Antisemitism in Australia was left unchecked and became normalised after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, fuelling violence against Jewish people, the country’s national security and intelligence chief has said.
Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, made the frank remarks at the public inquiry into last December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, 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,” Burgess told the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
"Some of those violent aspects...and those behaviours, including antisemitism that, in our view, were left unchecked, were therefore normalised and gave more permission for violence...and Jewish Australians were on the receiving end.”
Beginning in late 2024, antisemitism “escalated in severity from threatening, intimidating behaviour to direct targeting of people, businesses and places of worship,” Burgess said.
Australian Jewish groups have long claimed that the government turned a blind eye to the incitement to violence that began immediately after the October 7 2023 Hamas-led massacres on southern Israel, and that it was allowed to fester unchecked for months before a rash of violent attacks on 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 the Chanukah by the Sea event on Bondi Beach, which occurred on the first night of Chanukah, 14 December.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation 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.
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