An Emmy award-winning television producer has issued a powerful call for Jewish defiance in the wake of the deadly attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, declaring that the community must refuse to be intimidated into hiding its identity.
A Hanukkah Night Shattered by Violence
Leo Pearlman, co-partner at Fulwell 73 and producer of hits like 'Gavin & Stacey', was with his children preparing for the first night of Hanukkah when the news of the Sydney massacre broke. The festive chatter about candle-lighting and presents was abruptly silenced as his phone flooded with messages detailing a shooting where Jews were deliberately targeted.
The sensation was horrifyingly familiar. Pearlman describes it as a grim echo of the atrocities in Manchester, Amsterdam, Washington DC, and the horrors of October 7th. The abstract news became devastatingly personal when he learned his daughter's 12-year-old school friend had been at the event, forced to barricade herself in an ice-cream shop while gunfire rang out.
The connection deepened further with the murder of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a London-born advocate for Jewish-Muslim dialogue and a dear family friend. "He was murdered for one reason: he was Jewish," Pearlman states.
The 'Permission Structure' of Relentless Anti-Zionism
Holding his children as the messages continued, a furious question formed for Pearlman. He asks what outcome was expected after years of escalating, public antisemitism in Western cities.
He points to the chants of "From the river to the sea" and calls to "globalise the intifada" at mass marches in London, New York, Paris, and Berlin. He criticises media outlets for treating Hamas propaganda as "context" and governments for offering diplomatic recognition to militants, which he sees as signalling that violence pays.
"Relentless, performative anti-Zionism is not a principled stand for human rights," he argues. "It is a permission structure, a complicit approval for the very attacks against Jews that we are now forced to witness." Pearlman contends that Bondi was not an aberration but the "downstream consequence" of a culture that has rewarded political movements obsessed with Israel's destruction.
Jewish Grief as Ignition, Not Retreat
In the aftermath, Pearlman observes a common instinct to retreat: removing Magen David necklaces, hiding Jewishness online, urging children to keep their heads down. He understands this impulse but rejects it utterly.
"The events of this year have taught us that silence is not safety, appeasement is not peace, and hiding is not survival," he writes. He asserts that the world misunderstands Jewish grief, seeing it as fragility when it is actually ignition.
For Pearlman, the true meaning of Hanukkah is adult defiance: lighting a flame amid destruction and rebuilding when the world expects disappearance. Explaining the attack to his children, he realised the answer was simple: "it means we do not let anyone tell us to shrink – not now, not ever."
His resolution for the coming year is clear. "In 2026, we must refuse to hand our children a smaller identity than the one we inherited," he declares. "We are still here, we will not be intimidated into silence, our identity is not negotiable and our survival is not conditional."
Leo Pearlman's recent film, 'We Will Dance Again', documenting the October 7th attack on the Nova music festival, is available on BBC iPlayer.
