Police believe “foreign actors” are paying local criminals to commit crimes amid a surge in anti-Semitic incidents.
Australia is investigating suspicions that funding from outside the country is behind a surge in anti-Semitic crimes.
Detectives investigating anti-Semitic attacks across the country have concluded that foreign actors paid local criminals to carry them out, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday. He, however, declined to comment on the source of the alleged funding.
“It’s important that people understand where some of these attacks are coming from and it appears… that some… are being carried out by people who have no particular problem, are not ideologically motivated, but are paid actors . “Albanese told reporters.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police “believe criminals for hire may be behind some incidents”.
Investigations are underway to identify “who is paying these criminals, where these people are located, whether they are in Australia or overseas, and what their motivation is”, he added.
Arson
The comments follow a meeting of state police chiefs to discuss the increase in anti-Semitic crimes in Australia since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 2023, which has intensified in recent months .
Masked arsonists threw a firebomb at a synagogue in the city of Melbourne in December. Vandals set fire to a Sydney daycare, set fire to cars in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and splattered downtown synagogues with red paint and graffiti.
Sydney and Melbourne are home to 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population.
After a Sydney daycare 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 Adam Edward Moule, 33, on Tuesday evening and charged him with attempting to burn down a synagogue in Newtown, an inner suburb of Sydney, on January 11. Police said his alleged accomplice is also expected to be arrested soon.
Kershaw told federal and state leaders at a news briefing 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.
