JERUSALEM, Israel – In Sydney, Australia, hundreds of Jews gathered on Sunday afternoon to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah. That’s when three terrorists, including a father and a son, murdered at least 16 people in cold blood and wounded more than 40.
It’s being called the Hanukkah Massacre of 2025.
The killing spree sent hundreds fleeing for their lives. Dozens of videos spread scenes of the horrible mass slaughter around the world, nearly in real time.
Australian Christian Abilgail Crombie-Hedding told CBN News, “You’re seeing videos. You’re seeing photos much quicker than you would have seen in previous attacks.
Crombie-Hedding added, “So, you’re watching it kind of happening in real time. And to just feel that helplessness that there’s nothing you can do to them, you can just watch and it’s just horrible. And yeah, I just felt like, completely shaken and just sick to my stomach.”
One picture epitomizes the horror of the massacre on Sydney’s Bondi Beach: the bloodied face of Arsem Ostrovsky, an international lawyer who moved to Australia just two weeks earlier. Australia’s Channel 9 News interviewed Ostrovsky moments after the shooting spree.
“It was absolute chaos. We didn’t know what was happening, where the gunfire was coming from,” Ostrovsky recalled.
“I saw blood coming from me. I saw people hit. I saw people fall to the ground,” he added. “My only concern was my kids. Where are my kids? Where’s my wife, my family? I survived October 7th. I lived in Israel the last 13 years. We came here just two weeks ago to work with the Jewish community, to fight anti-Semitism, to fight this bloodthirsty, ravaging hatred.”
Ostrovsky is a friend of CBN News. We interviewed him just two months ago in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, just before the release of the remaining living hostages.
The dead in Sydney include a Holocaust survivor and a child. Several of the wounded are fighting for their lives.
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2025 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
