The footage is hard to watch, and impossible to forget.
On the eve of Hanukkah’s first night, as families gathered on Bondi Beach to celebrate the Festival of Lights, gunfire tore through the crowd. Then, in the middle of chaos, one man did the unthinkable. Identified by Australian and international media as Ahmed al-Ahmed, a 43-year-old Sydney fruit shop owner and father of two, he moved toward the attacker, wrapped him from behind, wrestled away the long gun, and forced the shooter to retreat. He was shot and hospitalized, but his split-second decision is widely credited with preventing even greater carnage.
There is something profoundly Hanukkah about that moment.
Not because Ahmed is Jewish (as far as the reporting shows, he is not), and not because heroism belongs to any one people or faith. It is Hanukkah because Hanukkah is the insistence that light is not a metaphor. It is a responsibility. A candle does not negotiate with darkness. It pushes back, stubbornly, flame-first.
In Jewish history, the phrase “Righteous Among the Nations” is reserved for non-Jews who risked everything to save Jews during the Holocaust, recognized by Yad Vashem under a framework established by Israeli law. The names are etched into the Jewish conscience: Oskar Schindler, who used his factory to save Jews marked for death, and Raoul Wallenberg, who helped rescue Jews in Budapest with Swedish protective papers. Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who issued visas that became lifelines. Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped smuggle Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ulma family in Poland, murdered for hiding Jews.
These stories are not only about the Holocaust, but they are also about moral clarity under pressure, the choice to see a fellow human being and refuse to look away.
Ahmed al-Ahmed belongs among the Righteous Among the Nations
Ahmed al-Ahmed belongs in that moral family tree.
The setting is different. The century is different. The weaponry is different. But the basic equation is hauntingly familiar: Jews gather publicly as Jews, and someone decides that visibility is a crime punishable by death. That is not politics. That is not “tension.” That is hatred with a body count. Australian authorities have treated this Bondi Beach massacre as a terror attack targeting a Jewish Hanukkah gathering.
So what does the Jewish world do when a non-Jew quite literally runs into the line of fire to save Jewish lives?
First, say thank you loudly, clearly, and repeatedly. Not with vague platitudes about “humanity,” but with a direct acknowledgment of what he did: he likely saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, by stopping at least one gunman in the middle of an active attack. Gratitude should not be whispered, especially not in an era when moral cowardice is often presented as sophistication.
Second, honor him, publicly and formally.
It is time for Jewish organizations in Australia and worldwide to elevate Ahmed al-Ahmed as a symbol of what courage looks like when it is unscripted and unpolished, when it comes from instinct and decency rather than ideology. He did not have to calculate the risk. He lived it. According to reports, he was wounded and underwent medical treatment after being shot during the confrontation.
And yes, I believe the State of Israel should acknowledge him. Maybe he should be the next laureate of the Genesis Prize.
Not because Jews need saviors, but because Jews recognize righteousness when they see it. Israel is not only a refuge and a military power, but it is also the sovereign expression of Jewish memory. That memory includes a sacred ledger of those who stood with Jews when it was dangerous, inconvenient, or unpopular. When Israel honors that courage, it signals to the world that there is a difference between those who spread light and those who spread darkness, and that the Jewish people know the difference.
What would recognition look like? An invitation to Jerusalem. A public meeting with Israel’s president. A national citation for civilian bravery. A tree planted in his honor, not to imitate Yad Vashem’s specific Holocaust framework, but to echo its message: that saving Jewish life is an act the Jewish people record, remember, and repay with eternal gratitude.
There is another reason this matters.
The Bondi Beach attack will be exploited by extremists who want to turn it into fuel for collective blame, collective suspicion, and collective hate. That road leads nowhere good. Jews know what it means to be judged not as individuals but as a category, a problem, a target.
Ahmed’s story is the antidote to that poison.
“There are those in every religion who spread light, and there are those in every religion who spread darkness and hate,” I wrote to myself after reading the accounts of what happened. That is not a slogan. It is a reality check. The murderer on Bondi Beach chose darkness. Ahmed chose light.
Hanukkah’s message is not triumphalism. It is resolve. The miracle was not only that the oil lasted. The miracle was that Jews insisted on lighting the menorah anyway, in a world that had grown comfortable telling them to dim their presence. That is why Hanukkah is so emotionally charged in a year when Jews around the world are being told, explicitly or implicitly, to celebrate quietly, to hide symbols, to make themselves smaller for their own safety.
No. The answer to darkness is not disappearance. It is light.
The Jewish tradition calls this being an “or la’goyim” (a light unto the nations). It is also tied, in modern language, to tikkun olam (repairing the world). Those phrases are often overused, sometimes emptied of meaning. But on Bondi Beach, they snapped back into focus. A light unto the nations is not a branding exercise. It is a demand that human beings choose decency over cruelty, even when the consequences are immediate and personal.
Ahmed al-Ahmed did not deliver a speech. He did not write an op-ed. He did not post a manifesto about coexistence.
He saw Jews being hunted, and he acted.
The Jewish people owe him more than applause. They owe him recognition, memory, and honor. And Australia, too, should treat his bravery as a standard, not an exception, in the fight to protect minorities and defend the public square.
This Hanukkah, candles will be lit in Sydney, in Jerusalem, in New York, and in countless other places where Jews are asking a simple question: is it still safe to be visibly Jewish?
One answer, at least, came from a fruit shop owner who ran toward the gunfire.
Ahmed al-Ahmed reminded the world what light looks like.