RSS
Australian Police Suspect Foreigners Paying Criminals to Perpetrate Antisemitic Attacks
Members of the Jewish community and supporters gather for a protest rally against rising antisemitism at Martin Place in Sydney, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: AAP Image/Steven Saphore via Reuters Connect
Law enforcement in Australia has started an investigation into the origins behind a spree of recent antisemitic crimes, announcing they suspect individuals outside the country have coordinated the campaign of hate.
On Wednesday, Australia Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said his department believes that “criminals-for-hire may be behind some incidents” and that they have begun investigating “who is paying those criminals, where those people are, whether they are in Australia or offshore, and what their motivation is.”
Police have identified six attacks in Sydney alone since November 2024, including cars set on fire accompanied with anti-Israel graffiti and synagogues vandalized with swastikas. In Melbourne, arson attacks also targeted Jewish politician Josh Burns’ office in June and the Adass synagogue in December.
A December report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said that the country’s Jews experienced more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, compared to 495 in the prior 12 months. The number of antisemitic assaults rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. In the seven weeks following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic acts in Australia rose by 591 percent according to the ECAJ.
In a statement, Kershaw said on Tuesday that police sought to determine “whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs.” He added, “We are looking at if — or how — they have been paid, for example in cryptocurrency, which can take longer to identify.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also described the government’s suspicions about the nature of the attacks. He said that it looked as though “some of these are being perpetrated by people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors.”
Efforts to counter antisemitic crime in Australia have intensified following a Tuesday act of arson at a Sydney child care center located close to a synagogue. The criminal also left antisemitic graffiti before starting the fire. This prompted the New South Wales Police to double their staffing on Strike Force Pearl, a unit created to counter hate crimes targeting Jews.
On Tuesday, Strike Force Pearl arrested a suspect in a Jan. 11 arson attack against a Sydney synagogue and announced they expected to arrest his accomplice soon.
Kershaw also named the AFP’s divisions tasked with investigating antisemitism and their areas of focus.
“The AFP has established Special Operation Avalite to target high-harm antisemitism. AFP-led Operation Ardvarna is targeting the display of prohibited symbols — both operations have made arrests and more are expected soon,” Kershaw said. “Special Operation Avalite has received 166 reports of crime since it was established in December last year. Of those reports, many are duplicates, some are already under investigation by our state counterparts and some don’t meet the threshold of a crime.”
Kershaw said that “Special Operation Avalite is investigating 15 serious allegations. All lines of inquiry are open to the investigations — including what anonymizing technology, such as dedicated encrypted communication devices, have been used to commit these crimes.”
Australia’s National Cabinet met in a snap meeting on Tuesday and agreed to establish a national database to track antisemitic crimes. “The purpose of one national reporting system is to better inform and coordinate responses to antisemitic incidents,” Albanese said.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton expressed skepticism about Albanese’s response to the attacks. “If the prime minister thinks that he’s going to get the Australian public off his back and that he’ll have some reprieve from the media by holding this meeting, he doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation,” he said. “This is a national crisis. We are having rolling terrorist attacks in our community, and the prime minister is being dragged kicking and screaming to hold a meeting of our nation’s leaders.”
On Jan. 14, the Anti-Defamation League released the results of a new global survey into antisemitic attitudes by country. The group found that 20 percent of Australians — 4.2 million people — embrace antisemitic attitudes, agreeing with at least six antisemitic tropes.
The survey showed a gender disparity in hate, with 27 percent of men embracing such views compared to only 14 percent of women. Australians over 50 showed the lowest propensity for hate against Jews, with 13 percent harboring antisemitic views, whereas 33 percent of those 33-49 and 21 percent of those 18-34 expressed support for anti-Jewish bigotry.
The post Australian Police Suspect Foreigners Paying Criminals to Perpetrate Antisemitic Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Says Iran Must Give Up Dream of Nuclear Weapon or Face Harsh Response
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
President Donald Trump said on Monday he believes Iran is intentionally delaying a nuclear deal with the United States and that it must abandon any drive for a nuclear weapon or face a possible military strike on Tehran’s atomic facilities.
“I think they’re tapping us along,” Trump told reporters after US special envoy Steve Witkoff met in Oman on Saturday with a senior Iranian official.
Both Iran and the United States said on Saturday that they held “positive” and “constructive” talks in Oman. A second round is scheduled for Saturday, and a source briefed on the planning said the meeting was likely to be held in Rome.
The source, speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the discussions are aimed at exploring what is possible, including a broad framework of what a potential deal would look like.
“Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
Asked if US options for a response include a military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, Trump said: “Of course it does.”
Trump said the Iranians need to move fast to avoid a harsh response because “they’re fairly close” to developing a nuclear weapon.
The US and Iran held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but they made little, if any progress. The last known direct negotiations between the two governments were under then-President Barack Obama, who spearheaded the 2015 international nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned.
The post Trump Says Iran Must Give Up Dream of Nuclear Weapon or Face Harsh Response first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say
Families and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas gather to demand a deal that will bring back all the hostages held in Gaza, outside a meeting between hostage representatives and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The latest round of talks in Cairo to restore the defunct Gaza ceasefire and free Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said on Monday.
The sources said Hamas had stuck to its position that any agreement must lead to an end to the war in Gaza.
Israel, which restarted its military campaign in Gaza last month after a ceasefire agreed in January unraveled, has said it will not end the war until Hamas is stamped out. The terrorist group has ruled out any proposal that it lay down its arms.
But despite that fundamental disagreement, the sources said a Hamas delegation led by the group’s Gaza Chief Khalil Al-Hayya had shown some flexibility over how many hostages it could free in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should a truce be extended.
An Egyptian source told Reuters the latest proposal to extend the truce would see Hamas free an increased number of hostages. Israeli minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Army Radio on Monday that Israel was seeking the release of around 10 hostages, raised from previous Hamas consent to free five.
Hamas has asked for more time to respond to the latest proposal, the Egyptian source said.
“Hamas has no problem, but it wants guarantees Israel agrees to begin the talks on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement” leading to an end to the war, the Egyptian source said.
AIRSTRIKES
Hamas terrorists freed 33 Israeli hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees during the six-week first phase of the ceasefire which began in January. But the second phase, which was meant to begin at the start of March and lead to the end of the war, was never launched.
Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of the terrorists. Israel believes up to 24 of them are alive.
Palestinians say the wave of Israeli attacks since the collapse of the ceasefire has been among the deadliest and most intense of the war, hitting an exhausted population surviving in the enclave’s ruins.
In Jabalia, a community on Gaza’s northern edge, rescue workers in orange vests were trying to smash through concrete with a sledgehammer to recover bodies buried underneath a building that collapsed in an Israeli strike.
Feet and a hand of one person could be seen under a concrete slab. Men carried a body wrapped in a blanket. Workers at the scene said as many as 25 people had been killed.
The Israeli military said it had struck there against terrorists planning an ambush.
In Khan Younis in the south, a camp of makeshift tents had been shredded into piles of debris by an airstrike. Families had returned to poke through the rubbish in search of belongings.
“We used to live in houses. They were destroyed. Now, our tents have been destroyed too. We don’t know where to stay,” said Ismail al-Raqab, who returned to the area after his family fled the raid before dawn.
EGYPT’S SISI MEETS QATARI EMIR
The leaders of the two Arab countries that have led the ceasefire mediation efforts, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, met in Doha on Sunday. The Egyptian source said Sisi had called for additional international guarantees for a truce agreement, beyond those provided by Egypt and Qatar themselves.
US President Donald Trump, who has backed Israel’s decision to resume its campaign and called for the Palestinian population of Gaza to leave the territory, said last week that progress was being made in returning the hostages.
The post No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting
FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaks as he meets with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, in Baghdad, Iraq October 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad/File Photo
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will visit Russia this week ahead of a planned second round of talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at resolving Iran’s decades-long nuclear stand-off with the West.
Araqchi and US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Oman on Saturday, during which Omani envoy Badr al-Busaidi shuttled between the two delegations sitting in different rooms at his palace in Muscat.
Both sides described the talks in Oman as “positive,” although a senior Iranian official told Reuters the meeting “was only aimed at setting the terms of possible future negotiations.”
Italian news agency ANSA reported that Italy had agreed to host the talks’ second round, and Iraq’s state news agency said Araqchi told his Iraqi counterpart that talks would be held “soon” in the Italian capital under Omani mediation.
Tehran has approached the talks warily, doubting the likelihood of an agreement and suspicious of Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iran if there is no deal.
Washington aims to halt Tehran’s sensitive uranium enrichment work – regarded by the United States, Israel and European powers as a path to nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy production.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Araqchi will “discuss the latest developments related to the Muscat talks” with Russian officials.
Moscow, a party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, has supported Tehran’s right to have a civilian nuclear program.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on vital state matters, distrusts the United States, and Trump in particular.
But Khamenei has been forced to engage with Washington in search of a nuclear deal due to fears that public anger at home over economic hardship could erupt into mass protests and endanger the existence of the clerical establishment, four Iranian officials told Reuters in March.
Tehran’s concerns were exacerbated by Trump’s speedy revival of his “maximum pressure” campaign when he returned to the White House in January.
During his first term, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic regime.
Since 2019, Iran has far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on uranium enrichment, producing stocks at a high level of fissile purity, well above what Western powers say is justifiable for a civilian energy program and close to that required for nuclear warheads.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised the alarm regarding Iran’s growing stock of 60% enriched uranium, and reported no real progress on resolving long-running issues, including the unexplained presence of uranium traces at undeclared sites.
IAEA head Rafael Grossi will visit Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, in an attempt to narrow gaps between Tehran and the agency over unresolved issues.
“Continued engagement and cooperation with the agency is essential at a time when diplomatic solutions are urgently needed,” Grossi said on X on Monday.
The post Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.