TABLET MAG
The Maccabees of Bondi Beach
Nicole Wizman
December 21, 2025

…In the hours and days that followed, one story quickly rose above the rest. Footage circulating online showed a heroic bystander, later identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed, rushing toward one of the attackers and wrestling a gun out of the terrorist’s hands. As the footage spread rapidly across social media and news broadcasts, it soon came to dominate the public conversation, increasingly framing the attack as a story of Muslim-Jewish reconciliation rather than an act of antisemitic violence, with Ahmed al-Ahmed becoming the central figure through which the massacre was understood. This reframing allows Australia to look away from its deeper failures that made the attack possible. It also obscures another critical fact: that there were many Jews at the event who also behaved with unbelievable heroism and bravery, whose names have been largely absent from the narrative. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST Muslim Bondi Beach hero who disarmed terrorist branded a ‘traitor’ in Arab media for saving Jewish lives The heroic Syrian-Australian man who disarmed one of the terrorists firing at a crowd of Hanukkah revelers at Australia’s Bondi Beach has been slammed as a traitor by many Palestinian commenters for saving Jewish lives, according to a new report. After the West Bank-based Ramallah News outlet shared a story about the life-saving actions taken by Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, many of the outlet’s readers trashed the Muslim hero and prayed that he would not recover from his serious injuries, according to an analysis by the Israeli-based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

JPOST Gefen Bitton, Israeli who tried to stop Bondi Beach shooter, in coma in critical condition Israeli national Gefen Bitton, who ran towards the Bondi Beach shooters to try and stop them, has been hospitalized and is in a coma, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday. Bitton was seriously wounded while trying to assist and stop the attackers. The man in his 30s works as a garage door installer. Although he had initially managed to escape the danger, he chose to return to the scene upon realising what was happening.