After brief hiatus, antisemitism in Australia rears head with Melbourne attacks
While government seems to be taking anti-Jewish threats more seriously, hate speech is becoming more normalized, community leaders say
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
A pair of attacks on Jewish targets in Melbourne on Friday night show that Australia’s antisemitism problem continues to grow, despite brief glimmers of calm, Jewish community members said over the weekend.
“We’re starting to see outright calls for the death and murder of Jews become normalized on Melbourne’s streets,” Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, told The Times of Israel on Sunday. “There has been a transition from coded slogans like ‘From the river to the sea’ and ‘Globalize the intifada’ to explicit incitement with the chant ‘Death to the IDF.'”
On Friday night, the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation was set on fire while around 20 people were eating Shabbat dinner inside. Everyone escaped unscathed through the back of the synagogue, and damage was contained to the entrance. A suspect identifying as Iranian, 34-year-old Angelo Loras, was arrested, but has not been linked to other attacks, police said.
About half an hour after that attack, a mob of pro-Palestinian protesters stormed Miznon, a restaurant founded by Israeli chef Eyal Shani and co-owned by Shahar Segal, who has served as a spokesperson for the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The protesters hurled furniture and food at the restaurant and shattered one of its outer windows as customers dined both inside and outside. One suspect was arrested and later released.
Witnesses said the mob chanted “Death, death to the IDF” as they ransacked the restaurant, a slogan popularized several days earlier by rap duo Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury festival in England.
Two major antisemitic attacks in Melbourne, Australia:
A synagogue was set on fire with 20 people inside the synagogue at the time, however, everyone was able to evacuate from the back.
In a separate incident, a group of 20 Palestinian protestors stormed and trashed an Israeli… pic.twitter.com/dDJALZ9LID
— Ari Ingel (@OGAride) July 4, 2025
“That chant has now become common for pro-Palestinian protesters on the street,” Leibler said. “For a community founded by Holocaust survivors to have a synagogue and Jewish-owned business targeted on the same night has very worrying echoes of the past.”
Anti-Israel protesters also chanted “Death, death to the IDF” at their weekly rally in Melbourne on Sunday, local media reported.
Also Friday night, in a third attack, cars in another part of Melbourne were set on fire and daubed with antisemitic graffiti.
Since the Hamas terror group launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023, Australia’s 120,000-strong Jewish community has been among the hardest hit by antisemitism in the world.
In recent months, Jews there have experienced synagogues, schools, and homes firebombed, two nurses threatening to kill Jewish patients in their hospital, and the discovery of a trailer filled with explosives said to have been intended to cause a mass-casualty event at a Sydney synagogue.
More than 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents were recorded between October 2023 and September 2024, a fourfold explosion from the previous year, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
Australian Jews have been frustrated by what they say is the failure of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government to rein in attacks and violent rhetoric, but were cautiously hopeful that he would do more to protect the Jewish community after he and his Labor Party were reelected to lead the country in May.
While there are signs that the government has finally begun to understand the significance of the antisemitism problem and take action, Friday’s attacks, along with the Department of Home Affairs’ decisions last month to place travel bans on two Israeli right-wing politicians and bar pro-Israel activist and influencer Hillel Fuld from entering the country, make it hard to be optimistic, Leibler said.
“We should have had a moment of calm after the elections, but major events keep happening that won’t let things remain calm,” he said. “Most Australians strongly condemn these attacks and just want them to stop already.”
After Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue was destroyed in December in a firebombing attack, the Albanese government took a number of steps to boost efforts to combat antisemitism, including the creation of an anti-terror task force specifically dedicated to anti-Jewish violence. Other initiatives include a ban on the Nazi salute and hate symbols, criminalizing doxxing, introducing legislation to outlaw hate speech, and committing funds to improve safety and security at Jewish sites across the country.
These measures have not proven to be enough to stem the tide, although the government’s response to Friday’s attacks was quite strong, and sent a reassuring message to the Jewish community, Leibler said.
While Australian police have suspected that foreign interests might be coordinating antisemitic attacks, no evidence of that has emerged, he noted.
Community reactions
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin called on the government to strongly confront antisemitism “with the full force of the law.”
“These events are a severe escalation directed towards our community and clear evidence that the antisemitism crisis is not only continuing, but getting worse,” he said in a statement.
“Those who chant for death are not peace activists. Those who would burn houses of prayer with families inside do not seek an end to war,” Ryvchin said. “There is a violent ideology at work in our country that operates on the fringes of politics and social movements, that taps into anger and prejudice, and smirks as businesses are destroyed, lives are threatened and proud, patriotic Australians experience fear in their own homes and their own streets.”
“Those responsible cannot be reasoned with or appeased,” he concluded. “They must be confronted with the full force of the law.”
Other community leaders echoed similar sentiments.
“This violent extremism is infiltrating every part of our society, and it’s ruining the fabric of multicultural Victoria that we all used to take immense pride in,” said Elyse Schachna, president of Zionism Victoria, an umbrella organization of pro-Israel groups in Zionist organizations in the state of Victoria. “We must be unequivocal: the pogrom on Friday night at both an Israeli restaurant and a synagogue clearly demonstrates that this isn’t just merely anti-Israel, it’s always been about Jews.”
“This is a moment where silence is no longer an option,” said Dionne Taylor, Australian emissary for pro-Israel advocacy group ISRAEL-is. “We need more voices from the silent majority to speak out clearly and unequivocally: This is not who we are. Now, more than ever, we must stand together to protect the social cohesion that defines our nation.”
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