By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM/SYDNEY (Worthy News) – Israel has urged Australia to do more to halt an “epidemic of antisemitism” after police said they had foiled an attack involving explosives in a suburb of Sydney, Australia’s biggest city.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government was doing all it could to combat attacks that he told include domestic terrorism.
Besides a discovered planned attack targeting Jews, a Jewish school and two other properties in Sydney were sprayed with antisemitic slurs, authorities said on Thursday.
Earlier, police in New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, said Wednesday they had found explosives in a caravan, or trailer, that could have created a blast wave of 40 meters (130 feet).
There was some indication the explosives might be used in an antisemitic attack that could have caused mass casualties, police warned without elaborating.
Prime Minister Albanese, who faces a national election by May, has been criticized by the conservative opposition coalition as “weak” for “failing” to prevent hate crimes against Jews.
However, Albanese said his Labor government was “doing everything we can” to tackle what he called an act of terrorism against the Jewish people, adding that an undisclosed number of arrests were made. “The fact that people are being detained, arrested, charged, kept in the clink without bail, indicates that that’s the case,” [we take it seriously] he told ABC Radio.
10 ARRESTED
New South Wales police said they had arrested 10 people over the past 10 days for alleged antisemitic attacks. The explosives were discovered on January 19 in the suburb of Dural. The vehicle’s owner was in custody on unrelated matters, said New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb.
“This represents undeniably an escalation in race-filled hatred and potential violence,” state Premier Chris Minns told a press conference. “We’re very concerned about it.”
It underscores the escalating series of attacks on synagogues, buildings, and cars since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October 2023, adding to fear among Australia’s 115,000 Jewish people, noted Jewish representatives.
The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies called the incident “a matter of the gravest” possible consequence.
“We have been saying for weeks now that the Jewish community is the target of an ongoing campaign of domestic terrorism. This is now beyond dispute,” it stressed in a statement.
Israel agreed. “The epidemic of antisemitism is spreading in Australia almost unchecked. We expect the Australian government to do more to stop this disease!” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on social media platform X.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
A leading Dutch Jewish voice and longtime politician has filed a police complaint against the British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan, after the band’s frontman appeared to urge violence against Jews and to celebrate the recent assassination of born-again Christian influencer Charlie Kirk during a controversial concert in Amsterdam.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the Republican Party will host the first-ever Midterm National Convention in 2026, an unprecedented move in U.S. political history.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Monday formally opened the restored Pilgrimage Road in Jerusalem’s City of David, the ancient thoroughfare once used by Jewish worshipers ascending to the Temple Mount during the Second Temple era.
A pastor in Southern California was shot and killed inside his home, authorities and church members said, shocking a close-knit evangelical community in the rural town of Ramona east of the city of San Diego near the U.S.–Mexico border.
Ukraine says Russia’s military has bombarded the southern city of Zaporizhzhia with rockets overnight, killing one person and wounding 13 people, including two children, while another person died and several were injured elsewhere in the country.
The United States and the United Kingdom are set to unveil a wave of major nuclear energy agreements during President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain this week, in what both governments are calling the start of a “golden age” of nuclear power.
Archaeologists in Turkey have uncovered a 2,050-year-old Roman council hall etched with early Christian carvings, offering fresh historical insight into the biblical church of Laodicea–one of the seven congregations addressed in the Book of Revelation.