Wellington, New Zealand (AP) – A wave of anti-Semitic attacks has rocked Australia, arrested for destruction or attacks at home, schools and synagogues since October, and has been charged for more than a year for crimes targeting Jews. Ta.
The attacks in Jewish areas sparked a pouring of condemnation. But in a rare moment of unity, Australia's federal lawmakers on Thursday almost unanimously raised the hate crimes law.
“We want to capture, be accused and outline people who are engaged in anti-Semitism,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.
“This is an era of national crisis,” said opposition leader Peter Dutton.
Jewish and Muslim organizations and hatred researchers have dramaticized incidents in which Hamas burned fuel in hatred in both groups since Hamas' attacks on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023 Recording the spikes. And while the way groups define anti-Semitism and Islamophobia differs, the number of cited by organizations all indicates an increase in cases.
The anti-Semitic episodes of two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne (85% of Australian Jews are based) bring out the highest profiles because they are serious, unusual and public .
Since November, they have been included:
– A list of trailers filled with explosives used in mining and a list of Jewish targets discovered in Sydney's suburbs
– One person hurts when bombing a synagogue in Melbourne. Loss of another person using Nazi symbols and pro-Palestinian graffiti
– A flare-up Jewish childcare center
– Jewish schools in Sydney and Melbourne are smeared with white supremacist graffiti
– 3 Jewish companies torched
– The original home of a prominent Jewish leader who was sprayed with graffiti
– In Jewish areas, cars were tainted and windows were destroyed
Counterterrorism authorities have arrested 12 people in connection with these crimes. Since October 2023, nearly 200 more people have been charged with crimes related to anti-Semitism in New South Wales, where Sydney is located, police say.
Investigators are looking into whether employment offenders have been paid by foreign officials to carry out the recent attack, task force leaders said in January. They did not identify foreign interests they believed to be responsible.
A few days later, authorities say the 12 people arrested by the task force do not share the anti-Semitic ideology expressed in their crimes, highlighting the proposal that the acts were coordinated overseas. .
The revelation was strange, but not unprecedented, analysts said.
“The relationship between ideological groups and criminal groups is nothing new,” says Matteo Vergani, a researcher of hatred and extremism at Deakin University. “What's new is that it usually happens in connection with large-scale terrorist attacks. That's amazing.”
A lawmaker in this week's speech said Hamas' October 7 attack caused an anti-Semitism explosion at a level that Australia had not previously registered.
In a tense public debate that reflects people in the United States and elsewhere, the leaning right-wing lawmakers and Jewish leaders, among Peter Verteim of the Australian Jewish Executive Council, are Palestinian parents, He specifically criticizes university students as “progressive.” He said it promoted crime.
He said protesters will use their opposition to Israel to target Jews and give anti-Semitism a “new social licence.”
Other Jewish leaders were more cautious. The episode is “surprising and remarkable,” said Sarah Schwartz of Australia's Jewish Council.
“But the real danger we see here by linking this spurt of this anti-Semitism incident to the Palestinian solidarity movement is that such language breeds divisions and breeds anti-Palestinian racism. “I think it's bad for Jews too,” she said.
On Thursday, the central left government of Albanese approved measures in the House of Representatives that create new, enhanced hate crime crimes that protect traits such as race, religion and gender.
The amendments from the opposition include imposing forced prison terms for terrorist crimes previously rejected by the Prime Minister, and displaying symbols of hatred.
The bill handed over 117 votes to 13 votes. It is expected that the Senate will pass it to the law.
Other initiatives since last January include:
– Impact sanctions against Terrorgram, an online white supremacist terrorism finance network
– Criminalizing Nazi salute
– Creating Doxing – Share Personal Information Online – Illegal after Australian Jews List was published online in 2024
– Appointing envoys of the nation to deal with Islamophobia and anti-Semitism
Some states have passed their own laws. New South Wales also revealed the hate crime measures proposed on Thursday.
With all measures, anti-Semite hatred has skyrocketed throughout the US, Europe and the UK since October 2023, with many leaders denounced it, but according to some figures urges tens of thousands of Jews to leave Europe.
However, there were distinctive factors in the situation in Australia, analysts said. One was the claim that major agitators could be based overseas.
The other was the shock of such hatred in a country far from the Middle East. There, it is a country far from the Middle East, where fewer than 120,000 people, or about 0.5% of the population lived relatively peacefully, Wertheim said.
Australia's restrictive gun laws could have caused the perpetrator to commit a vandalism crime, Bergani said. After the 1996 gun massacre, semi-automatic rifles were banned in Australia.
However, this episode promotes a difficult political situation ahead of the national elections until May 17th.
The anti-Semitic attacks led the national news, prompting daily questions to Albanese and inaction claims from his main political opponent, conservative liberal leader Dutton. Meanwhile, Dutton's detractors accused him of politicizing the crime, the accusations he rejected – and to encourage a freeze on visas for Palestinians fleeing the war.
This week's lawmakers have focused on the wave of anti-Semitism since October 7, 2023, and “a very long history of anti-Semitism and racism” against other Australian groups, including Muslims and Indigenous peoples. Schwartz said he ignored the
Still, the crime terrified Australian Jews, she added. Vergani said that Jews had told him they had never experienced such hatred in Australia.
“They didn't have this constant sense of greater things in their lives that could happen,” he said.
