December 15, 2025
Avner Boskey

In all their afflictions, He was afflicted

Anti-Semitism is alive and well and living in – Paris, London, Belgium, Sweden and Milano. It is wildcatting on the university campuses of Columbia, NYU, Yale, Emerson, Emory, MIT, Tufts, Harvard, USC, UCLA, UTA, Oregon, McGill, and Australia (Monash U and U of Sydney). Primary anti-Israel and anti-Jewish organizers include Students for Justice in Palestine, Young Democratic Socialists of America, Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, etc. Major PR activist work has been sponsored over the years by the Muslim Brotherhood (based in Qatar), as well as through MB’s worldwide media outlet al-Jazeera (also based in Qatar).

On the First Night of Hanukkah

On Sunday evening December 14, 2025, over 1,000 Jewish people were gathered at Australia’s most famous beach – Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia – for a Chabad-sponsored candle-lighting ceremony – ‘Chanukah by the Sea’ – on the First Night of Hanukkah. This eight-day Hebrew holiday is 2,000 years old, and Daniel the prophet spoke of it 2,500 years ago in Daniel 11:31-32. The eight days of Hanukkah and the  Twelve Days of Christmas have certain festive similarities.

At 6:47 PM local time the shooting began.  Two Muslims – a father and a son – began point-blank firing with hunting rifles into the crowd of Jewish people assembled on Bondi Beach.

Over a ten minute period, they fired over 50 shots into the 1,000+ crowd, murdering 15 people including:

  • ten year-old Matilda Britvan, a student at the Harmony Russian School in Sydney
  • an 87 year-old Ukrainian Jewish Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman (murdered while shielding his wife Larisa from jihadi bullets)
  • Reuven Morrison, age 62, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union
  • a French Jewish new immigrant to Australia Dan Elkayam, age 27

Over 38 people were wounded, including two police officers (one, a retired cop Peter Meagher).

A witness told the investigators, “They were shooting continuously, and nobody fired back. People were frozen. Police officers were at Bondi Beach and did not react for at least 20 minutes, even as the terrorists kept shooting and reloading their weapons.”

“Not an immediate threat”

A 50 year-old Muslim Pakistani immigrant who worked as a fruit seller and lived in Sydney’s Bonnyrigg suburb, Sajid Akram (‘Akram’ means ‘generous’ or ‘noble’ in Arabic; ‘Sajid’ means ‘one who bows down in worship’) had first arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, gradually obtaining a resident visa in 2001. His 24 year-old Australian-born son Naveed, was an unemployed bricklayer. He studied Quran at Al-Murad Institute of Heckenberg, New South Wales and, according to the suspected gunman’s Facebook page, he also studied at Hamdard University in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Naveed was investigated by security authorities for six months in 2019 regarding ties to ISIS. He was close to an ISIS cell led by Isaac al-Matari, the group’s head in Australia. Al-Matari is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence. Mike Burgess, director-general of ASIO, Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, confirmed that Naveed was “known to us, but not in an immediate-threat perspective.” According to Australia’s ABC outlet, father and son pledged allegiance to the ISIS terror group. An official from Australia’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team told ABC that an ISIS flag was found in the Akrams' car, along with IEDs in another car linked to the Akrams.

This jihadi terror attack came about a month after Israel’s Mossad notified Australian intelligence about Iranian-backed “terror infrastructure” already in Australia, planning to carry attacks on Jewish targets. According to the Mossad, the senior commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force Sardar Ammar has been intensifying efforts to attack Jewish and Israeli sites around the world since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. On August 26, 2025, Australia blamed Iran for overseeing two 2024 arson attacks – at the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen (a kosher deli) in Sydney. Canberra expelled Iran’s ambassador at that time, and listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization.

According to Australia’s highest-rated show 7News, in the months before this terror attack, Naveed Akram and his father Sajid practiced extensively at Cecil Park’s government-run Sydney International Shooting Centre.

Before orchestrating the mass shooting at Bondi Beach, both shooters spent a month in the Philippines, one of the world’s top extremist hotspots. As per multiple police sources, Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram had visited the Southeast Asian country together, without any other family members. Both of them returned to Australia just weeks before they opened fire on the Jewish gathering of roughly 1,000 people. The Islamic State East Asia, a branch of the ISIS terror group, is a proscribed terrorist group in Australia since 2017. “While there are no known links between ISEA and Australia, there have previously been links between Australians and terrorist groups in the Philippines,” a briefing document reads. Police sources told The Daily Telegraph: “There’s areas down there that are very dangerous… [with] training camps and the like. It has become a well trodden path for Islamic State through South East Asia and into the Philippines ever since 2019.”

A rabbi’s plea

Just weeks ago, Chabad Rabbi Eli Schlanger had written a letter to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, urging him to support Israel: “As a rabbi in Sydney, I beg you not to betray the Jewish people and not God Himself. Jews have been torn from their land again and again by leaders who are now remembered with contempt in the pages of history. You have an opportunity to stand on the side of truth and justice. I congratulate you in advance for the courage to do what is right and stand firm against this act of heresy.”

The anti-Semitic kettle has been boiling for some time

Anti-Semitism is raising its head all across the globe. Many avert their gaze from this, justifying the oldest hatred with new-fangled terminology: “It’s not anti-Jewish – just anti-Zionist.” Considering that over 90% of all Jews are Zionists, such special pleading is obscene.

Here are five recent articles which have been shining a spotlight on the Frankenstein’s monster morphing in Australia:

  • Anti-Jewish Incidents: Executive Council of Australian Jewry dated December 3, 2025:   “In the 10 years prior to October 2023 (Oct. 2014 – to Sep. 2023) the average annual number of anti-Jewish incidents was 342. In the two years since 7 October 2023, and the subsequent surge in antisemitism, there has been an average of 1,858 incidents per year. In the previous 12-month period, ending 30 September 2024, a total of 2,062 incidents were logged.”

  • “We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society and become part of the mainstream, where it is normalized and allowed to fester and spread, gaining ground at universities, in arts and culture spaces, in the health sector, in the workplace, and elsewhere. In such an environment, Jews have legitimate concerns for their physical safety and future in Australia.”

He who hates God, hates His people

Anti-Semitism is metastasizing – not only in the Middle East and in Europe, but also in North America. This is sobering, even depressing – but it should not be surprising. Revelation 12  informs us that Satan has a priority focus on destroying the people who gave birth to the Messiah, and his Last Days attacks on the sons and daughters of Jacob will bring the mighty response of the Archangel Michael, who stands guard over the Jewish people and carries ‘the Jewish portfolio’ in the kingdom of God (Daniel 10:13;10:21; 12:1; Jude 9).

Here are some Scripture passages which give context and encouragement as we stand firm and fight the good fight:

  • “In all [the Jewish people’s] affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them. In His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them, and carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah 63:9)

  • “He hears the cry of the afflicted!” (Job 34:28)

  • “All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you. And you shall be hated of all nations for My name’s sake” (Matthew 24:8-9)

  • “Many times they have attacked me from my youth up,” let Israel say. “Many times they have attacked me from my youth up – yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed upon my back. They lengthened their furrows. YHVH is righteous: He has cut up the ropes of the wicked! May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward! May they be like grass upon the housetops, which withers before it grows up – with which the harvester does not fill his hand, or the binder of sheaves his arms – nor do those who pass by say, ‘The blessing of YHVH be upon you! We bless you in the name of YHVH!’”                     (Psalm 129)

 

The hunting season is open

Many years ago, the God of Jacob spoke to the prophet Jeremiah about a Last Days ‘hunting season’ coming upon the world, directed against the Jewish people: “Behold, I am going to send for many fishermen,” declares YHVH, “and they will fish for them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill and from the clefts of the rocks” (Jeremiah 16:16). The dragon of Revelation 12 attempts to close in on his hoped-for Jewish prey.

  • This is the time when God’s intercessors rise to the challenge, and when the true friends of Israel will step into the breach!

 

How shall we then pray?

  • Pray for the release of understanding, revelation and vision for Israel and all who stand with her – regarding the evil ways of Satan and his evil plans for the Jewish people. Grant wisdom and strategies for how we can act accordingly!

  • Pray for the entire people of Israel to seek and find salvation in Messiah Yeshua

  • Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth!

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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