Australia’s New Years Eve celebration was a more solemn affair than usual this year, with a heavy security presence on the streets and a nationwide minute of silence for the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre.
The moment of silence was held just before the first round of fireworks were launched over Sydney Harbor at 11:00 local time (12:00 p.m. GMT, 7:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time).
Thousands gathered for the celebration held up their phone lights, in the modern rendition of a candlelight vigil, and the images of a menorah and dove were projected on the pylons of the Harbor Bridge, along with the words “Peace” and “Unity.”
The moment was held in remembrance of the December 14 attack in which a father-and-son team of jihadis slaughtered 15 Jews who were celebrating Hanukkah on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach. One of the victims was a ten-year-old girl while another was an elderly Holocaust survivor. Another forty people were injured in the attack.
The older jihadi, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, was killed by police at the scene. His son Naveed Akram, 24, is in custody and has been charged with 59 offenses, including murder and terrorism. Homemade flags of the Islamist terrorist organization ISIS were found in their vehicle.
About 2,500 police officers were dispatched to patrol the streets of Sydney on New Year’s Eve, some of them carrying rifles. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns conceded that some revelers might be troubled by the sight of police “carrying firearms and weapons that you haven’t seen before.”
“But I don’t make any apology for that. We want people to be safe in our community,” Minns added.
Throughout the week, Minns urged Australians to show their “defiance” in the face of the Bondi Beach atrocity by turning out in large numbers for New Year’s Eve.
“The best way of demonstrating defiance to that kind of ideology, that horrible crime, is to go about living your life the way you would ordinarily do it and get some joy out of New Year’s Eve safe in the knowledge that there are thousands of police and a massive government response to this terrorism event,” he said on Wednesday.
“I particularly encourage those in Sydney not to be cowed or fearful by the threats of terror and the testing times, particularly that the city has seen, but to come out to celebrate and to see in the new year in a uniquely Australian style,” opposition leader Sussan Ley agreed.
Most New Year’s Eve celebrants who spoke with reporters found the heavy police presence to be reassuring.
“We had our worries about coming for New Year’s Eve, but we were reading more recently in the news… how more police were going to be here, it would be a bit safer,” a British tourist named Joe told the BBC.
“Because of all the security, the police, even police helicopters, they’ve done what they can and we’re just here trying to enjoy ourselves,” visitor Lieke Wijnnhoven from the Netherlands told the Australian Associated Press (AAP).
The police were out in force in other cities as well. A German visitor to Melbourne resignedly told the AAP that “everywhere can happen, things like this, we had it in Germany too.”
On Monday, seventeen families of the Bondi Beach shooting victims wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese demanding a federal inquiry, or “royal commission” as they are called in Australia, to investigate the surge in antisemitism — and the feeble government response to it — since Palestinian terrorists massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
“We need to know why clear warning signs were ignored, how antisemitic hatred and Islamic extremism were allowed to dangerously grow unchecked, and what changes must be made to protect all Australians going forward,” the letter said.
Albanese has resolutely dismissed these calls for a royal commission, preferring to appoint a retired bureaucrat to “examine potential failings in procedures and laws that led to the shooting,” with a report due in April.