The most important thing to learn from the December 2025 Bondi Beach attack is how to better anticipate and mitigate the next attack. There is probably going to be another attack, somewhere, sometime. The auguries are plain.
As Australian authorities try to retrace the steps and understand the motivations of the Bondi Beach gunmen who killed 15 people on Sunday, one key focus has emerged: their travel to the Philippines last month, shortly before the attack.
What’s in the Philippines? The Islamic State of East Asia. The Australian government says, “ISEA is one of Islamic State’s wilayat-bayat (“peripheric provinces”) … ISEA is affiliated with Islamic State. In September 2017, the Islamic State released a video calling for its fighters to travel to the Philippines instead of Iraq and Syria.”
It was in the Philippines, in a downscale apartment in the Malate district, where, in the late 1990s, September 11 had its operational beginnings. Khalid Sheik Mohammed originally envisioned Operation Bojinka to have three phases:
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Assassination of Pope John Paul II: A planned suicide bombing during his January 1995 visit to the Philippines.
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Bombing of 11-12 U.S.-bound airliners: Operatives would board flights in Asia, assemble and plant nitroglycerin-based liquid bombs (disguised in contact lens solution bottles, timed with Casio watches), then disembark at stops. Bombs would detonate over the Pacific, potentially killing ~4,000 people.
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Aircraft hijackings/suicide crashes: Into U.S. targets like CIA headquarters, Pentagon, World Trade Center, or others. This phase was scaled back due to a lack of recruits but later evolved into 9/11.
This is why the Bondi Beach massacre should not be regarded as an isolated attack. It’s more probably part of a multi-phase sequence that has yet to unfold. Australian Prime Minister Albanese should not imagine that the last gunshot on December 14 was the end of the story. It may only be the beginning of the saga. The data shows that something is already happening. Between 2023 and 2025, roughly 10,000 incidents and 20,000+ deaths were attributed to terrorism, nearly all of it Islamist-driven outside the West. This amounts to an average of 9-10 incidents per day worldwide. What’s changing is not only the operational tempo but the fact that the ground attacks are spreading to the West. The Wall Street Journal writes:
ISIS hasn’t given up. Stymied for now in its desire to recreate a territorial caliphate, it will attack Americans, Jews and Christians wherever it can. This is one reason U.S. policy seeks to prevent the terrorists’ recovery in Syria: Better to fight over there than in Sydney and U.S. cities.
ISIS now has expanded access to the West to realistically menace you on Main Street. The biggest vulnerability of the West is the Left/Islamist political alliance, exemplified not only by the Australian Labour Party bending over to avoid offending Islamism but by Zohran Mamdani, Sadiq Khan, Omar/Walsh, and many others, too many to mention. Islam is not only in the West; in many places, it is in charge. ISIS is advancing through a Fifth Column, and their goal is to globalize the Intifada. The real analytical question is what escalation trajectory these “globalize the Intifada” attacks follow. What happens after Bondi? There are two likely paths the Jihadist strategic planning may follow:
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The first may be called the “vertical spread” approach. The proliferation of many more crime-scale attacks on Jewish/conservative targets, on the Charlie Kirk, Brown, MIT, and Bondi Beach order of magnitude. To drive Jewry back to Israel and thus destabilize Europe, blending far-left anti-imperialism with Islamist rhetoric.
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The second trajectory is a lead-up to the “big bang” with a second 9/11 or Oct 7 as the endpoint.
Theoretically, the more promising path for extremists is the “big bang” approach because the gradual “vertical spread” may ultimately prove too slow, allowing time for the public to turn against their leftist coalition partners. However, the Islamists are aroused and are pressing on. As if to remind Albanese that political Islamism is a genie that won’t go back in the bottle, Australian cops intercepted a group of ‘men’ headed for Bondi Beach, probably intent upon confronting the ‘Zionists’ even while burials were in progress. SWAT teams searched and cuffed five bloodied bearded men dressed all in black after authorities rammed their vehicle in a broad daylight stop. This shows not only implacable malice but newfound confidence.
The dance has started, but it has not ended. But a sufficiently “big bang” could allow their progressive partners the chance to establish the equivalent of China’s Social Credit System (SCS) and control individuals, businesses, and entities, using the government machinery for just long enough to lodge a beachhead – like London or Minnesota – that cannot be repelled. Bondi Beach is not past, but prologue.
