Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Buildings defaced with antisemitic graffiti in Bondi Beach, Australia

One derogatory comment concerned the Israel Defense Forces.

Graffiti on the wall of a recently closed-down Jewish-run business in Melbourne. Credit: Courtesy of the Zionist Federation of Australia.
Graffiti on the wall of a recently closed-down Jewish-run business in Melbourne. Credit: Courtesy of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Antisemitic graffiti has been sprayed on buildings and bollards at North Bondi in Sydney, local media reported on Saturday.

Police cordoned off the area to investigate the incident. Officers advised locals to avoid the area, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

The Jewish Australian Association, a membership-based community organization guided by “center-right Australian values,” as stated on its website, posted images of the vandalism on X, writing that “Bondi Beach [was] hit by wave of antisemitic graffiti.”

It added that the New South Wales police were “hunting for suspects.”

It was not initially clear who was behind the graffiti-spraying. One photo captured a derogatory comment against the Israel Defense Forces.

The “J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism 2025” published in May found that Australia experienced a fourfold increase in documented antisemitic incidents in 2024—the steepest rise among English-speaking countries with available data.

The report compiles statistics from member organizations of the J7 task force, a global coalition formed in 2023 that includes the Anti-Defamation League in the United States and partner groups in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Argentina.

While the United States reported the highest number of incidents in absolute terms—9,354 in 2024, up from 8,873 the previous year—Australia registered the most dramatic relative increase, with reported antisemitic incidents rising from 495 to 2,062.

See more from JNS Staff
“Just like we knocked them out again today, we’ll knock them out a lot harder and a lot more violently in the future if they don’t get their deal signed, fast,” President Donald Trump said.
“This is meant to make the job of the police and prosecutors easier,” Tara Cook-Littman, of the Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut, told JNS.
“No challenges were received during the public display period,” Shirley N. Weber’s office told JNS.
A 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship would include a penalty for protesters who breach it, though the state Assembly speaker said nothing has been agreed to yet.
“An event at a city-owned pool that was publicly and indiscriminately advertised as ‘whites only’ would surely violate the Constitution,” the executive director of the state Public Safety Office wrote. “The same must be true here.”
The gift from the Jan Koum Family Foundation is expected to triple the size of the Jerusalem hospital.