Police believe ‘foreign actors’ are paying local criminals to commit crimes amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents.
Australia is investigating suspicions that overseas funding is behind a rise in anti-Semitic crime.
Detectives investigating antisemitic attacks across the country concluded that foreign actors were paying local criminals to carry them out, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday. However, he declined to comment on the suspected source of funding.
“It is important that people understand where some of these attacks come from and it seems … that some … are carried out by people who do not have a particular problem, are not motivated by ideology, but are paid actors,” Albanese told reporters.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police “believe some of the incidents may be organized crime”.
Investigations are ongoing to determine “who is paying these criminals, where are these people, whether they are in Australia or out of the country and what their motivation is”, he added.
Arson
The comments followed a meeting of state police chiefs to discuss the rise in anti-Semitic crime in Australia since war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, which has increased in recent months.
Masked arsonists set fire to a synagogue in the city of Melbourne in December. Vandals set fire to a kindergarten in Sydney, burned cars in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, and sprayed red paint and graffiti on synagogues in the city center.
Sydney and Melbourne are home to 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population.
In the wake of the Sydney kindergarten fire, New South Wales police said the number of detectives working for Strike Force Pearl, set up to investigate anti-Semitic crimes, had doubled from 20 to 40.
Detectives arrested 33-year-old Adam Edward Moule on Tuesday night and charged him with attempting to burn down a synagogue in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown on January 11. Police said his alleged accomplice was also expected to be arrested soon.
Kershaw told federal and state government leaders at a briefing on Tuesday that police were investigating the involvement of young people in recent incidents and whether they had been radicalized online and encouraged to commit anti-Semitic acts.
