Jerusalem is almost 9,000 miles from Sydney, Australia. But on the evening of December 14, 2025, the distance collapsed.

At 6:42 p.m. in Sydney, two terrorists attacked a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, killing 15 people and injuring others. Within an hour of the news reaching Israel, senior Hadassah experts in psychology and trauma care were in contact with members of the Forum of Jewish Therapists in Australia. Within three hours, Amichai Ben Ari, a Hadassah rehabilitation psychologist specializing in acute trauma, delivered the first in a series of webinars for psychotherapists, family physicians and community leaders on supporting victims, their families and the wider Jewish community. And two days later, Hadassah psychologist Osnat Goori Mussel was on the ground helping treat the trauma.

Australia’s Jewish community has long been supportive of the Hadassah Medical Organization. The country has a thriving Hadassah International chapter, and the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus was made possible by a landmark philanthropic gift from John and Pauline Gandel of Melbourne.

With antisemitism rising in Australia, HMO’s chief psychologist, Shiri Ben-David, had visited the country in August 2025 under the auspices of Hadassah International and Hadassah Australia to share Hadassah’s clinical experience—connections that enabled rapid outreach after the attack. 

Goori Mussel, a clinical psychologist at the Hadassah Center for Pediatric Traumatic Stress, arrived in Sydney on December 16 as part of the Israel Trauma Coalition, a network of Israeli experts that responds to crises in Israel and abroad. For six days, she and other specialists worked with Australian clinicians.

She emphasized that their goal was to help the community mobilize efficiently. She urged local leaders to draw on existing resources, including rabbis and school principals, and offered guidance on speaking with children after trauma.

“I shared our experience in speaking to small children, reminding parents that they need to validate the experience and not pretend it was ‘just fireworks and didn’t happen,’ ” she said, recalling one mother who told her 4-year-old to close his eyes during the attack and believed she had spared him from witnessing the horror.

“He admitted he’d peeked,” Goori Mussel said, “and wanted to talk about what he’d seen.”

Hadassah staff will continue providing support through webinars for as long as needed.

“Even though we are dealing with a startling and calamitous terror attack,” Goori Mussel said, “I feel proud that Am Yisrael—the Jewish people—feel mutual responsibility and are ready and able to reach out and help one another.”   

Barbara Sofer, an award-winning journalist and author, is Israel director of public relations for Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America.