46 minutes agoShareSaveTiffanie TurnbullBondi BeachShareSaveGetty ImagesAs helicopters circled overhead, sirens descended on her suburb, and people ran screaming down her street on 14 December, Mary felt a grim sense of deja vu.”That was when I knew there was something seriously wrong – again,” she says, her eyes brimming with tears.Mary – who did not want to give her real name – was at the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre last April when six people were stabbed to death by a man in psychosis, a tragedy still fresh in the minds of many.Findings from a coronial inquest into the incident were due to be delivered this week, but were delayed after two gunmen unleashed a hail of bullets on an event marking the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah eight days ago.Declared a terror attack by police, 15 people were shot and killed, including a 10-year-old girl who still had face paint curling around her eyes.The first paramedic to confront the bloody scenes at the Chanukah by the Sea event was also the first paramedic on the scene at the Westfield stabbings.”You just wouldn’t even fathom that something like this would happen,” 31-year-old Mary, who is originally from the UK, tells the BBC. “I say constantly to my family at home how safe it is here.”This was the overarching sentiment in the days following the shooting. This kind of thing, mass murder, just doesn’t happen in Australia.But it can and it has – twice, in the same community, within 18 months.A sea of flowers left by shocked and grieving people at Bondi is being packed up. A national day of reflection is over. On Sunday night, Jewish Australians lit candles for the last time this Hannukah.But the two tragedies have left scores physically scarred and traumatised, and the nation’s sense of safety shattered.’Everyone knows someone affected’EPABondi is Australia’s most famous beach – a globally recognised symbol of its way of life.It’s also a quintessential slice of Australian community. There’s a bit of “everyone knows everyone” – and that means everyone knows someone affected by the 14 December tragedy, mayor Will Nemesh told the BBC.”One of the first people I texted was [Rabbi] Eli Schlanger. And I said, ‘I hope you’re OK. Call me if you need anything’,” he said.But the British-born father of five, also known as the “Bondi Rabbi”, was among the dead.The first responders, police and paramedics would have been working on members of their own community. Others had the task of having to treat the shooters who had taken aim at their colleagues.”[Westfield Bondi Junction] was horrendous, something we’re certainly not used to. And then this again was massive, catastrophic injuries,” Ryan Park, health minister for New South Wales, told the BBC.”They’ve seen things that are like you would see in a war zone… You don’t get those images out of your head,” Park added.Mayor Nemesh fears this will forever be a stain on Bondi, and Australia.”If this can happen here at Bondi Beach, it really could happen anywhere… the impact has reverberated around Australia.”EPA’Warnings ignored’No one is feeling this more than the Jewish community, for whom Bondi has become a sanctuary.”I swam here every day for years on end, rain or shine. And this week… I couldn’t get in the water. It didn’t feel right. It felt sacrilegious in some way,” Zac Seidler, a local clinical psychologist, told the BBC.Many of the victims of the attack moved here over many decades for safety from persecution, including 89-year-old Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman. Instead, his life was bookended by violent acts of antisemitic hate.Mr Seidler has spent the past two years trying to convince his grandparents, who are also Holocaust survivors, to hold on to their faltering belief in the good of humanity.”[My grandmother] kept saying, ‘These are the signs. I’ve seen this before’. And I just kept saying, ‘Not in Australia, not h …
