The two terrorists who attacked a huge Hanukkah fest at Australia’s Bondi Beach, it turns out, first visited the Philippines. More specifically, Southern Mindanao, where they “underwent military-style training” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, citing senior counter-terrorism officials.
” The Philippines has been a hotspot for Islamist militants since the early 1990s.” the outlet said. Inspired by Islamic State—also known as ISIS—the killers apparently spent most of November in Mindanao, returning to Australia just two weeks before the killings. Philippine officials confirm the visit but say they see no evidence of military training. Either way, it could be bad news for anyone living on these islands, especially in the south like me. Why bad? Let me count the ways.
First comes the stigma of just being associated with a horrendous tragedy of this—or any—magnitude. Among the 15 people slaughtered were two rabbis, a 10-year-old girl, and an elderly Holocaust survivor. More than 40 others sustained injuries, some of them critical.
It’s also disconcerting to think that Southern Mindanao’s alleged retreat from conflict following decades of strife may now be ending. I remember my first visit there in 2003 when the Filipina checking me in at Los Angeles International Airport stared like she was seeing a ghost. “You’re going where?” she asked incredulously. “Please don’t; Muslim terrorists will cut off your head.”
It wasn’t much better in Zamboanga, where airport attendants escorted us off the tarmac between lines of well-armed guards. Later, following the Marawi siege of 2017, Philippine officials declared a victory of sorts. The situation “is relatively peaceful,” a military spokesman told reporters at the 2022 groundbreaking of a reformatory designed to train former terrorists as tour guides. “For quite some time,” he said, “there’s been an absence of violent clashes.”
Ah, but then came the war in Gaza. A 2023 explosion at Mindanao State University killed four students. An American got kidnapped in Zamboanga. And last year, the New York-based Anti-Defamation League reported that 42% of Filipinos displayed antisemitic attitudes, a dramatic increase from 2014 when only 3% expressed such sentiments. “These figures are alarming,” then-Israeli Ambassador Ilan Fluss said, “and we cannot simply watch as this hateful ideology spreads.”
And yet it did.
Earlier this year I reported on an alarming development on Siargao Island, where my wife was born. A local group of “free Palestine” ranters had concocted a petition to ban Chabad House, the same international Jewish organization that sponsored the ill-fated Bondi Beach bash. Chabad’s sin: hosting vacationing former Israeli soldiers the protestors considered criminals.
“If Chabad House is legal,” one of them wondered online, “is Satanism also welcome in Siargao?” A sentiment, I’d wager, paralleling those of the terrorists pulling triggers in Australia.
All of which means that the threat of Mindanao-based terrorism, the New York Times reported last week, has now come “under fresh scrutiny.”
So, how will that turn out? For me, it raises fears regarding potential harm to a country I’ve come to love. One of the most obvious: a resurgence of the views I encountered two decades ago regarding the undesirability of Mindanao—and, more generally, the Philippines—as a destination. Which could be economically devastating at a time when the nation is already suffering from a serious deficit in tourism.
But there’s an even bigger worry lurking in the shadows. US President Donald Trump recently blocked or limited entry to the nationals of 35 countries following a spate of violence involving militant Muslims. “We will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm,” he declared.
Lately the President has threatened to expand that list, vowing at one point to “permanently pause migration from all third world countries.” Will the Philippines be among them? That would also impact the nation’s economy. And, as an American married to a Filipina with lots of ambitious relatives, it would bring this mess even nearer than just close to home.
It would bring it into my bedroom. From where I watch with horror the violence that could be unfolding.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
