By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-02-02 12:56:18 | Updated at 2025-02-02 15:58:09
3 hours ago
Cars and houses in Sydney were daubed in antisemitic graffiti, police said on Sunday, the latest in a string of incidents targeting Jews in Australia’s biggest city.
The spate of attacks in recent months has alarmed the country’s Jewish community, drawn criticism from Israel and placed pressure on the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who faces re-election in polls that must be held by May.
In the latest incident, police said on Sunday that vehicles and residences were damaged overnight with antisemitic graffiti in Sydney’s east, an area with a significant Jewish community.
“Crime scenes have been established,” police said in a statement, a day after they doubled to 40 the number of officers in a special task force set up in December to target antisemitic crime in the country’s most populous state of New South Wales.
David Ossip, president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, said of the attack on Sunday, “cars and homes were defaced with hate speech for the sole purpose of intimidating and terrorising the Jewish community and destabilising Sydney’s social harmony”.
On Thursday, antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on three sites including Mount Sinai College in the city’s east, one of almost a dozen incidents in the city of around 5 million in recent months that police say appeared to be coordinated.
