Aussie PM blasted as having ‘blood on his hands’ as 10-year-old Bondi terror attack victim is laid to rest
After the tragic shooting outside the Bondi Chanukah event, a woman in a shirt printed with the Australian and Israeli flags declared that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “has blood on his hands.”
She broke into tears while speaking about 10‑year‑old Matilda, the youngest victim, and urged that “He must resign.”
When asked whether the Prime Minister should attend her daughter’s funeral, she said, “He has that girl’s blood on his hands.”
She sobbed as she talked about Matilda’s funeral, noting that “You’re all going to celebrate Christmas very soon, right? Jesus was a Jew. He would have looked like a rabbi that was killed last week.”
In a poignant moment she added, “Oh, Matilda… we have all failed her. She’s this a ray of sunshine.” Her friends described the child as “the most friendly, most beautiful, happy child.”
At the service held at Sydney’s Chevra Kadisha, mourners’ cries cut through the air. A father, who chose only to say Wayne, wept outside the altar as he recounted the shooting and the danger he faced while trying to protect his daughter.
“It’s a horror show, an absolute horror show… do you know what it’s like to lie down on top of a daughter, shots and bullets going off and people dying around you?” he said, eyes red. He also criticized the Prime Minister: “Albanese is weak, he doesn’t listen… he’s a politician that wants votes. He is not a leader,” he insisted. “He wants votes. He doesn’t want safety… he doesn’t care about people.”
Inside the synagogue, the collective grief over Matilda’s loss was palpable as relatives said goodbye to the girl who would never celebrate her 11th birthday. The Rabbi leading services remarked, “The tragic, totally cruel unfathomable murder of young Matilda, is something that is so painful to us like our own daughter was taken from us,” adding, “… a parent losing a child is the greatest pain a parent can go through.”
He affirmed that what Matilda symbolised – “a righteous woman” in Hebrew – would keep her a “sweet, kind girl” living on through the actions of those who love her: “We have to make sure that she doesn’t just remain in our hearts and minds and memories but she needs to remain alive in our deeds, in how we live our lives.”
The event drew a large crowd. Hundreds stood around the hearse holding a child‑sized coffin, sharing embraces and tears as they paid their last respects. Opposition leaders from both state and federal levels attended, with Sussan Ley visibly moved as she approached the synagogue alongside Julian Leeser.
NSW Premier Chris Minns read a poem in Matilda’s honour at the service: “A child of celebration was lost to terrors night, yet in the hush of sorrow her memory will shine,” he spoke, adding, “A beacon of her love though her earthly light has gone. She bore the name Matilda to honour this great land, Australia’s heart and spirit forever hand‑in‑hand.”
The informal memorial held at Bondi Pavillion gave Matilda’s parents another chance to speak. Father Michael emphasised that the shooting was deliberate: “It wasn’t just a stray bullet, it wasn’t an accident.
It was a bullet that was fired on her.” Coming from Ukraine, he recalled choosing the name Matilda as a reflection of their first Australian child, saying, “It is the most Australian name I could think of. So just remember … remember her name.”
When the shooting erupted, Matilda was playing near a petting zoo when gunfire erupted and she ran back to her parents in shock. Her father later described, “While the shooting was still going on, I saw Matilda.
She ran to where we were. I saw her go down and I crawled to her,” adding, “I took my shirt off and stuck it on her wound. I was talking to her. She was in shock, telling me ‘It’s hard to breathe.’ I was holding her, saying ‘calm down.’” She died in front of her six‑year‑old sister.
Her mother, Valentyna, recounted the horror of the moment she spoke to Sky News: “I can’t imagine what monster stands on that bridge, and seeing a little girl running for her father, to hide with him, and he just pulled his trigger on her.”
The first funeral of the 15 victims of the terror attack, which involved two gunmen opening fire on a crowd celebrating Chanukah, began on Wednesday at Rabbi Eli Schlanger’s service. Before the proceedings, Rabbi Schlanger’s wife Chayale cried as she and other relatives mourned on the coffin. Rabbi Eli’s father‑in‑law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, also broke down while speaking, pausing to lay a hand on the coffin.
“Whatever I say today will be such an understatement to what you meant to everyone and to your family and to me, personally,” he said. “Eli, from the moment you married Chayale, you became a son to us, as much as she is our daughter, and you became everything to me.”
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