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 daycare center was torched and scrawled with anti-Semitic slurs under the cover of night. A rash of anti-Semitic 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 multicultural and tolerant, where a third of the population was born overseas. Authorities are investigating whether there was international involvement in the attacks in recent months in Sydney and Melbourne, the country’s two largest cities.
The latest attack was on the daycare center in Sydney, which was reported early 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.
The specter of foreign involvement has added a new dimension to the anxiety that has been brewing in Australia’s small but deep-rooted Jewish community. The police have not said whether, or how, the more than half a dozen attacks since October are related.
In December, the Australian Federal Police set up a task force to investigate violence and threats against the Jewish community. The state police in New South Wales, where most of the attacks have taken place in the greater Sydney area, said they have arrested and charged nine individuals in relation to the crimes.
On Wednesday, officials announced the most recent arrest, that of a 33-year-old man in a case of attempted arson and graffiti on January 11, when red swastikas were spray painted on the fence of a synagogue in the Newtown neighborhood of Sydney.
The state’s premier, Chris Minns, said officials were cracking down on what he called “rampant anti-Semitism and violence in our community.” The crimes, he added, were a “deliberate attempt to strike terror into the hearts of people that live in this state.”
Julie Nathan, research director at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said the recent attacks were unlike anything she had seen before. “This is every few days,” she said. “We have had terrible graffiti, vandalism of cars and buildings, but nothing consistently at this level.”
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the E.C.A.J., had his former home vandalized with red paint and anti-Semitic slurs last week. “It was quite harrowing, to go there and see the walls I’d painted myself, the home that we loved, formed such memories in,” he said.
Andrew Markus, an emeritus professor at Monash University’s Australian Center for Jewish Civilization, said the increase in attacks did not portend a broader trend. “A small segment, minute segment, is causing fear and anxiety and headlines,” he said. “It is a major problem, but you can’t jump from that to say that there has been a major shift in Australian public attitudes.”