There is a particular kind of shock that follows violence in an open space. A beach, of all places, is meant to be without edges or barriers. It is where land gives way to the vastness of the ocean, where we stand barefoot and are reminded of how small we are in the face of nature. The beach is warmth underfoot, a salt breeze against the skin, the quiet poetry of wet sand and dry, cold water and hot sun. It is the feeling of being both here and somewhere else entirely.
For generations, the open horizon of the sea has represented possibility. How many of us have stood staring out, imagining that if you just sailed and sailed, a different life might be waiting? For the Irish, that horizon has often pointed toward Australia. Once, you needed a criminal record to get in; now, one will keep you out. Australia has long been a place of both wonder and hardship for Irish emigrants, but Bondi Beach came to symbolise something else entirely — escape, sunlight, reinvention. We grew up hearing stories of Christmas barbecues on the sand while we picked at turkey in grey drizzle, dreaming of a white Christmas that rarely arrived.
That is why Bondi Beach carries such emotional weight. It is not just a location; it is an idea. To hear that violence erupted there last weekend — that men opened fire in a place defined by openness and safety — was profoundly horrifying. It joins a long list of horrors from recent years, each one beamed directly into our living rooms, onto our phones, into the hands of children barely old enough to process what they are seeing, but old enough to know that people of their own age are perishing. Hate and its consequences are now recorded instantly, endlessly replayed, stripped of context, and too often allowed to numb us to what should never feel ordinary.
The past decade has been relentless. War, pandemic, the return of authoritarianism, and the steady erosion of our sense of security have left us raw. We are slowly realising that nowhere is untouched, that even places we believed to be sanctuaries are vulnerable.
There is nothing more corrosive than racism, whether directed at Irish people, Black communities, Muslims, Asians, Jews, or anyone else. We, as a nation, know this too well. Irish people endured it in Britain for decades and should understand better than most what it means to be blamed, caricatured, and dehumanised.
The horrific targeting of Jewish people at Bondi Beach is a stark reminder of what happens when individuals are held responsible for the actions of governments or terror groups they do not control. Many Irish people feel deep sympathy for Palestinians and justified anger at the genocide we see unfolding in Gaza. But that anger cannot be allowed to metastasise into hatred of all Jewish people at home or abroad. That logic is no different from blaming every Irish person, from Dublin to Boston, for the atrocities of the Troubles.
The cruelty of this attack is almost unbearable. Bondi, a place so many associate with safety, beauty, and young Irish lives abroad, became a site of terror. To know that one victim had already survived the Holocaust, fled war in Ukraine, and was then murdered simply for being Jewish is a reminder of how fragile refuge can be.
When violence reaches the shoreline, when it follows us even to the edge of the sea, it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: openness requires vigilance, and humanity requires constant defence.
