Read Part 1 of Mitch Sutton’s three-part series here.
Read Part 3 here.
It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the wave of so-called anti-Semitic terrorism which has swept Australia in recent months is fake. Senior police officials have admitted that the incidents are not ideologically or religiously motivated, but are being committed by criminals paid by unnamed overseas actors.
In my previous article I detailed six such cases, collating the facts from mainstream media reports and police statements. In every case where the alleged perpetrators were caught, they had a background in petty crime and links to the illicit drug trade. None are alleged to have links to an ideological agenda, and all appeared to be ignorant of even basic facts about the Jewish controversy (one couldn’t even spell the word Israel correctly). In three of the four cases with known alleged perpetrators, they allegedly acted as a group and involved an unidentified third party who has never been named or charged. In one of the cases, it is confirmed that this unknown third party commissioned and paid for the crime.
Most people would expect at this point that the government would find the foreign perpetrator as soon as possible, arrest their Australian collaborators and expose the operation publicly to ensure that this enemy can no longer wage covert influence campaigns to subvert Australian democracy. The attacks would stop, a foreign adversary would be exposed and everyone could thank the security services for a job well done in defending Australia’s sovereignty.
This hasn’t happened. Instead, Australia’s political leaders and the security establishment have acted as though there really was an organic wave of ideologically motivated anti-Semitic terrorism. Their response has been to advocate placing further restrictions on free speech at the state level, pressure social media companies behind the scenes to ban nationalist dissidents, and pass a Commonwealth hate crimes bill the broadens the definition of violent threats to the point where “threatening a car” can result in 7 years’ imprisonment.
Because none of these measures address the real issue of foreign interference, the attacks have continued, providing further excuses for the government to pass yet more laws to address this fictious crisis. This dynamic will be further analysed in Part 3, where I will analyse the possible motives of the foreign actor and how they align with the Australian government’s own goals.
When asked questions about who has organised the attacks, the government has generally attempted to avoid providing any information at all under the excuse that it is an operational matter and any comments will hinder the police investigation. On other occasions senior government figures have dishonestly tried to create the impression that Australian nationalists are responsible for the attacks.
For example, in an interview on February 2 journalist Michelle Grattan directly asked the Prime Minister about the issue. The Prime Minister’s reply is worth reproducing verbatim, because it is a microcosm of the government’s public response.
GRATTAN: This whole wave [of attacks], though, seems quite extraordinary, to me, at least. Have you any explanation or theory about how this could be happening? So much violence, so many incidents.
ALBANESE: Well, the police have outlined, themselves, some of their views about what the motivation is, and one of those is that some of the perpetrators of these violent acts have been paid to do so. Now, they are engaged in an operation to not just find the perpetrators, but find who’s paying them. Who are the actors behind this? Which is why some of the calls for more of that information to be out there, whilst understandable from one perspective, what you can’t do is undermine an investigation. And I’m about outcomes here, I want to make sure that that the people responsible, not just up front, but behind this, are held to account.
GRATTAN: But are you surprised that we’ve seen this enormous outbreak?
ALBANESE: Well, of course, I was surprised as well by last week the vision of up to 30 men in black gear from head to toe, marching through Adelaide and Adelaide Park – trying to march through – and Adelaide city, to disrupt Australia Day festivities. That’s not who Australia – it’s not what we are. We’re a tolerant, multicultural, harmonious nation, and some of clearly the motivation of some of this is about causing social division. Is about disruption. And it is – it is shocking. It has caused enormous distress in particularly, of course, in the Jewish community, who’ve been targeted. But more broadly, it’s caused distress as well.
First, the pivot away from providing any actual answers, then the insinuation that White Australians peacefully exercising their political rights are somehow connected to the attacks without explicitly saying so. Zero discussion about the actual perpetrators and their motives.
The opposition, led by the ultra-Zionist Peter Dutton, have so far failed to hold the government to account for its inability to name the foreign power behind the fake terrorism wave. Instead, it has also acted as though the attacks are organic and ideological in nature, and not paid for by unknown parties. Like the government, it has blamed online radicalisation. Its preferred scapegoat, however, has been leftist pro-Palestine activists, whom has it has consistently insinuated are behind the attacks. Dutton has further alleged that the Albanese Government’s reluctance to openly back Israeli’s genocide in Gaza has been the primary cause of the incidents.
A representative sample of the opposition’s position can be seen in Dutton’s responses during an interview with ABC journalist David Speers on February 2.
SPEERS: …The anti-Semitism, the attacks that we’ve seen escalating in Australia. You’ve described this as a clear campaign of terror and a national crisis. Do you think the terror threat level should be increased?
DUTTON: Well, that’s a matter for ASIO. I wrote to the Prime Minister in November of 2023 saying that we needed to have a National Cabinet because the Police Commissioners and the Police Ministers needed to hear, along with the Premiers and Chief Ministers, a very clear message from their Prime Minister that we had zero tolerance for these anti-Semitic attacks, and it was entirely predictable. We saw the protests two days after October 7 on the steps of the Opera House, and the Prime Minister has been weaving all over the road on this issue, and I think because of that lack of national leadership, we have seen a predictable escalation. I worry that people are going to lose their lives, and I think the Prime Minister needs to start taking this seriously.
SPEERS: Look, more broadly, how would you stop these anti-Semitic attacks?
DUTTON: Well, there should have been from day one, David, a very clear message that we don’t tolerate racism and anti-Semitic conduct – whether it’s by neo-Nazi nutjobs or whether it’s by the left wing of crazy organisations on campuses. For months and months and months, people were protesting against Jewish students, against Jewish academics. To this very day, the universities haven’t given a proper account of how that was allowed to continue on. The Prime Minister did nothing about it. The marches on the streets that went on for months and months, waving flags of terrorist organisations. All of that allowed people to believe that there was no red line that could be crossed and there’s no consequence.
Unfortunately, the government’s odd response to what might be the largest case of foreign interference in the country’s history does not stop at its elected officials. It also extends to the security services. In some of these cases, the authorities seem bizarrely reluctant to find and charge the perpetrators.
The Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne suffered an alleged arson attack on December 6 that the government declared was a terrorist incident. At a press conference the following Monday, the AFP Deputy Commissioner stated that the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team investigating the incident “are already well-prepared, well-briefed and well-progressed.” The Victorian Police Commissioner went further, stating that “We’ve had significant progress, we’ve gained intelligence and evidence, as a result of that … we are treating this as a terrorist attack.” Yet despite the AFP stating that they would aim “to reach an outcome in the investigation as soon as possible”, no new information appears to have been released since December 9 last year. It is now over two months since that alleged arson attack occurred, and police haven’t even released the security camera footage of the perpetrators, despite having confirmed its existence at an earlier press conference.
Indeed, the only substantive publicly available evidence about the case comes from an interview (starting at 1:30 in the video) that Jewish journalist Avi Yemeni conducted with eyewitness Yumi Friedman. This interview raises more questions than answers. In the interview Friedman reports that an unnamed Jew who was also present at the site at 4am confronted the attackers, who not only left this man unharmed but also ran away! This other Jew also apparently saw the attackers (plural) carrying “jerry cans…big cans of petrol” that they used to start the fire after smashing the front door down with a sledge hammer. Friedman himself claims not to have been present at this exchange because he had run off earlier.
This raises several obvious questions. The attackers were unlikely to have dragged several large jerry cans of petrol with them by foot or bike. They must have used a car, which would be a very substantial piece of evidence even if it were stolen. Secondly, the attackers seemed to go out of their way to avoid harming Jews. Friedman was allowed to escape, and the attackers ran off rather than attempting to do violence to the lone Jewish man who had directly witnessed the crime. The fact that the attack took place at 4am when there was no possibility of the fire causing mass casualties is another interesting fact that has not been adequately explained. If the attackers really were murderous ideological anti-Semites, then their actions make little sense.
Yet despite this panoply of evidence, eyewitness testimony and security camera footage in a nationally significant counter-terrorism case, there have been no arrests and no suspects named. Why? It is almost as if police have come upon evidence that would cause substantial embarrassment for the government if it were publicly released. Perhaps I will be proven wrong and the suspects will one day be arrested and tried. More likely, I suspect this will simply disappear down the memory hole. Certainly, the media seems to show little interest in holding the authorities to account over their apparent inability to catch the perpetrators or release new information.
To conclude, the government and security services seem to want to talk about anything other than the reality of the attacks – that they are being directed from overseas by a party that is trying to achieve political change in Australia. Instead, they have mysteriously decided to play into the hands of the attackers by pretending that the phenomenon is an organic one caused by Australians, which requires further restrictions on their political rights to combat.
In the final article of this series, I will take the facts discussed in Parts 1 and 2 and speculate as to which foreign actor has been planning the attacks, why they’re doing it and how it links in to the government’s response.
Read Part 3 here.
Header image: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese examines fire damage at the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Melbourne (Facebook).
