Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was met with boos while attending a vigil honoring the victims of the Bondi Beach shooting on Sunday.
An estimated 10,000 mourners, including Albanese and various Australian politicians and members of the Jewish community, gathered on Bondi Beach to commemorate the victims. David Ossip, who serves as president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, remarked on Albanese’s presence to the crowd and received a chorus of boos.
“This has to be the nadir of antisemitism in our country,” Ossip said. “This has to be the moment when light starts to eclipse the darkness.”
Meanwhile, the crowd cheered at the mention of opposition leader Sussan Ley. Ley has said that a coalition government under her leadership would reverse a decision by Albanese’s government to recognize a Palestinian state.
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The tense reaction comes after Jewish leaders and Israeli officials have lambasted Albanese’s government for ignoring warning signs of Australia’s rising antisemitism in the months before the attack on Bondi Beach.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted a letter he sent to Albanese earlier this year when the latter’s government announced it was recognizing a Palestinian state. He argued the move “pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.”
“Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia. You did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country. You took no action. You let the disease spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today,” Netanyahu said the day of the attack.
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The Dec. 14 attack left 15 people dead and dozens more hospitalized. The shooters were a father-son duo, and the father was killed in the attack. The son, 24-year-old Naveed Akram, woke from a coma after recovering from severe injuries and faces charges of murder and terrorism.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
