Three more incidents of anti-Semitic graffiti were found across Sydney yesterday morning, leading Australian political leaders to warn of an escalation in hatred and decry as terrorism explosives found earlier in a trailer on the city’s outskirts.
Law enforcement earlier this month found a list of Jewish targets together with a cache of Powergel — an explosive used in the mining industry — in Sydney’s outer suburb of Dural, state police said on Wednesday.
The amount uncovered could create a bomb with a blast zone of about 40m, officers said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“This represents, undeniably, an escalation in race hatred, race-filled hatred and potential violence in New South Wales,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told reporters yesterday.
News of the discovery — which police chiefs said was leaked to a newspaper, compromising a clandestine investigation — followed months of anti-Semitic arson, window-smashing and graffiti in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s most populous cities, concentrated in the areas where many Jewish people live.
Yesterday’s target included a Jewish school.
“It is utterly appalling and shameful,” Minns said.
A police investigation into months of such crimes has prompted 10 arrests and Minns expected more.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in 2023, targeted arson — including at a childcare center — and graffiti attacks have soared in Sydney and Melbourne, home to 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population. One person has been physically hurt — a worshiper who sustained burns in a fire that was set at a Melbourne synagogue in December last year.
A joint counterterrorism team involving federal and state law enforcement is investigating — and this month its leaders said they were investigating whether criminals for hire were being paid by foreign actors to carry out the attacks.
Australia Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw did not name what foreign interests the taskforce believed were responsible.
Those suggestions were renewed yesterday when New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson said police believed some of the attacks “were being orchestrated by others,” rather than those arrested.
“We haven’t identified any of the individuals of the 10 charged with any specific ideology that would cause them to commit the acts that they’ve committed,” Hudson said.
He added that officers had found links between certain occupations, but did not supply more details.
The owner of the trailer was one the 10 people arrested and was already in custody when the explosives were found on Jan. 19, Hudson said.
Police were speaking to the makers of the explosives, which are exclusively used in mining, he added.
The contents of the trailer were “clearly designed to harm people, but it’s also designed to create fear in the community,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
He affirmed Minns’ characterization of the episode as a potential act of terrorism — although he added that state police have not formally classified it that way.
Police chiefs said a terrorism designation would not change what charges could be applied to those responsible, adding that they did not believe there was more risk from explosives.
Peter Wertheim, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said that many in his community were anxious.
“We are angry because we are seeing that the Australia that we have been fortunate enough to live in ourselves, a land of freedom, fair-mindedness, civilized norms of behavior and the rule of law, is starting to slip away from us,” he said.
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