Anti-Semitism royal commissioner Virginia Bell on Wednesday tried to placate Jewish anger over her limited investigation into last year’s Bondi Beach massacre by proposing part of her confidential report into the terrorist attack be made public — years in the future.
Ms Bell said on the last day of hearings into Australia’s worst modern terrorist attack that she recognised frustrations that she did not publicly investigate how and why two men identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram drove to the famous beach with an ISIS flag and killed 15 mostly Jewish people at an important religious celebration.
The former High Court judge said she wanted confidential sections from two reports by the $131 million inquiry about the attack on December 14 last year made public. But such a step would only happen after Naveed Akram’s murder and terrorism case finishes — his father Sajid died in the attack — and would be a decision made by the federal government.
While seven mainstream Jewish groups on Wednesday expressed their support for the royal commission, which they hope will make Australians more aware of anti-Semitism, some Jews are concerned the inquiry did not do enough to investigate the causes and motivations of Islamic-inspired violence against Jews.
“I’m conscious that many members of the community, and particularly members of the Jewish community, must find it frustrating that a royal commission established in the aftermath of the Bondi Chanukah attack has not been seen publicly to be investigating what led to the attack and whether it might have been prevented,” Commissioner Bell said today.
“The commission has had to take care to conduct its inquiry in a way that does not occasion prejudice to the pending criminal proceedings.
“After conclusion of the criminal proceedings I propose substantial parts of the confidential volumes of the interim and final reports should be made public.”
Symptoms or the cause?
In public hearings, the royal commission focused on Jews’ experiences of abuse and prejudice and suggestions to tackle the problem rather than the sources of hostility towards Jews, Zionism and Israel.
Menachem Vorchheimer, a Melbourne activist who successfully sued a Muslim leader this year for stating “All Zionists are terrorists”, said the inquiry should have examined whether political decisions and rhetoric “created a permissive environment in which those hate groups were able to express those hateful ideologies and that march continued on until the Bondi massacre”.
“That’s the part I don’t think we pulled apart,” he said.
Some Jewish leaders argue the Albanese Government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state last September and criticism of Israel’s war against Hamas contributed to a rise in hostility towards Jews.
But government officials, including Anthony Albanese, have repeatedly condemned antisemitic attacks, defended Israel’s right to exist and allocated money and manpower to combating anti-Semitism.
Open criticism
On Wednesday morning 30 former defence and military officials published an open letter in The Australian seeking an extension to the royal commission’s December 14 deadline.
The signatories, who included former Defence Force chief and governor-general David Hurley, complained the inquiry had not forced Islamist organisations that protested against Israel’s invasion of Gaza to give evidence, or “investigated the sources, origins and growth of Islamist extremism in Australia”.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said it would be inappropriate to issue orders to an independent inquiry and the Government would work with the royal commission on the “appropriate treatment of classified information” once the court cases finished.
On Wednesday Commissioner Bell said she would seek an extra four days, to December 18, so her report does not distract from commemorations on the massacre’s first anniversary.
Over 62 days, the inquiry heard from 346 witnesses. About 14,000 of Australia’s estimated 120,000 Jews submitted written statements, which were used to select individuals to appear in person for hearings televised over the internet, according to Richard Lancaster, the royal commission’s lead barrister.
“This is a powerful confirmation that antisemitism is a stain on the whole community and that a properly functioning democracy rests on the safety of all parts and all communities that make up the society,” Mr Lancaster said today.
No politicians were required to give evidence.
Police officers and intelligence officials were mostly questioned in private. While the confidential hearings protected official secrets, they meant that important questions were never asked publicly, including what the intelligence services knew about the Akrams before the attack.
ASIO source
On Wednesday, Commissioner Bell responded to a complaint from a former ASIO source known as Marcus that he had been refused a visa to return to Australia to give evidence to the royal commission about the Akrams, who he said he met in 2019 and feared were becoming radicalised.
Marcus previously told the ABC he spent years infiltrating Islamic extremist groups in western Sydney on behalf of ASIO before his cover was exposed and his relationship with the domestic intelligence agency broke down.
Commissioner Bell said today that royal commission staff contacted Marcus’s lawyers and offered him a two-week window to talk to a senior royal commission lawyer over video or a secure phone line from overseas.
“His lawyers said the offer doesn’t engage certain legal protections,” Commissioner Bell said. “To date Marcus has not taken up the offer.”
She said the royal commission had been given his ASIO reports from 2019 and questioned the ASIO officers involved.
Mr Akram, an Australian-born bricklayer from Sydney, has not pleaded to the 59 offences against him, including displaying the prohibited symbol of a terrorist organisation.
He is due to appear in court next on October 28 for a procedural hearing. Prosecutors have already provided three parts of the brief of evidence to his lawyers and plan to hand over the rest by that court hearing, according to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The last witness to appear at the royal commission was Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, whose son-in-law Eli Schlanger, a 41-year-old father of five, helped organise the Chanukah by the Sea event at Bondi and died at the scene next to his wife and son, who were both injured.
“My grandson was just two months old when his father Eli lost his life,” the rabbi said. “He will come to know his father through his mother, brother, sisters, his grandparents and uncles through stories and the legacy Eli left behind.
“And one day he will be old enough to understand what happened on that Sunday, 14 December, 2025. And I wonder what Australia he will know by then.
“Will he learn that the warning signs were there? That hatred was allowed to grow and even after Bondi, Australia failed to change course? Or will he learn that Bondi became a moment when Australia understood where unchecked hatred can lead and found the courage to confront it and chose another path?
“My prayer is that when my grandson is old enough to understand what happened to his father, he will also be able to understand what Australia chose to do about it.”
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