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The Australian Government Allowed Hate Speech Against Jews and Israel; Then a Synagogue Was Burned
Arsonists heavily damaged the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 6, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Vandals defaced a synagogue in the Australian city of Melbourne in late November, with the phrases “Free Gaza” and “Jews kill babies.” A week later, in early December, two masked individuals deliberately burned down a different Melbourne synagogue, according to local police, who declared it to be an act of terrorism.
For Jews worldwide, it’s a short ride from inflammatory rhetoric to synagogues in flames.
Jacinta Allan, the premier of the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, described the arson as an “act of antisemitism.” And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, “I have zero tolerance for antisemitism. It has absolutely no place in Australia.”
But this is far from an isolated case in the country. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry reported more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadruple the number over the previous 12-month period.
Just days ago, another antisemitic attack took place in Sydney.
On October 9, 2023, two days after Hamas launched the bloodiest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, demonstrators gathered outside the Sydney Opera House to bash Israel, with some shouting blatantly antisemitic slogans. There was some debate as to whether they were shouting “Gas the Jews” or “Where’s the Jews?” But after the Hamas massacre, the distinction means little.
Just days before the Melbourne arson attack, protestors, allegedly without permits, gathered across from The Great Synagogue of Sydney to protest an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Technion, Israel’s premier research university. For nearly three hours, the Jewish people there were locked down inside the synagogue out of fear for their personal safety.
The demonstrators shouted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan calling for the ethnic cleansing of Israel. The protestors held signs accusing Israel of war crimes, and claiming that the Australian prime minister has blood on his hands for not halting Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Then, when a Jewish man unfurled an Israeli flag across the street, facing Palestinian flags and banners calling for sanctions against Israel, the anti-Israel mob began aggressively shouting “shame” and “murderer” at him. Yet the police detained the pro-Israel pedestrian for endangering the peace by “antagonizing” the mob, not the unauthorized assembly.
In effect, the protestors used the pretext of human rights to harass Jews outside a synagogue. And several supposed human rights groups are producing materials that help protestors justify their hatred of the Jewish State and its supporters.
During this time, the Australian government has grown increasingly critical of Israel and its defensive war against Hamas — which culminated in Australia’s decision to reverse decades of policy, and vote for an extremely anti-Israel measure at the United Nations.
The same week as the Sydney synagogue heckling and the Melbourne synagogue arson, Amnesty International, the once-respected human rights organization, released a report contending that Israel had committed acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
This erroneous conclusion is flawed for several reasons. First, it rests on expanding what it calls an “overly cramped” standard for determining genocidal intent, the core of the crime. Second, it frames the war as an Israeli assault on Gazans even though Hamas initiated the fighting. Third, it misrepresents data about food insecurity in Gaza, which actually shows that Israel has taken significant steps to stave off starvation.
Fourth, it accepts Hamas’ overall casualty figures while omitting the number of Hamas fighters killed in the fighting, which — even using Hamas’ false numbers — would show a civilian-to-combatant death ratio in line with urban combat, not genocide. Fifth, it discounts Hamas’ use of human shields as a contributing factor to civilian deaths. And sixth, it dishonestly edits quotes from Israeli officials to suggest that they had genocidal intent when the opposite was true.
In truth, there’s many more than six reasons why the report is false and genocide isn’t happening; but no amount of the truth will convince people who are pre-determined to find Israel guilty.
This isn’t an exercise in seeking the truth. Amnesty produced its 296-page report with the intent to punish Israel and — by extension — its supporters. The report attempts to cast Israel as a uniquely evil state that must be dealt with accordingly.
This approach to the Jewish State feeds into a long history of antisemites casting the Jews as villains. In what has become known as the blood libel, medieval Christians in Europe accused Jews of killing Christian babies to use their blood for their Passover matzah. This framework justified all sorts of injustices against Jews, who were seen as bloodthirsty baby killers.
The details may have changed, but the accusations remain the same. The protestors outside synagogues in Australia, Amnesty International, and possibly the arsonists in Melbourne decry the Jewish State as a bloodthirsty child killer and want to stop it. Those casting aspersions against Israel are not overzealous defenders of human rights. Rather, they are modern purveyors of ancient blood libels portraying Jews — and now the Jewish State — as an embodiment of evil that must be destroyed. Australia and other nations should treat these vilifiers accordingly.
David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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