On a recent morning, seven friends from Sydney stood alongside their fellow soldiers and received their light-green berets, the color of the IDF’s Nahal Brigade.
They had all spent a year in Israel, either at yeshiva or on an experiential program. While most returned to their home country, these boys decided to leave their families and friends in Australia and enlist as lone soldiers in the IDF.
The Masa Kumta is a march after which the beret is awarded to the soldiers. It marks the end of months of basic and advanced combat training. However, it was not only the physical test that made these soldiers so impressive, but the sacrifice that comes with being a lone soldier while your family is almost 14,000 kilometers away.
The friends had arrived in the IDF via slightly different routes. One told me about the influence of Bnei Akiva, another of family history and friends who had already served. October 7, however, was central for all seven.
“I hated the idea that Israel was fighting while I felt helpless in Sydney. It was around the time of my end-of-year exams, but I just wanted to start my year in Israel.”
Fighting a sense of helplessness
But on December 14, 2025, that sense of helplessness was flipped on its head. Two terrorists attacked a public Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach. Fifteen people were killed, and another 40 were wounded in the deadliest terrorist attack on Australian soil.
One of the soldiers learned of the attack while in training, when his commander pulled him aside to tell him.
“He said there had been an attack at Bondi, and my first thought was ‘Who was there?’” he recalled. “Then I was trying to get names and work out whether everyone was safe while we were still in the middle of training. I had a gun on me, which was incredibly strange. I could protect Jews in Israel but not my own family in Sydney.”
The attack brought another strange phenomenon for the soldiers, which they shared with me: they suddenly worried more for their family in Sydney than for themselves, despite being in the army.
“My parents are normally the ones asking if I’m okay and whether the army is looking after me,” one soldier said. “After Bondi, I was the one calling them. I worry more about them now than they worry about me.”
The Bondi shooting did not happen in isolation. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded 1,654 anti-Jewish incidents in the 12 months leading up to September 2025, almost five times the annual average of 342 recorded during the decade before Oct. 7.
Australian Jews have seen the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne set alight, a kosher business in Bondi destroyed by arson, cars and buildings in the heavily Jewish suburb of Woollahra vandalized, and a childcare center in Sydney firebombed. Bondi was the culmination of the atmosphere of intimidation and violence towards Jewish people that was created after Oct. 7.
The Australian government has since established a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in January, after sustained pressure from Jewish organizations. Its interim report, published in April, made 14 recommendations and identified serious shortcomings in counterterrorism coordination, information-sharing and security planning. Its final report is due in December.
Most see little point in returning to an increasingly antisemitic Australia
One parent of the seven gave me his feelings on the inquiry. While it was necessary, he suggested that its creation would do little to help the Jewish community in Australia feel safer: “I struggle to be grateful for a royal commission that was only created when 15 Jews were killed, not when our shuls were being attacked for two years.”
Most of the soldiers see little point in returning to Australia. “My family will be coming over the next few years, and there is nothing for me in Sydney. Antisemitism feels too far gone. Here we are not at the whim of a government; we can protect ourselves.”
The decision to move has come with sacrifices. One told me that he missed his best friend’s wedding. Another sees his girlfriend every six weeks. One pointed out that this has been the experience of much of Israeli society, particularly since Oct. 7.
But Israelis can at least return home to parents who understand the bureaucracy of the army, and can do washing and provide a home-cooked meal. For these boys, they figure most of it out on their own.
I asked their parents how hard it is to be 20 hours away from their sons in the army. While they said it was hard and that there are sleepless nights, one of them shared a powerful perspective. He said he had never felt more connected to Am Yisrael (the Jewish people) than he did now, sharing the burden carried by so many Israeli parents whose children serve in the army.
At the end of the ceremony, the commanders counted down, and the soldiers threw their new berets into the air. It was impossible, in the sea of green, to distinguish the Israeli natives from the seven who had arrived from Sydney.
But while they earned the same beret, their circumstances remained different. Their families are still across the world, and they have less of a support system than Israeli soldiers. But within Nahal, they were all simply soldiers.
I congratulated one of the soldiers, and he reminded me that the “real army starts now.”