India, Feb. 10 -- Israeli President Isaac Herzog started a state visit on Monday aimed at consoling grieving Australian Jews and improving bilateral relations by laying a wreath and stones at the site of an antisemitic attack in Sydney that left 15 dead. Herzog met victims' families and survivors of the Dec. 14 attack on a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach. Only one of the two alleged gunmen survived following a gunbattle with police.

Naveed Akram has been charged with committing a terrorist act, murdering 15 people and wounding another 40 in what was Australia's worst mass shooting in 29 years. Herzog laid the wreath and two stones he had brought from Jerusalem at the rain-swept Bondi Pavilion near the site of the massacre. The pavilion be...