January 23, 2025
The AFP’s claim foreign actors could be paying criminals to carry out anti-Semitic attacks in Australia is understood to have blindsided its state counterparts, as the federal government rejected the opposition’s call for more evidence to back up the theory.
NSW Police sources said they knew nothing of Australian Federal Police boss Reece Kershaw’s claims that intelligence suggested foreign bodies were funding the attacks that have seen synagogues, homes, cars and even a childcare centre firebombed – potentially even by using cryptocurrency – until they saw his media statement.
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb refused to be drawn on that intelligence before a meeting between the AFP and all other state police commissioners on Wednesday afternoon.
“If the AFP and other jurisdictions have information relevant to our investigations, then we need to have that information,” she said.
While Commissioner Kershaw offered the caveat that “intelligence is not the same as evidence”, Coalition MP James Paterson called for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to say more about what, if true, he said would be “the most serious domestic security crisis” in Australia’s peacetime history.
“I think the Australian people are entitled to more information from the Prime Minister today about what he knows about this, when he was briefed about it and what action the government is taking about it,” Mr Paterson told ABC Radio.
“This either means, if it is true, if it is confirmed, that a transnational terrorist organisation is sponsoring attacks in Australia or potentially that a foreign government is engaging in state-sponsored terror targeting the Jewish community.
“To put claims like this out there would make it the most serious domestic security crisis in peacetime in Australia’s history and will cause incredible alarm within the Jewish community.”
The Prime Minister fired back on Wednesday, denying the comments were a headline-grabbing exercise.
“It was important to counter a message out there that action wasn’t being taken,” Mr Albanese told ABC Sydney.
“And without compromising any of the police investigations, which of course are ongoing, it was important to get more information and transparency out there.”
So far nine people have been arrested by NSW Police over their alleged involvement in anti-Semitic attacks dating back to November.
The Telegraph does not suggest any of them were paid by foreign actors.
The most recent came on Tuesday when Adam Moule, 33, from Camperdown, was charged with allegedly trying to burn down Newtown Synagogue alight and spray painted an array of red Nazi swastikas on its outside.
Tammie Farrugia, 34, from Liverpool, was charged earlier this week for her alleged involvement in arson and hate speech attacks late last year in Woollahra.
Three men – Thomas Stojanovski, 19, Mohommed Farhat, 20, and a 21-year-old – have been charged with burning a car and graffitiing on Matt Moran’s restaurant Chiswick in Woolahra last November.
Juon Amuoi, 26, Craig Bantoft, 37, Wayne Ogden, 40, and Guy Finnegan, 31, were charged over two separate firebombing attacks on Bondi businesses.
Finnegan pleaded guilty this week and was sentenced to 10 months in jail.
The other eight people charged under Strike Force Pearl remain before the courts.
