Australia’s Victoria to launch anti-hate task force after Melbourne synagogue arson

SYDNEY – Australia’s Victoria state will set up an anti-hate task force to help frame laws giving police more powers to tackle violent protests, as it probes an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue when worshippers were inside, it said on Monday.

There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the Jewish community. A man was later arrested on suspicion of deliberately setting the front door ablaze.

There were two other incidents targeting Jewish residents in Melbourne on Friday night, with police saying they have not yet found a link between the perpetrators.

“Just as the fire came to the front door here of this (synagogue), it was stopped. So too must we put a stop to antisemitism,” Victoria state Premier Jacinta Allan told reporters outside the synagogue.

“Not only does it have no place here in Melbourne and Victoria, it has no place anywhere.”

Allan said the task force, which would include the premier, state police minister, Mayor of Melbourne, and police personnel, would have its first meeting this week. Jewish community representatives will be invited to attend the meeting.

The government is consulting experts while drafting a bill to ban face masks, display of terror symbols, and devices used by protesters to attach themselves to objects that make it difficult for police to remove them, Allan said.

Counterterrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested a 34-year-old Sydney resident, whom the authorities declined to identify, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire. Police said the man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the synagogue and set it on fire before fleeing. He was named in media reports as Angelo Loras who describes himself on social media as an Iranian.

The attack was the latest of a rash of incidents to target Jews in Melbourne and Sydney, much of it thought tied to anger over Israel’s actions in the Middle East, with Australian leaders vowing to crack down on perpetrators.

Homes, schools, synagogues, and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson.

There were two other incidents targeting Jewish residents in Melbourne on Friday night.

In one instance, a group of about 20 anti-Israel protesters swarmed an Israeli-owned restaurant while chanting “Death to the IDF.”

The protesters allegedly flipped over tables and smashed a window, according to local media.

In another part of the city, cars were set on fire and daubed with antisemitic graffiti.

In January, a home in Sydney previously owned by a senior Jewish community leader was vandalized, two cars were set on fire, and a Jewish school and two other properties in Sydney were sprayed with antisemitic slurs. Melbourne’s Adass synagogue, built by holocaust survivors in the 1960s, suffered widespread damage last year from an arson attack that also injured one person.

Australia’s Jewish community, numbering around 120,000, has been among the hardest hit by the global surge in antisemitism since October 7, 2023. The country experienced more than 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadruple the number from the year before Hamas’s October 7 assault that sparked the Gaza war, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.