared values.
“As a Muslim we must respect everyone. My religion is mine; his religion is his,” Islam said. “I appreciate him [Ahmed] and I pray for him, and I hope he comes out of this situation okay.”
For Islam, Ahmed’s actions transcended faith. “He went in to help human beings,” he said. “That’s what matters.”
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Ali Kalache, who runs the pharmacy next door to Ahmed’s shop, said he recognized him immediately in the video.
“The guy was advancing towards the crowd, there was no one in his path, and he [Ahmed] just got up and did what he did,” Kalache said.
“He’s a phenomenal guy. Heroes come in all shapes and forms.”
Springing Into Action
Seconds after Ahmed was shot, another civilian stepped forward. Reuven Morrison, a Russian-born Jewish man who had migrated to Australia as a teenager in the 1970s, was captured on video throwing a brick at the retreating gunman.
He was fatally shot.
“My father was murdered. In cold blood. Shot. For being Jewish,” his daughter later said. “He did not cower. He did not lay low. He sprang to action. To fight.”
Exactly a year earlier, Morrison had warned publicly about rising antisemitism in Australia — a warning that now reads as tragically prescient.
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Inside nearby venues, the same instinct was taking hold.
Mark Fantasia, general manager of North Bondi Fish, was standing on the deck overlooking the beach when he heard what he initially thought were popping sounds.
“I mean, you almost couldn’t see sand,” he recalled. “The beach was full.”
As crowds surged in all directions, Fantasia opened the restaurant’s doors and ushered people inside — more than 100 by his estimate — before running toward the danger.
“I’m first aid trained,” he said. “And I just thought, ‘Well, I can help people.’”
Fantasia checked on wounded police officers, ensured others were receiving care, and watched as civilians shielded strangers with their bodies.
“The thing that gives me the most comfort is the amount of people that ran towards danger,” he said. “That kind of Aussie mateship and kinship.”
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Nearby, members of the Bondi Surf Life Saving Club were gathered for their Christmas party when the shooting began.
“As lifesavers, our training is to help people,” club president Liz Webb said. “So when the events unfolded, our people just didn’t question. They just helped.”
Some ran toward the gunfire as bullets “whizzed by.” Others triaged the wounded, coordinated CPR, and worked alongside professional lifeguards and paramedics.
“So many more lives were saved because we were right there,” Webb said.
Police officers, too, moved toward danger. Three uniformed NSW Police officers were already on duty at the event when the shooting began. All three engaged the gunmen.
Probationary Constable Jack Hibbert, 22, was shot twice just four months into his career. Constable Scott Dyson, serving in Bondi for 18 months, was also shot.
“They weren't shot in the back as they were running away; they were shot in the front,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said.
Detective Cesar Barraza later joined the confrontation, taking up position behind the attackers as gunfire continued.
By the time the attackers were neutralized, 15 people were dead or dying.
Everybody Who Could Went Forward
In the month since the horrific evening, Australia has argued — loudly and often — about policing, politics and prevention. There have been arrests, charges, inquiries and recriminations. Jewish Australians have spoken openly about fear and isolation; Muslim leaders have warned against collective blame.
A Royal Commission has been announced to examine how the attack occurred.
But amid that debate, Sam Mostyn says she has witnessed something quieter and more enduring.
“People opened their homes. Welcomed strangers. Sat with the dying so no one was alone,” she said.
“I don't think hero is a big enough word for some of these acts.”
For Mostyn, Bondi Beach did not just reveal vulnerability. It revealed character.
“Almost everybody who could do something went forward,” she said. “I think all of us wonder whether we would ever do that in those circumstances.”
One month on, the question Australia continues to ask is not only how the attack happened — but who it showed Australians to be.
And whether that instinct to step forward, to protect, to act without calculation, can endure long after the flowers have faded from the memorials at Bondi Beach.
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