When Identity Itself Becomes the Justification for Violence
On 7 October 2023, the world witnessed a rupture that went far beyond another terrorist incident in the Middle East. Hamas’s barbaric assault on southern Israel, marked by mass murder, sexual violence, kidnappings, and the deliberate targeting of civilians, was not merely an act of war. It was an ideological declaration: that Jewish civilian life, anywhere and everywhere, could be treated as a legitimate battlefield.
More than two years later, on 14 December 2025, that same ideological violence manifested itself thousands of kilometres away at Bondi Beach in Sydney. An Islamist attack targeted a Jewish gathering in one of Australia’s most iconic public spaces as the local Jewish community was celebrating the first night of Hanukkah, a festival that commemorates resistance to forced religious and cultural erasure. No military installation. No political leadership. Just civilians gathered openly, confidently, as free people.
What makes the Bondi Beach attack even more disturbing is the profile of the perpetrators. Australian authorities identified the attackers as a father–son duo, a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son, who opened fire on the gathering. The father was shot dead by police at the scene, while the son, identified as Naveed Akram, a Pakistani national based in Sydney, was hospitalised in serious condition, according to official briefings carried by international media.
Different continents. Different perpetrators. Identical intent.
Together, these attacks expose a disturbing continuity in modern Islamist terrorism, one that increasingly targets identity, civilisation, and visibility, rather than military power or political authority. And in that continuum, Jews and Hindus emerge repeatedly as shared targets.
This is not coincidence. It is doctrine.
Civilian Life as the Battlefield
The defining feature of the 7 October 2023 massacre was its ruthless clarity. Hamas did not confine itself to military objectives. Families were hunted in their homes. Elderly civilians were executed. Young people attending a music festival, symbols of life, coexistence, and youth, were slaughtered.
The Bondi Beach attack followed the same ideological logic. A Jewish community gathering in a public, celebratory setting was chosen precisely because it was civilian, visible, and symbolic. Bondi Beach is not merely a stretch of sand; it is an emblem of Australian openness, multiculturalism, and freedom of assembly.
Islamist terrorism today seeks to contaminate such spaces. The goal is not tactical gain but psychological domination, making ordinary life itself feel unsafe.
In both Israel and Australia, the message was unmistakable: normal life is no longer neutral.
Identity-Based Terrorism: Killing the ‘Who’
In conventional warfare, violence is directed at actions, affiliations, or strategic assets. In Islamist terrorism of this kind, violence is directed at identity.
On 7 October, civilians were murdered not because they posed a threat, but because they were Jews. At Bondi Beach, a Jewish gathering was attacked not for political mobilisation, but for communal presence.
This distinction matters deeply.
When identity alone becomes sufficient cause for murder, terrorism shifts from being a security challenge to a civilisational threat. Geography ceases to matter. Citizenship ceases to matter. Behaviour ceases to matter.
Existence itself becomes provocation.
Symbolic Spaces, Strategic Desecration
Kibbutzim and music festivals in Israel symbolise community, rootedness, and coexistence. Bondi Beach symbolises openness, leisure, and shared civic space. Hanukkah day one was no coincidence. These are not random choices.
Islamist extremism increasingly targets symbols of joy, continuity, and public confidence. The aim is to poison memory, so that places once associated with freedom and celebration become haunted by fear.
This is why attacks now gravitate toward: Festivals, Beaches, Places of worship, Pilgrimage routes and Community gatherings, etc.
The battlefield has shifted from borders to everyday life.
Timing as a Weapon
The 7 October attack was timed during a Jewish holiday period, when families were together and psychological impact would be maximised. The Bondi Beach attack occurred during a Jewish communal celebration of Hanukkah, again ensuring visibility and vulnerability.
This is not opportunism. It is calculation.
Islamist terrorism uses timing as a force multiplier, striking when identity, emotion, and symbolism intersect most sharply.
Low-Tech Means, High-Impact Outcomes
One of the uncomfortable lessons of 7 October was how devastatingly effective low-tech methods can be when paired with ideological conviction. Paragliders, motorcycles, assault rifles, simple tools, devastating results.
At Bondi Beach, single shot firearms were used in an open civilian environment, reflecting the same doctrinal preference: accessibility over sophistication.
This shift makes modern terrorism easier to replicate and harder to pre-empt. It also ensures that no society, however peaceful, can consider itself immune.
Terror as Theatre in the Digital Age
The 7 October massacre was designed to be seen. Graphic footage was circulated deliberately to terrorise, humiliate, and radicalise. The psychological aftershock travelled faster than any weapon.
The Bondi Beach attack followed the same modern logic. News, images, and narratives spread instantaneously, ensuring fear extended far beyond the immediate victims.
In today’s world, terrorism is incomplete without digital amplification. The screen has become as important as the gun.
Exporting the Middle East Conflict – and Its Ideology
One of the most dangerous consequences of the 7 October massacre was its global aftershock. Antisemitic incidents surged worldwide. Jewish communities in Europe, North America, and Australia found themselves targeted for events over which they had no control.
The Bondi Beach attack represents the physical export of that ideological violence. A conflict rooted in the Middle East was deliberately globalised, transforming diaspora spaces into proxy battlegrounds.
This phenomenon mirrors what Hindus have experienced for decades, violence in one geography being justified through religious ideology in another.
Intergenerational Radicalisation: When Hatred Is Inherited
The involvement of a father and son acting together is not a peripheral detail. It strikes at the heart of how Islamist extremism reproduces itself.
Radicalisation here is not merely organisational; it is familial and intergenerational. Ideology is transmitted not only through sermons or online propaganda, but through domestic socialisation, from parent to child, normalised within the private sphere before erupting into public violence.
When a father leads a son into mass murder, terror ceases to be only a security threat. It becomes a civilisational contagion, capable of embedding itself within everyday social structures.
The symbolism is grim: hatred is no longer imported alone, it is raised.
Hindus and Jews: Shared Civilisational Targets
At this point, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
Hindus and Jews, two of the world’s oldest surviving civilisations, repeatedly find themselves targeted by Islamist extremism. This is not because of shared politics, but because of shared civilisational characteristics.
• Both civilisations are:
• Ancient and indigenous
• Non-proselytising
• Rooted in land, ritual, memory, and continuity
• Resistant to ideological homogenisation
• Survivors of conquest, persecution, and attempted erasure
For Islamist extremism, such civilisations represent an intolerable defiance. They contradict a supremacist worldview that divides humanity into believers and non-believers, rulers and subjects.
This is why:
Jews are targeted in Israel, Europe, and Australia
Hindus are targeted in Kashmir, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and increasingly in the diaspora
Temples and synagogues are attacked
Pilgrims and festivals are singled out
Different theatres. Same ideology.
Civilisation, Not Just Individuals, Under Attack
The goal is not merely to kill individuals. It is to intimidate civilisations into retreating from visibility.
When Jewish families hesitate to gather publicly, when Hindus fear attending temples or pilgrimages, the extremists have already succeeded, regardless of casualty numbers.
This is why Islamist terror focuses on civilisational markers: Synagogues, Temples, Festivals, Beaches, Public rituals.
Violence is used to say: you may exist privately, but not openly.
Pakistan and the Ideological Infrastructure of Terror
At this juncture, it is imperative to speak with clarity. External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar has described Pakistan as “the mother of terrorism.” This is not rhetorical flourish; it is a strategic assessment grounded in decades of evidence, state sponsorship, ideological nurturing, and logistical facilitation of Islamist terror networks.
From Hamas’s patrons and facilitators to transnational radicalisation pathways that reach Western democracies, Pakistan’s role as an incubator of extremist ideology has been repeatedly documented. The identification of a Pakistani national in the Bondi Beach attack does not indict a people; it underscores a systemic problem, the export of an ideology that sanctifies violence against non-believers, particularly Jews and Hindus.
Naming this reality is not prejudice. It is policy realism.
Failure to confront the ideological infrastructure behind terror does not reduce violence. It enables its repetition.
A Warning Previously Issued
Readers of Goa Chronicle may recall my earlier article in these columns where I argued that Islamist extremism was evolving into a civilisational campaign, increasingly targeting Hindu and Jewish communities worldwide.
That argument was not speculative. It was grounded in patterns, from attacks on Hindu temples in Bangladesh and Pakistan, to assaults on Jewish synagogues and gatherings in the West.
The events of 7 October 2023 and 14 December 2025 tragically validate that warning.
What was once dismissed by some as alarmism has now hardened into reality. Identity itself has become the trigger for violence.
The Strategic Objective: Social Fragmentation
Terrorism does not seek conventional victory. Its real objectives are: Fear, Polarisation, Withdrawal into ghettos, Breakdown of social trust.
By targeting Jews and Hindus, communities with strong civilisational identities, Islamist extremism aims to fracture plural societies from within.
Multiculturalism collapses not through debate, but through fear.
What This Means for Democracies
The implications are profound.
Counter-terrorism cannot remain narrowly tactical. Intelligence, policing, and surveillance are necessary, but insufficient. Democracies must confront the ideological architecture driving these attacks.
Failure to name the ideology does not reduce violence. It normalises it.
This is not a call for collective blame. It is a call for intellectual honesty.
Conclusion: A Civilisational Test
From southern Israel to Bondi Beach, from Kashmir to Dhaka, the pattern is clear. Islamist extremism increasingly targets ancient civilisations that refuse to vanish. This is not a clash of nations. It is a confrontation between pluralism and ideological absolutism.
Hindus and Jews, separated by geography but united by history, stand today at the frontline of this struggle. Not because they seek conflict, but because they refuse erasure.
The response must be clarity, courage, and civilisational confidence. Democracies must defend not only lives, but the right of communities to exist openly, visibly, and without fear. When terror follows people to their homes, festivals, temples, synagogues, and beaches, the fight is no longer about borders.
It is about the survival of civilisation itself.
