In May 2026, an Arab-Australian tradesman was surrounded by multiple police units after being reported for “suspicious behaviour” in Rose Bay in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
The incident did not happen in isolation.
From the aftermath of the Bondi Junction attacks, to aggressive political campaigning around antisemitism, to the role of local council figures and lobby groups, this article examines whether a climate of fear and political bias has distorted the meaning of “social cohesion” in Bondi.
Shortcut: Jump past contents to start reading main body of the article:👉 CLICK HERE
First published: 20 May 2026
Last Update: 26 May 2026 (see 🗄️Version History - Article Updates)
APPENDICES
END PAPERS
On 19 May 2026, Ibrahim Mouammar — an Arab-Australian tradesman and well-known participant in Sydney’s pro-Palestine protests — stopped at a Bunnings store in Rose Bay to buy sandpaper while working nearby.
As he attempted to leave the car park, he found himself surrounded by multiple police vehicles, including armed officers and later riot police.
A member of the public had reported him for “suspicious behaviour”.
🎥 Instagram: NSW Senator David Shoebridge Instagram, 20 May 2026: NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge was equally disgusted with the treatment of the man by police. He is familiar with the area, having been a Woollahra Councillor for 8 years. Click below to watch 👇
The response was part of Operation Shelter, the major policing initiative established after the Bondi Junction attacks and later expanded into a permanent rapid-response unit1.
Mouammar filmed the encounter, visibly distressed and repeatedly asking why he was being treated as suspicious.
The incident raises broader questions:
What kind of atmosphere now exists in Sydney’s eastern suburbs — and who is being asked to carry the burden of that fear?
In April 2024 a mentally ill man rampaged through Bondi Junction shopping centre killing 6 people with a knife before being shot dead by a police officer.
In the immediate aftermath of the Bondi Junction attacks, social media was flooded with speculation that the perpetrator was Muslim or motivated by Islamist extremism.
The attacker was later identified as Joel Cauchi, a white Australian man with a long history of severe mental illness.
Yet even after his identity became public, some commentators continued implying the attack fit familiar assumptions about terrorism and ethnicity.
The speed with which suspicion attached itself to Muslims and Arabs revealed an uncomfortable reality that for many Australians, “suspicious” still has a racial dimension.
The atmosphere around Palestine activism in Bondi had already become visibly hostile well before Ibrahim’s encounter with police.
On Father’s Day 2025, a peaceful beach gathering organised by Jewish pro-Palestine activists commemorating fathers killed in Gaza was confronted by a loud counter-protest by pro-Israel activists.
Days before the event, Channel 7 aired a report framing the gathering as a controversial “protest” targeting Bondi Beach on Father’s Day.
The language used throughout the segment was notably loaded. Bondi was described as “the latest iconic Sydney location targeted by protesters”, while organisers of a planned counter-protest promoted the slogan:
“Not in our backyard”.
The report featured Australian Jewish Association (AJA) CEO Robert Gregory and Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh, both expressing concern about the event proceeding.
Gregory stated:
“They’ve got everyone on edge, everyone’s nervous … we know many of these people are troublemakers.”
He also referred to attendees “coming from outside the area” and questioned “what their intention” was.
For critics, the rhetoric carried a clear implication:
that pro-Palestine activists were not simply political demonstrators, but outsiders whose presence in Bondi itself was inherently suspicious or threatening.
Yet the event being discussed was organised by Jewish pro-Palestine activists and centred around a peaceful Father’s Day gathering, including a symbolic paddle-out and origami boats commemorating fathers killed in Gaza and the first Simud Flotilla raising awareness of the broader humanitarian crisis.
Mayor Nemesh stated in the report that he had written to the Police Minister seeking intervention to stop the gathering and Sky News noted that a request had actually been made of Waverley Council to remove the shark net to prevent the paddle out2.
🎥 Instagram: "Not in our backyard“ - Channel 7 footage days before the 7 Sep 2025 event, and a speech by the organiser Michelle Berkon on the beach at the event. - Click below to watch 👇
The contrast between the media framing beforehand and the reality of the event afterwards was striking.
The pro-Palestine side of the gathering remained peaceful throughout.
It was the counter-protest which escalated into sustained verbal abuse and aggressive crowd behaviour captured on video in front of police.
🎥 video 15 Sep 2026: from Bondi Beach Father’s Day event 7 sep 2025, click below to watch 👇
The incident raised broader questions about who is treated as belonging in Bondi — and whose political presence is framed as a threat requiring policing or intervention.
🔍📖 Read the full story of the Fathers Day Event at Bondi in the substack article below:
On the topic of social cohesion, the Mayor of Bondi Beach (Waverley Council) has a multi-cultural advisory committee to maintain that “balance”. On this committee he actually appointed the extremist Australian Jewish Association (AJA) - a decision critics argued normalised a highly polarising organisation3.
Critics argue these decisions reflect a broader political culture within parts of Waverley Council in which pro-Israel advocacy is treated as institutionally aligned with “social cohesion”, while criticism of Israel is treated as divisive or suspect.
in April 2024 the AJA had again hosted extremist Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss on an organised Zoom event4
the following month the AJA interviewed live Tsav9 extremist Rachel Touitoi who oversaw “operations” from January 2024 blockading aid into Gaza, tearing apart and emptying food bound for the starving in front of the world’s press5. The French Government have now issued a warrant for her arrest6.
the month after the AJA joined the Waverley Council advisory, they took a private tour group to Israel with an agenda including storming the Temple Mount, and extremely provocative move joining Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir.
🔍📖 Read the full story of the AJA and Daniella Weiss in the substack below:
Nemesh served in the same council involved in the sacking of the Greens Deputy Mayor in 2023 for backing a move to condemn Israel’s bombing of Gaza7.
Deputy Mayor Fabiano’s “crime” for such an extreme action? Proposing balanced amendments to a council motion to:
call out war crimes perpetrated by a right-wing Israeli government including the bombing of Palestinian civilians
calling for all perpetrators to be held accountable for their actions in accordance with international law
an end to the war in Gaza
But more telling is the event Waverley Council will be hosting in November this year.
In September 2025, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a US-based organisation, hosted a summit on antisemitism for Australian mayors and councillors on the Gold Coast.
The event attracted controversy after reports that travel and accommodation expenses were offered to some attendees.
Critics argued the summit blurred the line between combating antisemitism and promoting a particular political alignment around Israel.8.
Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh appeared as a keynote speaker and later promoted a “model antisemitism strategy” for councils9.
A cursory glance at the document reveals key weaknesses similar to the Australian antisemitism envoys much criticised strategy document such as:
requiring adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism which can rule out criticism of Israel
quoting ADL mythologies and frameworks from the US - which the antisemitism envoy has described as “the gold standard”
quoting and encouraging referencing of ECAJ’s own bespoke antisemitism statistics - which have been called out as subjective and problematic again taking criticism of Israel as “antisemitic”
And this background of not allowing criticism of Israel is the real agenda here as was very apparent from the day.
🔍📖 Read the full story of the 2025 Gold Coast Summit in the substack below:
And it was revealed that this year’s summit is to be hosted in Bondi on November 26-27 this year coinciding with the end of the Royal Commission process10.
In December 2025, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs published a report identifying Australian social media accounts it claimed were involved in “antisemitic” or “delegitimising” online activity11.
The report generated controversy in Australia because it appeared to involve the monitoring of domestic political speech by a foreign government.
More significantly, the report itself stated that some of the underlying data had been provided by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) — the same US-based organisation behind the Australian antisemitism summits attended by councillors and mayors, including Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh12.
This matters because CAM is not simply an external conference organiser.
Its influence increasingly overlaps with:
Australian council policy discussions
antisemitism education frameworks
political lobbying
and broader debates around acceptable speech on Israel and Palestine.
Advisory Board members of CAM and co-chairs of the 2025 summit are:
the late Stanley Roth, who was the brother-in-law of Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal. Stanley’s brother and Jillian’s husband John donated $50,000 to Advance Australia, which is an extreme far-right lobby group in Australia13.
businessman David Gonski, who now leads Australia’s Education Antisemitism Taskforce14
Critics argue this creates an increasingly blurred line between combating genuine antisemitism — an important and necessary goal — and monitoring or politically categorising criticism of Israel.
That concern becomes even more significant when the same networks are simultaneously:
advising councils,
influencing policy frameworks,
shaping educational approaches,
and participating in public debates around “social cohesion”.
For some Australians, particularly Arab-Australians and Palestine activists, the concern is no longer simply about disagreement over politics.
It is whether political advocacy, protest activity and even ordinary visibility in public space are increasingly being viewed through a lens of suspicion.
And in Bondi, that concern no longer feels abstract.
Across these incidents and institutions, a broader pattern emerges.
Ibrahim Mouammar was not arrested.
He was not accused of any crime.
He was a tradesman buying sandpaper in a suburb now saturated with fear, political messaging and extraordinary policing resources.
But the fact he was treated as suspicious at all — and that such a massive police response followed — should concern anyone who genuinely cares about social cohesion.
Because social cohesion cannot mean one community receives endless institutional protection while another learns to expect scrutiny, suspicion and over-policing.
The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion should examine not only antisemitism, but also whether fear around antisemitism is itself producing new forms of division, profiling and political intolerance.
Bondi may be one of the clearest tests of that question in Australia today.
Who knew?
Bondi and Sydney’s eastern suburbs already contain longstanding negotiated religious accommodations in public space — making current debates around ownership, belonging and public identity more layered than many outsiders realise.
There is actually a physically marked-out boundary around Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs for Jewish religious purposes that has been in place since 2002 and is maintained in coordination with local authorities and service providers. It is known as Sydney “Eruv” and is essentially a wire high in the air running around the suburb - with it’s own website showing the boundary and condition15.
The existence of the Eruv is not controversial in itself and is a longstanding and legally recognised religious accommodation in many cities worldwide. Similar arrangements exist in cities around the world with large Orthodox Jewish populations, including New York16, London and Melbourne.
However, its presence does illustrate something important about Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
The area already contains longstanding negotiated religious accommodations within public space — something many non-residents would likely never notice.
Observant Jews are severely restricted for religious reasons on what they can do on Shabbat (Friday to Saturday night). This includes carrying certain items and going to other areas outside of the home or a courtyard in the home.
The Eruv is a physically marked out boundary by Rabbis over a large area that essentially virtually extends the boundaries an observant Jewish person can be in during Shabbat from one home area to anywhere within the Eruvin. This allows observant Jewish people to live reasonably normal lives on Shabbat rather than just being shut in their own homes17.
The boundary is marked by a wire fence high in the air on the top of tall poles either on private land, or on public land with “symbolic leases” arranged with the local council. Often there are flags marking the wire for visibility in public spaces for safety reasons, or also the flags are simply put onto electricity wires running along a boundary with permission from the grid provider.
Sydney is unusual in that it actually has a large number of physical boundaries - walls and fences - marking out the Eruv area. The Eruv boundary is regularly inspected by Rabbis to attest to the integrity of the boundary.
The Sydney Eastern Suburbs Eruv has been operating since 2002 with another one further south in Maroubra operating since 2017.
Questions surrounding Eruvs have occasionally generated public debate in Australia, particularly around the use of public infrastructure and perceptions of religious enclaves.
In 2011 a similar Eruv was marked out in St. Ives in Sydney’s northern suburbs, but apparently without seeking the appropriate council approvals.
The council intervened after a few years preventing the Eruv boundary from being completed but it wasn’t removed since it would cost the council some $50,000 to remove the partly-constructed Eruv to that date.
There was considerable public debate around this including comments objecting to the Eruv concerned it would create a “religious enclave” and that “religious laws had no place on public land”18.
In 2016 permission was finally given and the Eruv was complete19.
There was concern that the Eruv would increase an influx of Jewish families to St. Ives increasing the concentration and “enclave” feel but 2021 census data would appear to rule that out showing no great increase between 2011-202120.
The relevance of the Eruv to this article is not religious practice itself.
Rather, it highlights how questions of identity, belonging, public space and community boundaries already exist in subtle ways within Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Against that backdrop, slogans such as “Not in our backyard”, references to protesters “coming from outside the area”, and heightened policing responses take on a broader social and cultural context.
For many residents these dynamics are invisible or entirely unremarkable.
For others, they contribute to a perception that parts of Bondi operate not simply as shared public space, but as territory associated with particular political and communal identities.
END PAPERS
Recommended Sleekit Scotsman ☮️🏴 substack articles related to this one
Following the December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre, Australia rapidly escalated policing powers, hate speech laws, security funding and antisemitism initiatives. Yet political pressure continued to intensify — culminating in a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion which had its first hearing block in May 2026.
There has been strong criticism of the need for the Royal Commission after measures to date and also of its execution. The evidence presented once the commission began was criticised for its pattern and monolithic tone.
This article examines the pattern of behaviour of the pro-Israel lobby prior to the Royal Commission’s first hearings.
It shows that the Government ultimately yielded to sustained pressure from pro-Israel lobby organisations - and therefore if this happens again the legal outcomes of this inquiry could be significant in terms of freedom of speech.
This article looks at a peaceful Jewish-led Father’s Day pro-Palestine protest on Bondi Beach on 7 Sep 2025 - and how the response got out of hand.
It reveals a disturbing shift in the pro-Israel community from restraint from the “mainstream” organisations to a right-wing aligning with neo-nazi sentiment in Australia to aggressive confrontation.
And the whole thing reeks of orchestration.
The real reason for the upcoming Gold Coast “antisemitism summit” (first published Aug 19 2025). A US-based organisation has organised a summit for local government officials and has offered to pay the costs of multiple mayors to attend a 3-day “antisemitism training” junket on the Gold Coast - with the pro-Israel lobby. Information and activism:
Find your councillor
Email templates to use to write to them
List of councillors attending
Speaker bias research notes
Link to independent media
Israeli extremist settler groups - subject of Louis Theroux’s 2025 documentary - have been enabled by extremist pro-Israel groups such as the Australian Jewish Association for years (first published May 4 2025):
Centred around video calls between the AJA and Daniella Weiss of Israeli extremist settler group Nachala, subject of a Louis Theroux documentary
Examines the AJA involvement with the group over the years
Looks at fundraising in Australia for them and the enabling tax changes under the Scott Morrison government benefiting investment in the Occupied Territories
Deep-dive into former Morrison Tresurer Josh Frydenberg’s involvement with the pro-Israel lobby
Other extremist groups the AJA platform in Australia
The Australian 2025 antisemitism criminal hoaxes, the history of bias in NSW and how the pro-Israel lobby milked it (first published 12th March 2025):
NSW Premier Chris Minns’s pro-Israel bias and history of suppressing pro-Palestine protest
Events after the police revelation of hoaxes
NSW Parliament pro-Israel bodies
Australia’s UN voting record and the timing of the attacks
Government community funding and support summary
A complete index of ALL Sleekit Scotsman articles, categorised, hyperlinked and with descriptions for easy browsing.
Sleekit Library
·
November 8, 2025
This is a categorised view of Sleekit Scotsman articles, with summary overviews and links to articles themselves. You’ll find subsets of these listed as relevant at the back of Sleekit Scotsman articles for further related reading.
First published: 20 May 2026
Last Update: 26 May 2026
Sleekit Scotsman ☮️🏴 articles are updated periodically to add latest information on the subject of the article for relevance
Updates
26 May 2026: added APPENDIX A: Sydney Eastern Suburbs - the existing religious boundary accommodation
22 May 2026: added detail of shark net removal request and Channel 7 News video to 3. Bondi Beach Father’s Day event 7 Sep 2025
21 May 2026: added new section 6. CAM - Monitoring Australians and additional context to 3. Bondi Beach Father’s Day event 7 Sep 2025
20 May 2026: internal URLs updated
Sleekit Scotsman ☮️🏴 also publishes on a number of social media channels - please also consider subscribing to these:
✍️ Substack SleekitScotsman: this publication
📸 Instagram: @sleekit.scotsman https://www.instagram.com/sleekit.scotsman/
🧶 Threads @Sleekit.Scotsman: https://www.threads.net/@sleekit.scotsman
🦋 Bluesky: @sleekitscotsman.bsky.social
⬆️ Upscrolled @sleekitscotsman: https://share.upscrolled.com/en/user/e6b453ed-1273-458d-84c7-12703f1bd871/
👤 Facebook @sleekit.scotsman2 : https://www.facebook.com/sleekit.scotsman2
🎶 TikTok: @sleekit.scotsman: https://www.tiktok.com/@sleekit.scotsman
📺 YouTube @SleekitScotsman : https://www.youtube.com/@SleekitScotsman
🆇 X (formerly Twitter) @SleekitScotsman : https://twitter.com/SleekitScotsman
👾 Discord @sleekitscotsman: https://discord.gg/q5RFEpaCQp
🔗🌳 Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/sleekitscotsman
I am an autistic Scottish writer passionate about human rights issues and exposing Government corruption. I have a high attention to detail and can often spot connections and insights others may not see.
✍️ I’m an independent writer on social justice issues. As an autistic person, I have high attention to detail and try to put this in my work and though it does take me a long time to produce I do hope it is useful. 😊
☕️ My research, articles and memes are free but if you like my work please consider buying me a coffee on my Ko-Fi page - really appreciated!
Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.