The street along the famous Bondi Beach is cordoned off, police cordon tape is hanging around a large area and many police officers are still patrolling at lunchtime on Monday, local time. Along the street, more and more people come carrying bouquets of flowers.
Just 16 hours earlier, horrific scenes unfolded at the scene. Two gunmen attacked Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah. Fifteen people were killed and more than forty were taken to hospital.
"I and everyone I know knows someone who was either there, shot or killed," says Jasmine Mizrahi, who went to Bondi Beach the day after the attack.
She has previously been to the Hanukkah celebrations that were attacked several times, but this year she was not there.
When you look at the state of the world, especially the last two years, and the state of Australia the last two years, when you allow anti-Semitism to flourish as it has in this country, then this is what happens. It's inevitable. And it's terrible to say, but that's the way it is.
“Many have been afraid”
Marc Rosenthal is not surprised by the incident either.
It's expected, that's why many Jews in Australia, in Sydney, have been afraid and at the same time expected this, he says.
Unfortunately, many of us have been subjected to violence like this in one way or another.
Down by the beach is Raisa Mizerna. Her brother and his wife attended Sunday's celebration, and he lit the first candle on the Hanukkah candlestick. At first, the participants thought the sounds of gunfire were fireworks.
Then they saw people lying down and realized it was a real shooting. So they lay down on the ground and his wife crawled on the grass. She is 77 years old. I can't imagine this happening in Australia, she says.
“Shouldn't happen”
Caleb Hines carries a bouquet of pink and yellow flowers. He took time off work to go to Bondi Beach.
"I have a son who is six years old and when I heard about the children who were affected, I thought about what would have happened if he and I were here yesterday," he says.
This kind of thing shouldn't happen at all. It doesn't matter what ethnicity someone is, it shouldn't happen. It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Christian, Muslim. It shouldn't happen.
