There are nearly 10 billion people on the planet. Today every single one of us should stop what we are doing for five minutes to think about the implications of the massacre that took place on Bondi Beach yesterday. Each of us should ask ourselves if we are prepared to live in a world where an ethnic identity of any sort is grounds for physical violence of any kind on people who are celebrating a peaceful event, in this case Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Light. We do not have to be pro-Jews or anti-Jews to appreciate the wickedness of what has happened and is happening so often in many places.
Prayers and compensation of various sorts are well intended and may help those who are bereaved and wounded. Nothing can replace the wanton destruction of lives and the scandalous example to the rest of humanity, including the young, that such an event creates.
To meet fatal violence with death is merely to condone and encourage the violent. To make reparation a condition of rejoining society could be a more practical approach. We should find a currently uninhabited and isolated island on which to place the perpetrators when found guilty. They should be given three months survival food and water along with shovels and vegetable seeds to create and sustain their own lives. When they have built and proved satisfactory self-driving cars they could be considered for readmission to society.
In the present climate of sorrow and despair it may sound a ridiculous, perhaps even a frivolous idea. It is made quite seriously. The threat of being banished to such an Alcatraz won’t deter everyone. It will certainly make everyone inclined to disrupt society to think twice. Their reception of the internet will tell them what they are missing. Being blocked from sending to the internet will isolate them from creating more trouble.
What I am suggesting is not torture. It is a reminder that we depend on each other.
Maybe they will learn that.
Our deepest sympathy to those who have lost loved ones and have been wounded and traumatised by this terrible event. They will be in our thoughts and prayers.
John Bittleston
15 December 2025
