Antisemitic Crimes Possibly Funded Overseas – Australian Police

Australia’s federal police have said that antisemitic crimes in the country are possibly funded overseas or individuals paying local criminals, as they are investigating.

There has been a series of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents.

So far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes.

Albanese said it appeared some of the crimes were “being perpetrated by people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors”.

“Now, it’s unclear who or where the payments are coming from,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said it was possible that cryptocurrencies – which can take longer to identify – had been used.

However, Mr Kershaw cautioned, “intelligence is not the same as evidence” and more charges were expected soon.

Albanese said Tuesday’s incident at a childcare centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Maroubra was “as cowardly as it is disgusting” and described it as a “hate crime”.

“This was an attack targeted at the Jewish community. And it is a crime that concerns us all because it is also an attack on the nation and society we have built together,” he wrote on social media.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister told the ABC that Australia’s government had been “inflaming” problems in the local community by not clamping down harder on antisemitic crimes.

But Albanese on Wednesday said his government had “acted from day one” to protect Australia’s Jewish community, and criticised those seeking to make it a “political issue”.

The Jewish Council of Australia, which was set up last year in opposition to antisemitism, said that it “strongly condemns” this and all such incidents.

BBC/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma