December 9, 2024
A dedicated squad of police and intelligence officers will be created to deal with the national scourge of antisemitism after law enforcement authorities belatedly declared Friday’s arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue as terrorism.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, facing criticism for being too slow to respond to rising rates of antisemitism, convened cabinet’s national security committee on Monday before announcing the establishment of Operation Avalite to investigate threats and hate crimes against Jewish Australians.
“This is a crime. This needs to stop,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said.
Mr Kershaw said the synagogue fire, a car being set ablaze and anti-Israel graffiti last month in Sydney’s Woollahra, and the attempted arson at Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns’ electorate office in June, showed people of Jewish ethnicity or faith were “being targeted because of who they are”.
The new taskforce, to be staffed by counterterrorism officers from the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, comes amid a deepening political row over antisemitism.
Friday’s early morning arson attack that gutted the interior of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea was the most dramatic escalation in antisemitism directed against Australian Jews since last year’s October 7 terrorist attack that murdered 1200 Israelis. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign against terrorist group Hamas has destroyed large swaths of Gaza and resulted in thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton visited the synagogue on Monday – a trip the prime minister is expected to make on Tuesday.
The federal and Victorian governments have come under scrutiny over why the arson attack was not immediately declared an act of terrorism. The decision was delayed until Monday following meetings between senior federal and Victorian police.
The declaration opens up extra powers for investigators including the ability to stop, search and seize people without a warrant, and detain and question those they believe have knowledge of, or links to, the attack. It also carries stiffer penalties.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team – made up of state and federal police and ASIO officers – were pursuing three suspects, as he defended not making the declaration sooner.
“Based on the assessment at the time of having a crime scene, albeit in a circumstance and on a synagogue, it was not believed to be sufficient to establish the threshold for a terrorist attack to be declared,” he said.
“We’ve investigated over the weekend, we’ve had significant progress.”
Mr Patton said there was no evidence to suggest likely further attacks, an assessment backed by ASIO chief Mike Burgess.
Mr Dutton said it was “obvious from the start” that the synagogue fire was a terrorist attack.
“The fact that federal authorities weren’t engaged immediately for the bombing of a place of worship, a synagogue – particularly given the level of antisemitism that we’ve seen in the country over the last 13 months – is quite astounding.”
Mr Dutton vowed to crack down on antisemitism should the Coalition win next year’s federal election.
He promised that migrants who committed antisemitic acts could be stripped of their visa and deported under a tougher character test in migration law. A Coalition government would create a new police-led taskforce to prioritise investigating antisemitic acts, including reopening cases where decisions had been made not to charge someone.
Mr Dutton also said taxpayer funds would be available to station armed guards outside Jewish schools and synagogues. Under the Albanese government’s extra $32 million announced on the weekend for Jewish organisations, funds can only be used for unarmed guards.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said the government was seeking advice on how laws could be strengthened to protect people going to places of worship.
“This has to come to an end. We cannot let this conflict overseas continue to be a cloak for behaviour like that here,” she said on Monday.
NSW Premier Chris Minns had on Sunday instructed his attorney-general to explore new legal options to prevent intimidation of worshippers practising their faith after protesters gathered outside a Sydney synagogue last week, calling for sanctions against Israel.
According to the Executive Council for Australian Jewry, 2062 anti-Jewish incidents were logged in Australia in the year to September 30, a 316 per cent increase.
Mr Kershaw said investigators would focus on perpetrators urging violence against members or groups, advocating terrorism, advocating genocide, using a carriage service to make a threat, and using a carriage service to menace or harass.
Mr Burgess said the synagogue arson attack embodied the “ugly dynamics” ASIO had been warning about in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, with the risk of politically motivated violence intensifying, and provocative and inflammatory language becoming normalised.
While Mr Albanese has been blamed for the synagogue fire by not taking a stronger stand against antisemitism – including by Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu – Mr Burgess said it was a “hard call to put something on government to stop people doing the wrong thing in our society”.
Mr Albanese denied he had been flatfooted in addressing the aftermath of the synagogue fire, saying he had received daily police briefings and spoken to members of the Jewish community.
The prime minister was also forced to defend having a hit of tennis at Cottesloe tennis club in Perth on Saturday, after he was snapped by fellow players. The tennis match followed an earlier synagogue visit.
“I had six appointments on Saturday. After they had concluded late in the afternoon, I did some exercise. That’s what people do,” he said.
Mr Patton said that a stray bullet found at the scene of the fire was being examined but was not believed to be connected to the attack that destroyed much of the Adass Israel Synagogue at Ripponlea in Melbourne’s south-east early on Friday.
“The reality is that we have nothing to suggest that [bullet] had anything to do with this attack. We have taken it away for examination but … it could have come off a tradie’s ute, it could have been anything,” Mr Patton said.
