Australia investigates suspicions of foreign funding of anti-Semitic attacks | Crime news

Police believe “foreign actors” are paying local criminals to commit crimes amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents.

Australia is investigating suspicions that overseas funding is behind a surge in anti-Semitic crime.

Detectives, investigators antisemitic attacks across the country have concluded that foreign actors paid local criminals to carry them out, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday. However, he declined to comment on the source of the alleged funding.

“It's important for people to understand where some of these attacks are coming from, and it will appear … that some … are being carried out by people who don't have a specific problem, are not motivated by ideology, but are paid actors,” Albanese told reporters .

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police “believe some of the incidents may be organized crime”.

Inquiries are ongoing to establish “who is paying these criminals, where are these people, whether they are in Australia or offshore and what their motivations are,” he added.

Arson

The comments followed a meeting of state police chiefs to discuss the rise in anti-Semitic crime in Australia since war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, which have escalated in recent months.

Masked arsonists bombed a synagogue in the city of Melbourne in December. Vandals torched a children's center in Sydney, torched cars in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and spray-painted inner-city synagogues with red paint and graffiti.

Sydney and Melbourne are home to 85 percent of the country's Jewish population.

Since the Sydney children's center fire, NSW police said the number of detectives working for Strike Force Pearl, formed to investigate anti-Semitic crime, had doubled from 20 to 40.

Detectives arrested 33-year-old Adam Edward Mole on Tuesday night and charged him with attempting to set fire to a synagogue in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown on January 11. Police said his alleged accomplice is also expected to be arrested soon.

Kershaw told federal and state government leaders at a briefing on Tuesday that police were investigating the involvement of young people in recent incidents and whether they had been radicalized online and encouraged to commit anti-Semitic acts.