Just when the world was preparing to bid farewell to 2025, a beachfront bloodbath sent a chill across continents. In faraway Australia, a father-son duo, Sajid and Naveed Akram, killed 15 people and injured over 20 others in a mass shooting targeting those gathered to celebrate Hanukkah at Sydney’s popular Bondi beach. The scale and brutality of the attack—the deadliest mass shooting in that country since the Port Arthur massacre of 1996—have shaken its sense of security.
As with every atrocity of this nature, there is a rush to find explanations. Was this the work of a transnational terror network? Did the duo’s reported travel to the Philippines for ‘military-style training’ point to a wider conspiracy? Such questions would not explain why an otherwise unremarkable fruit-seller and his son chose to unleash violence on unarmed civilians. Acts of terror are rarely the product of a single cause—they emerge from grievance, indoctrination and a worldview that strips others of humanity.
The local police have charged 24-year-old Naveed with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder. Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has announced tougher hate-speech laws and restrictions on visas for those who propagate “hate and division”. But the repercussions of the attack will extend far beyond that country’s borders. It came at a time when global tempers were frayed and the fragile ceasefire in Gaza appeared poised to move into its next phase.
Bondi fits into a disturbing global pattern of targeted violence against communities that has intensified since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in 2023. This is not a clash of religions or civilisations. It is the deliberate targeting of civilians, justified through warped narratives.
Terrorism seeks to convey a brutal message: that dialogue, politics, and diplomacy are futile. It thrives on the belief that differences are irreconcilable and coexistence impossible. Countering this requires more than policing and intelligence; it demands rejecting narratives that legitimise mass murder in the name of distant causes or imagined enemies.
What political leaders across the world, including in India, must now confront is a harder truth: years of opportunistic polarisation has widened the space for radicalisation. In such an atmosphere, no security apparatus can fully guard against isolated individuals willing to turn hatred into spectacle. The real test lies in resisting the politics of division before it curdles into violence.