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As the sharp surge in anti-Semitic attacks continues around the globe with the mass-casualty shooting targeting Jews that occurred at Australia’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, experts say that societies and government officials in the West must directly confront Islamist jihadist extremism rather than attempt to address the issue with accommodations and stricter gun control laws.

The Bondi Beach atrocity, which was committed by a Muslim father-son duo who appeared to be inspired by the Islamic State, took the lives of 15 Jews, including a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi, and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. Twenty-two more victims are currently hospitalised, including six in critical condition.

Anti-Semitism Surge in Western Nations

The massacre is just the latest in a string of anti-Semitic attacks that have occurred in Western countries, particularly since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that took the lives of over 1,200 Israelis. Last year, the Anti-Defamation League tracked over 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in the U.S. alone over the one-year period since October 7, the highest number ever recorded in a single year period. In 2025, at least four American Jews were murdered by Hamas sympathisers in three separate incidents.

Massive surges in anti-Semitic incidents were also recorded in Europe since October 7, including in France, Germany, Ireland, the U.K., the Netherlands, Austria, and elsewhere. In Australia where the Bondi Beach massacre took place, 1,650 “anti-Jewish incidents” occurred over a 12-month span ending on September 30.

Albanese Promises to “Take Whatever Action Is Necessary”, Proposes Stricter Gun Laws

Following the Bondi Beach carnage, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that the government was “prepared to take whatever action is necessary” in response to the attack by instituting a higher level of gun restrictions. Notably, Australia has already instituted “what advocates considered the ‘gold standard’ on gun control,” including banning “assault rifles and many other semiautomatic weapons, as well as shotguns.”

But experts like Dr. Moshe Glick, president of the New Jersey chapter of Israel365, say that the root of the issue is not about gun control.

“[T]his is not about strict gun laws,” he contended during “Washington Watch” Monday. “The prime minister of Australia talked about, ‘We’re going to increase our gun laws.’ You know, they’ve got some of the strictest gun laws in the world. It’s an ideological hatred. First they come after the Saturday people and then these jihadists come after the Sunday people. So it’s the will of democratic Western culture [and] society to fight these jihadists around the world, or we’ll all be next.”

Anti-Semitism, Trump Administration, and Qatari Money

Glick further expressed encouragement that the Trump administration appears to be confronting anti-Semitism more directly.

“Thank God for President Trump and Harmeet Dhillon [and] Pam Bondi,” he exclaimed. “[There was] a case that happened… in New Jersey where a man, an elderly man, was attacked in front of one of our synagogues — choked.

“Police didn’t come to his rescue. I ended up coming to his rescue to physically separate him. And what’s crazy is I’m the one that got arrested. We’re so thankful for the fact that the Department of Justice has filed charges against six individuals and two of these jihadi organisations, so hopefully it’s catching [some] attention.”

Glick went on to argue that social media and Middle Eastern financial influences have played a large part in fomenting anti-Semitism in the West. “I think so much of it is our generation gets their information from TikTok and Instagram. And I think there’s a ton of Qatari money that’s being thrown at this to influence public opinion against the Jewish state.”

Gun Laws Won’t Fix an Ideological Islamist Problem

Going forward, Glick asserted that the U.S. and other Western societies must stand firmly united against jihadist culture, which goes far beyond gun control measures.

“I think we [mistakenly] apply Western culture to this,” he observed. “[W]hen you have an ideological hatred, which if somebody is willing to kill themselves — I mean, these two shooters in Australia, they didn’t think they were going to [commit a] hit and run. They were there to kill as many Jews as they could. … These are not normal people. These are not things where we’re going to have another armed security guard at the front door. That doesn’t work.”

“I think the fear of the Jewish and the Christian community [is] we’ve already seen churches that have been shot up. We’ve seen synagogues that have been shot up,” Glick continued.

“[W]e as Americans [should] stand united and say that this jihadist mentality is a sickening cancer within our society and we’re going to stand up united to fight it versus we’re going to have stricter gun laws. … That’s not going to work. It’s such a deeper, sicker problem, and hopefully the world is starting to wake up to that fact.”

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Image via screenshot of YouTube/9 News.