Photo: 7News Australia
The Australian Football League paid a pre-game tribute to the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre but removed all mention of Jews at the last minute.
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon claimed the change to the script was intended to be “more inclusive,” by excluding the fact almost all of those murdered by terrorists were Jews celebrating Hanukkah at the annual event on Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach last December. Apparently the AFL didn’t want to offend Islamic terrorists and extremists resident in Australia.
Dillon said he didn’t know who decided to remove “Jew” as an offensive word.
Now one of the teams in the match has ‘fessed up:
Swans Admit “Error of Judgment” in Bondi Tribute
Sydney has apologized for omitting a specific reference to the Jewish community in its pre-game tribute to victims of the Bondi terror attack
SYDNEY CEO Matthew Pavlich has taken “full responsibility” for the removal of direct references to the Jewish community from the club’s pre-match tribute to the victims of the Bondi terror attack in Opening Round.
The Swans have come under scrutiny for the speech Pavlich delivered before the Sydney vs. Carlton match at the Sydney Cricket Grounds on March 5.
The address paid tribute to victims of the Bondi terrorist attack but did not directly mention the Jewish community, with references removed from an earlier version of the script.
On Monday, Pavlich and the Swans took responsibility for changing the script.
“I own it as CEO, that’s on me, I take full responsibility,” Pavlich said.
“To be really clear, we worked on it internally, we sent that to the AFL, we also worked on it from there, and ended up doing what we did.”
He reiterated that there was no directive or instruction from the AFL to remove or change the reference to the Jewish community.
Earlier on Monday, the Swans said in a statement that the “script change was made within our club in a genuine effort to use inclusive language by referring to the whole community,” noting that the focus of the script was to recognize those people present on the field on the night. This included members of the Jewish community, community heroes and first responders.
“We acknowledge that was an error of judgment and again we apologize.”
On Monday Liberal senator James Paterson referred the AFL to the anti-Semitism royal commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding the script change.
Senator Paterson has asked former High Court judge Virginia Bell who is leading the royal commission on anti-Semitism to request the AFL preserve all documents and communications relating to the matter, including any correspondence with the Swans.
The issue was first raised on Friday by media commentator and Swans great Gerard Healy, who claimed the initial script was changed to remove the word “Jew” and references to the Jewish community.
The Bondi Beach massacre is considered the largest terrorist attack ever committed in Australia. Two rabbis, a Holocaust survivor and several children were among the 16 people murdered by a father and son of Pakistani origin on December 14, 2025. The massacre followed years of attacks on Jews in Australia largely unchecked by police and the Labor Government. The pair of terrorists had travelled to the Philippines prior to the attack for training from an ISIS affiliate there. The son was a target of Australian intelligence almost ten years prior to the mass murder for his sympathies for the ISIS terrorist network.
Full story here.