There was an air of inevitability as news spread of the massacre at the Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach yesterday. A friend in Sydney told me that almost everyone had been expecting something like this. Counter-terrorism analysts I spoke to yesterday and local media coverage said the same thing.
There is little mystery about the motive here. Sajid and Naveed Akram, the father and son who killed 15 people — including a Holocaust survivor, two rabbis, and a ten-year-old girl — had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (Isis), according to Australian security sources. Naveed, in particular, had been investigated six years ago due to his ties to an Isis cell.
