Antisemitism in Australia was left unchecked and became normalized after the outbreak of the war against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023, fueling violence against Jewish people, the country’s national security and intelligence chief said on Monday.
The frank remarks were made during a public inquiry into last December’s Bondi Beach mass shooting in Sydney, the worst terrorist attack in Australian history.
“There is no doubt that the war in the Middle East invoked a range of emotions in Australia,” said Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. “Some of those violent aspects ... and those behaviors, including antisemitism that, in our view, were left unchecked, were therefore normalized and gave more permission for violence ..., and Jewish Australians were on the receiving end.”
Burgess told the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that beginning in late 2024, antisemitism “escalated in severity from threatening, intimidating behavior to direct targeting of people, businesses and places of worship.”
Australian Jewish groups had long claimed that the government turned a blind eye to the incitement to violence that began immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel and that it was allowed to fester unchecked for months before a rash of violent attacks began against the Jewish community, including arson and vandalism of synagogues, shops and private vehicles.
Fifteen people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, were killed by father-and-son gunmen in the shooting at Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah.
Iran fingered
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization had concluded that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind at least two antisemitic attacks in Australia, including one on a kosher restaurant in Sydney and another at Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, leading to the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador in August, Burgess noted.
He added that the Islamic Republic was likely involved in other attacks.
“They use their network of proxies and agents to do their bidding, and that is to bring harm to Jewish people wherever they are in the world,” he said.
About 110,000 Jews live in Australia, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney.
