Sydney restaurateur Judith Lewis couldn’t save the mezuzah, a framed parchment inked with Hebrew prayers, that was hanging in her family’s café when arsonists set it alight in the early hours one Sunday in late October.
The symbol of Jewish faith was badly damaged in the blaze that destroyed Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, which had served Sydneysiders kosher food for more than 50 years at a location just 20 minutes walk from Bondi Beach.
Lewis has bought new mezuzahs, but can’t bring herself to hang them in the café’s new premises in the nearby suburb of Darlinghurst. She’s not sure why. “I’ve got them sitting on my desk and I’m a little bit hesitant to put them up … something’s holding me back at the moment,” she said.
Many among Australia’s 117,000-strong Jewish population are anxious after a spate of antisemitic attacks in its two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne – including arson attacks on synagogues, and swastikas scrawled on buildings and cars.
Around a dozen people have been arrested but Jewish leaders are demanding more action from government officials, who say they don’t want to see anti-Israel sentiment spill into violence on Australian streets after 15 months of war in Gaza.
Authorities are investigating 15 “serious allegations” among more than 166 reports of antisemitic attacks received since mid-December, when Special Operation Avalite was formed to address rising antisemitism, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said in a statement Tuesday.
Officers are looking beyond suspects accused of carrying out the crimes, to “overseas actors” who may have paid for their services, he added, a line of inquiry repeated in subsequent days.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters Wednesday: “It’s unclear who or where the payments are coming from.”
Albanese wouldn’t be drawn further on the police investigation but said Five Eyes – Australia’s security alliance with the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand – was “playing a role.”
“This isn’t something that began yesterday,” he said. “These things are ongoing, which is why people have been rounded up, arrested, charged, and are currently in jail without bail.”
Text messages suggest paid jobs
Ten people have been charged under Strike Force Pearl, a police task force formed in the state of New South Wales in December to investigate antisemitic hate crimes in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
“We don’t know who the principals are,” Webb said. “(We) can’t rule out that they’re only domestic, or that they might be international.”
Text messages exchanged between two men who pleaded guilty to one of the Sydney arson attacks point to the involvement of a third person pulling the strings.
Local media, citing court documents, reported that a mobile phone seized from one of the men contained a reference to a third person who went by the handle “jamesbond” on the encrypted app Signal.
“Jamesbond” seemed to berate the other two over an arson attack on Curly Lewis Brewing, a popular bar near Bondi Beach that was set alight on October 17.
“…Its not even 2 per cent burned f*** me dead,” said the message, according to local media, citing the court documents. One of the suspects later wrote to the other: “I’m starting to think he sent us to the wrong place lol,” local media reported.
One of the men told police he was acting under duress because he owed drug money and had received death threats, according to local media, citing court documents.
Lewis from Lewis’ Continental Kitchen believes the perpetrators may have intended to target her premises, located on Curlewis Street, but got the bar’s name confused with the street. Her place was allegedly set on fire just three days later by two other suspects.
Lewis believes the attacks were orchestrated by an outside player. “I don’t know who’s directing these fires and this graffiti and all this damage, because it’s definitely not the people who are doing it,” she said. “I’m really concerned about the higher-up level.”
Racist hate crimes
Security has been upgraded at Jewish sites in Sydney including synagogues, schools and places of business, and authorities are adopting increasingly tough language against those accused of antisemitic crimes.
“It is completely disgusting, and these bastards will be round up by New South Wales Police,” said NSW Premier Chris Minns on Tuesday, hours after a childcare center near a synagogue was torched.
Some Jewish groups have accused the government of being slow to respond, a claim advanced by the leading opposition party, which has given the attacks – and the response to them – an extra political dimension just months before a federal election.
Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton told Sky News Wednesday the rise in antisemitic attacks “was entirely predictable because of what we saw on the steps of the Opera House.”
He was referring to the events of October 9, 2023 – two days after the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel that started the Gaza war – when hundreds of demonstrators waved Palestinian flags to protest a decision to light up the Sydney Opera House in the colors of the Israeli flag.
Dutton has repeatedly criticized Albanese for what he says was a “weak” response to the protest, and continues to push the government to escalate the issue. Albanese, who’s due to call an election in the coming weeks, denies he’s been slow to act.
“What we need to do is to bring the country together, not look for difference, not look for division, not look for political advantage,” he said.
A similar message was sent Wednesday in a joint statement by multi-faith and human rights groups that said Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians had also been targeted by hate crimes.
“Political leaders should condemn recent hate crimes and acts of discrimination. However, they should not seek to politicize racist attacks for political gain,” the statement said.
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) condemned the attacks in a statement Thursday, saying they were part of a wave of “racism-driven hate crimes” across the country. APAN said many Palestinians and their supporters did not report harassment and abuse against them for “fear of retribution and inaction.”
Michelle Berkon is a member of Jews Against the Occupation ’48, a minority group of Jewish Australians who condemn the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and actively support the Palestinian cause.
She said it was “very malicious” to suggest, as some have, that Palestinians or their supporters were behind the antisemitic attacks. “Who stands to benefit from this? It’s certainly not the Palestinians, is it?” she said.
‘Outrageous’ arson sentence
Authorities insist that the theory of “overseas actors” paying local criminals is just one line of inquiry. They’re also looking into whether any young people have been radicalized online or encouraged to commit antisemitic acts.
The 10 people arrested so far by NSW Police are aged between 19 and 40. One of the two men who exchanged text messages over the Curly Lewis Brewing fire, a 31-year-old man, was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in prison, with a non-parole period of 10 months.
Lewis, whose café was burned to the ground, said the sentence was too lenient, calling it “outrageous.” “He should be given the full sentence of 10 years,” she said. Police said they would appeal the sentence.
On the heels of a national cabinet meeting, involving all state and territory ministers, police commissioners across Australia met and issued a joint statement, saying a strong policing response is needed now more than ever to keep the community safe.
Max Kaiser, executive officer of the Jewish Council Australia, says policing alone won’t address the broader issue of racism in Australia – that requires education and a community approach that brings together different faiths.
“It’s important that there obviously is some form of targeted police response to these particular incidents,” he said. “But unfortunately, there’s a strong intersection between a law-and-order, tough-on-crime response and politics in Australia.”
“Everyone wants the perpetrators to be caught, and the attacks brought to an end, if that’s possible, but the underlying issues are still there, and they can’t be solved through more arrests.”
Lewis wants the perpetrators to pay for what they did, with a hefty sentence behind bars. “They destroyed our thriving business of 55 years,” she said, of the café started by her parents, one of the first in Sydney to offer kosher food.
But she’s been heartened by the response of suppliers and community members who’ve rallied around the café, helping it to reopen, albeit with fewer staff and a steep drop in trade, just three weeks later.
“The one thing that really, really stunned me was, right from the beginning, after the fire, people would come up and say, ‘Tell us what we can do. We can clean, we can do whatever you want,’” Lewis said.
“Everyone wanted to help, and it was fantastic.”