Sydney Jewish school, home and mall daubed with antisemitic graffiti
Discovery of sprayed slogans including ‘Jew dogs’ comes day after announcement of apparent bomb plot against Jewish targets amid escalation in antisemitic incidents in Australia
MELBOURNE, Australia — Three more incidents of antisemitic graffiti were found across Sydney on Thursday morning, leading Australian political leaders to warn of an escalation in hatred.
Slogans were daubed at a Jewish school, as well as at a nearby home and shopping center. It was not clear from reports if the home was Jewish owned.
Among the messages vandals wrote were “You fucking Jews,” “Jews are real terrorists,” “Jew dogs,” “Fuck the Jews,” and “You wanna buy a caravan,” the last an apparent reference to the Wednesday announcement of the discovery of an explosives cache in a trailer earlier this month.
Law enforcement 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 Wednesday. The amount uncovered could create a bomb with a blast zone of around 40 meters (130 feet), officers said.
“This represents, undeniably, an escalation in race hatred, race-filled hatred and potential violence in New South Wales,” the state’s Premier Chris Minns told reporters on Thursday.
The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies called the incident “a matter of the gravest possible consequence.”
Major wave of anti-Jewish vandalism last night in Sydney
Jewish school hit, House, shopping centre.
The Government has totally lost control over the situation.
They were warned so many times about what they were unleashing. pic.twitter.com/FBYmYZzu6K
— Australian Jewish Association (@AustralianJA) January 29, 2025
“We have been saying for weeks now that the Jewish community is the target of an ongoing campaign of domestic terrorism. This is now beyond dispute,” it said in a statement.
There was “some indication” the cache may have been intended to blow up a synagogue, Australian media reported on Wednesday.
News of the discovery — which police chiefs said was leaked to a newspaper, compromising a clandestine investigation — followed months of antisemitic arson, window-smashing, and graffiti in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s most populous cities, concentrated in the areas where many Jewish people live.
“It is utterly appalling and shameful,” Minns said. A police investigation into months of such crimes has prompted 10 arrests and Minns said he expected more.
Renewed claims about coordination by foreign interests
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in 2023 with the Palestinian terror group’s devastating invasion of Israel, targeted arson — including at a child care 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 suffered burns in an arson attack that destroyed a Melbourne synagogue in December.
A joint counterterrorism team involving federal and state law enforcement is investigating the attacks, 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 on Thursday 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.
Trailer owner was already arrested in antisemitism sting
The owner of the trailer was one of the 10 people arrested and was already in custody when the explosives were found on January 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,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
He affirmed Minns’s characterization of the episode as a potential act of terrorism — although he also noted 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. They did not believe there was more risk from explosives, they said.
The Times of Israel Community.