cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13571
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that a heroic Jewish bystander saved Jewish lives during the Bondi Beach massacre by tackling one of the gunmen. In fact, the man who made the heroic intervention is a Muslim of Levantine descent who was shot twice in the process.
Ahmed El Ahmed, presumably from either Lebanon, Syria or, ironically, Palestine, went up unarmed against one of the attackers, wrested his gun away and turned it on the terrorist, forcing him to flee, as footage shown by Al Jazeera demonstrates:
A Muslim hero at Bondi Beach
Ahmed, a 43-year-old father-of-two who owns a local fruit shop was then shot by the other Bondi Beach terrorist, wounding him in the shoulder and hand.
5Pillars reported that speaking a man called Mustafa confirmed it was his cousin, 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, who “likely saved countless lives when he confronted and wrestled with the gunman and was now in hospital”.
According to 7NEWS, “Ahmed was shot twice during the commotion and was due to undergo surgery later that night. Mustafa said his cousin… had no experience with guns and was simply walking past when he made the decision to intervene”:
He’s in hospital and we don’t know exactly what’s going on inside.
Netanyahu at first claimed that the Bondi Beach hero was:
a Jew who pounces on one of the murderers, takes his weapon, and saves who knows how many lives.
https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/GnF7L11hvstrw_ne1.mp4
He has since corrected the record:
Netanyahu posted on X blaming the Bondi Beach attack on Australia:
On August 17, about 4 months ago, I sent Prime Minister Albanese of Australia a letter in which I gave him warning that the Australian government’s policy was promoting and encouraging antisemitism in Australia. I wrote: “Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”
A Palestinian-American journalist correctly observed that “Basically Netanyahu is saying that Australia got what it had coming for not supporting his genocide in Gaza even more than it already does”.
Netanyahu also said that his regime will carry out extrajudicial murders of anyone it considers responsible for the attack:
They’ll spend the rest of their brief anxious lives knowing that Israel will hunt them, find them and ruthlessly dispose of them. That is U.S. policy, this is Israel’s policy. It’s our policy in Gaza, in Lebanon, anywhere around us.
Despite its various supposed ceasefire agreements with Lebanon, Syria and Palestine – one of which the Bondi Beach hero comes from – Israel continues to bomb civilians in each of those countries.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
If he had shot the attacker with his own gun would he have got into trouble? From the footage I saw today it looks like the unarmed attacker went back and got another gun and kept firing.
Yes and no.
There would be some formal process, prosecutors and police might investigate and decide not to pursue, we don’t have a grand jury system so it might go to court just to be dismissed by a magistrate but I don’t think it would get that far because everyone would agree the circumstances were extreme (and a jury wouldn’t convict)
Yeah, the tactically sound action would have been to secure the shooter. As you would assume he had a sidearm the only valid move is to shoot him. However, that violates the states monopoly of violence so you would have assume that would end poorly.
Like, give the way things have gone if the defender was a woman you would expect her to face charges of some kind. I don’t know about Aus, but I the US women defending themselves or others are frequently punished.
The state’s intrest is not that this works well or has a happy ending. In this senario multiple state actors benefit from this going poorly. The primary intrest of thr state in this moment is to preserve their monopoly of violence.
I don’t see any scenario where someone would be charged for tackling a gunman in Australia, and if that were to happen it absolutely wouldn’t be worse for a woman. If anything the exact opposite
Editing to add: executing the shooter would not be the sound option by any metric unless they were actively reaching for another gun.
+1, see: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-19/nsw-group-bravery-award-2019-stabbing-mert-ney-sydney-cbd/105063028
I forgot about this line.
What a guy
You can’t determine if they have a side arm in the time it takes for them to draw a fire a side arm. Or well, most of us can’t. I know I would be pissing my peepee pants and wouldn’t be able to. Given that they have shown a willingness to shoot people it is the valid tactical choice. Ethically and legally are different questions.
I don’t think so. He might have gotten arrested but I doubt he would even be charged, or more likely charges would have been dropped after investigation.
People have defended themselves with firearms to deadly effect and avoided prosecution. Thinking specifically of some elderly woman with an unlicensed shotgun who killed a guy in the last handful of years, her case would have been harder to make since she had the gun and, I guess, had forethought to use it as a self defense tool.
Technically if you have a registered firearm and you happen to have it out of secure storage for a legitimate reason, like cleaning the thing or heading out to a gun range, and if you find yourself needing to defend yourself in a situation where deadly force is necessary, then using your gun in self defense is theoretically permissible.
The hero in this situation didn’t bring a weapon or plan for violence and he came under fire from the disarmed guy’s accomplice almost immediately. He had no way of knowing whether the man he disarmed would pull out a handgun or a knife, but he did know the man was intent on murder and that the attack was ongoing.
So yeah, I think he could’ve shot him without breaking the law. That said I’ve written a lot of qualifying words here for a reason, the law is not applied evenly. A more common scenario is knives- I’ve seen contradictory outcomes from people killing in self defense, where one situation resulted in no charges filed and another almost identical situation resulted in prosecution.
He was smart not to shoot. Restrained, IMO. Having that gun in his hands could’ve easily gotten him shot by a cop regardless of righteousness, so it was wise to put it down once the shooter had retreated far enough away.
It depends on if anyone gets caught in the crossfire.
If someone dies because he started shooting he’d be arrested and would likely see court, but I’m unsure on if a jury would convict.
If he’d just shot the guy I don’t think he’d see jail but he would probably be arrested and processed.