Spate of Violent Antisemitic Attacks Rattles Australia
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The police said they were investigating whether “overseas actors” were involved in the vandalizing of synagogues and a day care center.
In Melbourne, masked men set fire to a storied synagogue. In Sydney, a synagogue was defaced with red swastikas spray painted along the fence, while a day care center was torched and scrawled with antisemitic slurs under the cover of night.
A rash of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks has rattled the Jewish community in Australia, home to the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors outside Israel. There have been no reports of major casualties but the violence represents a dramatic escalation of tensions reverberating from the war in the Middle East, which has also spurred Islamophobic episodes in Australia.
The reports of arson and explicit graffiti have unnerved a nation that prides itself on being a multicultural and tolerant society and where a third of the population was born overseas.
Now, the authorities say they are investigating whether there was international involvement in the attacks in recent months in Sydney and Melbourne, the country’s two largest cities.
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The latest attack was on the day care in Sydney, which was reported early Tuesday. In a statement Tuesday, the head of Australia’s federal police said that his agency was investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” had paid locals in Australia to carry out some of these acts. But he did not give evidence or further details.