Australia falls silent, lights candles for Bondi Beach shooting victims

SYDNEY, Australia, December 23 ------ Australians fell silent in flickering candlelight on Sunday to honor the Bondi Beach shooting victims, marking one week since gunmen fired into crowds at a Jewish festival.

A father and son are accused of targeting the beachside Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 people in the nation's deadliest mass shooting in almost three decades. From raucous city pubs to sleepy country towns, Australia observed a minute's silence at 6:47 pm (0747 GMT) -- exactly a week since the first reports of gunfire.

Countless homes lined their windowsills with candles in a gesture of "light over darkness", a key theme of the Hanukkah festival. "Let's make peace together," Roslyn Fishall, a member of Sydney's Jewish community, told AFP from a makeshift memorial at a cloud-covered Bondi Beach.

Summer winds buffeted flags lowered to half-mast across the country, including over the famed Sydney Harbor Bridge. A candle was lit before thousands of people held their silent vigil at Bondi Beach. Anger spilled over at the government's perceived failure to act swiftly and forcefully enough after a rise in antisemitic incidents. Some booed when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's presence was announced.

Albanese, wearing a traditional Jewish kippah, did not speak at the event. David Ossip, president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, said that "last week took our innocence and, like the grass here at Bondi was stained with blood, so too has our nation been stained."

The shooting would have been a tragedy if unexpected, Ossip said. "How much more tragic is it that the loss of life occurred despite all the warning signs being there?" As dusk fell over the Bondi foreshore, event organizers estimated some 20,000 had turned out for the event. "Bondi is with us, Sydney is with us, Australia is with us and the world is with us," rabbi Yehoram Ulman said, before reading out the names of the 15 victims.

They include 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim, and Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman, 87, who was killed shielding his wife from bullets. Paramedics, police and parents of the wounded were invited on stage to light the arms of a Jewish candelabrum known as a menorah. A generation of Australians has grown up with the notion that mass shootings simply do not happen in the country.

That illusion was shattered when alleged gunmen Sajid Akram, 50, and his 24-year-old son Naveed trained their long-barreled weapons on the nation's most famous beach.

Source: news.abs-cbn.com