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The Unheralded Jewish Hero of Bondi Beach: When Strength Means Standing for Others
Boris and Sofia Gurman. Photo: GoFundMe.
Something important happened at Bondi Beach — not only because of the horror inflicted there, but because of how a few ordinary people responded when violence arrived.
The brutality of the Sydney massacre was shocking. But so were the choices made in those first moments.
Boris Gurman, a 69-year-old Jewish man, recognized the danger and moved toward it.
Boris attempted to disarm one of the attackers before the massacre fully unfolded. His wife followed him. Both were killed. They were days away from celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary.
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It matters that Boris acted first — before the attack fully erupted, before others even grasped what was coming. This was not reactive heroism but anticipatory courage: the willingness to absorb risk in order to spare others from it.
In a media environment quick to universalize violence and hesitant to dwell on Jewish agency, that distinction should not be lost. Boris Gurman did not merely die in a terror attack; he tried to stop one. Jews know this pattern well — not because we seek heroism, but because history has repeatedly demanded it.
Later, Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian bystander, confronted another attacker and physically disarmed him, saving countless lives. He survived, but was badly injured.
In the days that followed, Jews around the world donated generously to support his recovery, not out of sentimentality or symbolism, but recognition. They understood what he had done.
Neither man acted for attention. Neither was performing ideology. They did not pause to calculate outcomes or identities. They acted because innocent people were in danger. What they embodied is something our culture struggles to name but desperately needs: sacred masculinity.
For more than a decade, masculinity has been discussed almost exclusively as a problem to be managed. The language of toxicity has flattened male strength into caricature — aggression without restraint, power without purpose. Some of that critique is warranted. But the deeper failure of our moment has been to treat masculinity itself as suspect, something to be wiped out rather than formed.
The result has not been a more peaceful society. It has been a more confused one.
The opposite of toxic masculinity is not passivity or withdrawal. It is strength bound to responsibility — physical courage governed by moral restraint, a willingness to act not for dominance or glory, but for protection and care. Judaism has always understood this distinction. Its tradition does not celebrate brute force but gevurah: disciplined strength, directed outward, tethered to obligation. Its heroes are not conquerors intoxicated by power, but men who stand when others cannot — Abraham arguing for justice, Moses confronting tyranny, the Maccabees defending religious life against annihilation.
Boris Gurman stood squarely in that lineage. What defined his final act was not fearlessness but readiness — readiness to step forward when retreat would have been easier, readiness to bear cost for the sake of others. That is what sacred masculinity looks like when stripped of abstraction.
Ahmed al-Ahmed’s courage underscores another truth our culture often forgets: sacred masculinity is not tribal. It is moral. When he confronted the attacker, he did not act as a representative of a group. He acted as a man who understood that strength exists for defense.
Both men acted according to the same moral grammar, though at different moments and with different costs: when evil appears, strength is not optional. It has a purpose.
History offers a clear lesson. Communities endure not because they suppress masculine strength, but because they bind it to love, obligation, and moral limits. When men understand that their lives are bound up with others — with families, neighbors, and communities — they rise. When they are taught only suspicion or indulgence, they fracture.
We have seen this repeatedly since October 7. In Israel, men have acted not out of rage, but out of covenant — fathers shielding children, civilians confronting terrorists, ordinary people making unbearable choices to save others. One father famously threw himself on a grenade to protect his sons. His act was not impulsive. It was sacrificial. Love, quite literally, carved in fire.
Bondi Beach belongs in that same moral universe.
We should resist the temptation to romanticize death or mythologize heroism. Boris Gurman did not seek martyrdom. Ahmed al-Ahmed did not aspire to sainthood. But neither should we reduce their actions to fleeting news items or moral curiosities. What they demonstrated is something our culture urgently needs to recover: the idea that strength is for service, that courage is moral before it is physical, and that masculinity, rightly ordered, is not a liability but a civilizational asset.
In a healthier society, we would know how to speak about this without embarrassment or apology. We would teach our sons that masculinity is not about domination but guardianship, not about volume but resolve, not about asserting the self but standing for others. Sacred masculinity is not nostalgic. It is necessary.
Boris Gurman and Ahmed al-Ahmed did not defeat evil. But they confronted it. And in doing so, they reminded us of something we are in danger of forgetting: that civilization depends, in no small part, on people willing to use their strength in the service of others.
The world is not short on power. It is short on men prepared to stand when standing is costly.
At Bondi Beach, we saw what that looks like.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Downed Planes Raise New Perils for Trump as Tehran Hunts for Missing US Pilot
Traces of an Iranian missile attack in Tehran’s sky, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, April 3, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Two US warplanes were downed over Iran and the Gulf, Iranian and US officials said on Friday, with two pilots rescued and a third still missing and being hunted by Tehran’s forces.
The incidents show the risks still faced by US and Israeli aircraft over Iran despite assertions from US President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that their forces had total control of the skies.
The first plane, a two-seat US F-15E jet, was shot down by Iranian fire, officials in both countries said.
The second plane, an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft, was hit by Iranian fire and crashed over Kuwait, with the pilot ejecting, two US officials said.
Two Blackhawk helicopters involved in the search effort for the missing pilot were hit by Iranian fire but made it out of Iranian airspace, the two US officials told Reuters.
The degree of injuries among the crew of the aircraft remained unclear. The status and whereabouts of the missing F-15E crew member was not publicly known.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was combing an area near where the pilot’s plane came down in southwestern Iran and the regional governor promised a commendation for anyone who captured or killed “forces of the hostile enemy.”
Iranians, who have been pummeled by American air power for weeks, posted gleeful messages celebrating the plane downings. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on X that the U.S. and Israel’s war had been “downgraded from regime change” to a hunt for their pilots.
Trump has been in the White House receiving updates on the search-and-rescue operation, a senior administration official told Reuters. The Pentagon and US Central Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
NO SIGN OF END TO WAR
The prospect of a US service person being alive and on the run inside Iran raises the stakes for Washington in a conflict with low public support and no sign of an imminent end.
Iran has officially told mediators it is not prepared to meet with US officials in Islamabad in coming days and that efforts to produce a ceasefire, led by Pakistan, have reached a dead end, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The US and Israel opened the campaign with a wave of strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28. The war has killed thousands and threatened lasting damage to the global economy.
So far, 13 US military service members have been killed in the conflict and more than 300 have been wounded, according to the US Central Command.
Iran has rained down drones and missiles on Israel. It has also taken aim at Gulf countries allied to the US, which have so far held back from joining the war directly for fear of further escalation.
In a security alert on Friday, the US embassy in Beirut said Iran and its aligned armed groups may target universities in Lebanon and urged US citizens in the country to leave while commercial flights are still available.
Israel has been waging a parallel campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon after the militant group fired at Israel in support of Iran.
TRUMP THREAT TO STRIKE BRIDGES, POWER PLANTS
On Friday, as Trump threatened to hit its bridges and power plants, Iran struck a power and water plant in Kuwait, underlining the vulnerability of Gulf states that rely heavily on desalination plants for drinking water.
On Thursday, Trump posted footage on social media showing dust and smoke billowing up as US strikes hit the newly constructed B1 bridge between Tehran and nearby Karaj, which was due to open this year, and said more attacks would follow.
“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!” he wrote in a subsequent post.
On Friday, a drone hit a Red Crescent relief warehouse in the Choghadak area of Iran’s southern Bushehr province.
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery had been hit by drones. Other attacks were also reported to have been intercepted in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Missile debris landed near the Israeli port of Haifa, site of a major oil refinery.
Oil markets were closed after benchmark U.S. crude prices gained 11% on Thursday following a speech by Trump that offered no clear sign of an imminent end to the war.
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US-Iran: Diplomatic Push Falters as Qatar Steps Back and Pakistan Talks Stall
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Emilie Madi
i24 News – Diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran appear to have reached an impasse, as key regional mediators pull back and broader talks stall.
According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, Qatar has informed US officials that it does not wish to take a central role in mediating between the two sides. Officials familiar with the matter said Doha has made clear it is “not willing” to lead negotiations or act as the primary broker.
At the same time, Pakistan-led efforts to bring Iranian and American officials together have also stalled. Mediators say Tehran has refused to attend proposed meetings in Islamabad, calling Washington’s conditions “unacceptable,” further underscoring the widening gap between the two sides and the growing difficulty of restarting dialogue.
Despite the deadlock, diplomatic channels have not fully closed. Turkey and Egypt are continuing parallel efforts to revive talks, with discussions underway about potential alternative venues, including Doha and Istanbul.
US President Donald Trump downplayed the impact of recent military developments on diplomacy, including the destruction of a US fighter jet during operations in Iran. Speaking in a brief exchange with an NBC News journalist, he said: “No, not at all. It’s war. We are at war.”
He further fueled speculation with a cryptic social media post on Truth Social, writing: “Keep the oil, anyone?” criticising international allies on Friday over rising fuel prices. Trump appeared to mock allies such as the United Kingdom, writing that they should “keep the oil.”
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Report: Iran Retains Significant Missile Capability Despite Weeks of US-Led Strikes
Iranian missiles are displayed in a park in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 31, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – Despite weeks of sustained airstrikes by the United States and its allies, Iran has reportedly managed to retain a substantial portion of its military capabilities, particularly its ballistic missile arsenal.
According to a report by The New York Times citing US intelligence assessments, Tehran has developed methods to mitigate the impact of the strikes, allowing it to preserve and restore key parts of its missile infrastructure.
While the Pentagon has claimed responsibility for striking more than 11,000 targets over five weeks and reducing the rate of Iranian missile fire, intelligence officials now caution that the actual damage may be more limited than initially assessed. Iranian forces are reportedly able to rapidly repair or reactivate missile launchers stored in heavily fortified or underground facilities, sometimes within hours of being hit.
Analysts also point to the widespread use of decoy sites, which may have drawn strikes away from operational assets. Many of the targeted locations are believed to have contained dummy installations, complicating efforts to accurately gauge the degradation of Iran’s ballistic capabilities. Combined with deep underground bunkers and dispersed storage networks, this approach is seen as enabling Tehran to maintain a higher level of readiness than publicly estimated.
US intelligence officials assess that this resilience reflects a deliberate strategy: preserving a credible long-range strike capability as both a deterrent and a bargaining tool in any future negotiations, while ensuring regime survival and continued regional influence.
Despite sustained air dominance claimed by Washington and its allies, Iran’s adaptive tactics continue to complicate battlefield assessments, leaving the true balance of power in the conflict uncertain.