Bondi Benefit Concert Canceled as Greek Choir Refuses To Sing With Jewish Group

A choral concert meant to raise funds for victims of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack has been canceled after members of a Greek choir objected to performing alongside Jewish singers.The Concert for Hope collapsed last week when a majority of the 50-member Australian Hellenic Choir voted to withdraw from the event, citing “political objections” to sharing a stage with the Sydney Jewish Choral Society and fears for their personal safety, the Australian reported.The program would have featured the two choirs performing “The Ballad of Mauthausen” — a work about the romance between Greek and Jewish prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp. The two-hour show, backed by $15,000 in government funding, was scheduled for Sydney Town Hall on June 28. All proceeds were set to go to victims of the Bondi attack.The two choirs had performed together without incident in 2022, but attitudes within Australia’s Greek community toward Jews have shifted since Israel’s war in Gaza, said the president of the Australian Hellenic Choir and one of the event’s organizers, James Tsolakis. “There’s a bit of antisemitism in the Greek community; I didn’t realize the extent of it,” Mr. Tsolakis told the Australian. “Unfortunately, we have a lot of people in the community blaming the Jewish community for what’s happening in Israel, Palestine … that’s not correct.”He added: “You want to hate Netanyahu? Hate Netanyahu, but what have the Jewish people done to you? The whole antisemitism thing has got to be wound back.” Following the cancellation, the Jewish Choral Society filed an official complaint with a government body established in the wake of the Bondi shooting to address rising antisemitism in Australia, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. “The result is, like many other Jews in the arts since 7 October, 2023, we have been cancelled,” the Jewish Choral Society’s chairwoman, Anne Spira, told the Australian. “We have been de-platformed and it is deeply upsetting for us and for the broader Jewish community who have been the target of anti-Jewish racism in this country for 2.5 years.”Australia’s Jewish community, estimated at 120,000, has been among the most dramatically affected by the surge in antisemitism that followed Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack and Israel’s response. Australian Jews have faced mass doxxing, vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses, arson attacks on synagogues, and more.The hostilities escalated on December 15, 2025, when terrorists inspired by the Islamic State opened fire on a Chabad-organized beach gathering attended by more than 1,000 community members. At least 15 people were killed, among them a Holocaust survivor, two rabbis, and a 10-year-old child. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Australia in nearly 30 years.A human rights attorney and advocate for Israel, Arsen Ostrovsky, who was present at the attack and injured when a bullet grazed his head, responded to news of the concert’s cancellation bluntly. “Deeply disappointing,” he wrote on X. Mr. Tsolakis, who helped bring the event together, expressed similar frustrations. “I’m extremely disappointed and pretty upset,” he told the Australian. “I was not expecting this to happen at all as we’d performed with the Jewish choir without any problems in 2022. It would have been a sterling performance.”

Bondi Benefit Concert Canceled as Greek Choir Refuses To Sing With Jewish Group

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