Around 20 worshippers were having a Friday night dinner inside the synagogue at the time of the attack.
“This is a difficult one because there do seem to be genuine mental health issues, but it’s perhaps worrying that Mr Loras, who was born in Iran, came to have a bag with flammable liquids and something to start a fire with, that he came to choose a synagogue out of all the available buildings, and that he came to be there on a Friday night and was trying to gain entry,” Jamie Hyams, Director of Public Affairs at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, told JNS on Monday.
“We certainly hope this was indeed just an unfortunate coincidence, and that there will be no repeat.”
The attack was one of three suspected antisemitic incidents to rock Melbourne that weekend, along with the storming and trashing of a popular Israeli owned eaterie and vandalism against a business and three vehicles.
The Australian government has blamed Iran for an arson attack on a Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue in December 2023, which extensively damaged the building, as well as an attack on a Sydney kosher food business two months earlier.
Last year, Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the “anti-Israel attitude of the Labor government in Australia” for the arson of a Melbourne synagogue.
About 110,000 Jews live in Australia.
