Police feared antisemitism could escalate to terrorism

The Australian Federal Police feared antisemitism could escalate into terrorist acts following the October 7 Hamas attacks.

AFP assistant commissioner Stephen Nutt told the Royal Commission that October 7 fundamentally altered Australia’s national security environment, forcing a recalibration of policing priorities. Antisemitism has since become a strategic priority for the AFP.

“There was absolutely a concern that the antisemitism could escalate to actual terrorist acts,” Nutt said. “We saw protest activity, which is a legitimate part of a functioning democracy, turn into violent protests … and we also saw an increasingly open display of prohibited hate symbols, specifically … the symbols of proscribed terrorist organisations, including Hamas and Hezbollah.”

NSW Police assistant commissioner Leanne McCusker told the commission that no specific threat assessment was prepared for the Chanukah by the Sea event at Bondi on December 14, 2025, despite the national terrorism threat level having been raised to “probable” by ASIO in August 2024, and hate crimes against Jewish victims in NSW reaching 841 incidents that year. McCusker agreed preparing such an assessment would have been a “good idea”.

McCusker also confirmed that intelligence briefings on threats to the Jewish community, issued fortnightly between October and December 2023, were discontinued after December of that year, more than two years before the Bondi attack.