Yes, this is antisemitism
The conclusion that the Dural caravan incident was an elaborate 'hoax' has led some to deny or diminish the "severity of the antisemitism crisis", said Alex Ryvchin.
A key suspect behind the Dural caravan incident has been named as Sayet Erhan Akca, a 35-year-old former gym and childcare centre owner in Sydney.
Akca, who was on bail while facing serious drug charges from 2022, is now a high-level suspect for the joint counterterrorism task force investigating the caravan plot and a spate of other antisemitic attacks across Sydney. He was allegedly hoping to leverage a lenient court outcome by providing information about the fabricated plan to police.
According to The Daily Telegraph, Akca – who has a wife and young son in Sydney – has been in Asia and Turkey since police say he hid in a boat to flee the country in mid 2023.
Akca reportedly posted a series of antisemitic and anti-Israeli slurs over a period of many years, as uncovered by The Australian.
In one post Akca claims that “Hitler was only washing earth, they made him out to be evil”.
In 2018 he posted: “How did 6 million die when only 3.2 registered Jews in Europe at the time?”
But while it may be clear now that there was no real threat from the Dural caravan incident, there can be no mistaking the brazen series of acts that have terrorised Australia’s Jewish community.
The incidents – which have included the firebombing of a synagogue, childcare centre and kosher deli causing widespread damage and endangering lives – can only be described as an “antisemitism crisis”, according to Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) co-CEO Alex Ryvchin.
The latest incident took place just this week, with Toorak shule in Melbourne vandalised on Tuesday.
Earlier this week, police charged and arrested 14 people in connection with shocking antisemitic incidents. Among them bikie boss Sayed Moosawi, who is alleged to have directed two arson attacks on Bondi businesses – the Curly Lewis Brewery and Lewis’ Continental Kitchen – which had been previously linked to an organiser calling himself “James Bond”. Moosawi, who was reportedly raised in the Middle East, has unsurprisingly denied his involvement.
Police also ruled the explosives-laden caravan found abandoned in rural Dural on January 19, with a note listing Jewish targets, was in fact an elaborate “hoax”. Some commentators and mainstream media outlets have used this revelation to downplay the very real antisemitism crisis.
“The Jewish community now has to contend with antisemitism emanating from violent criminal gangs as well as familiar ideological and political sources,” said Ryvchin.
“There is also strong concern in the community that the characterisation of the Dural incident as a ‘hoax’ has led to the denial or diminishing of the severity of the antisemitism crisis and has empowered dark, conspiratorial elements of our society. It is critical that governments and law enforcement continue to treat antisemitism as the grave and persistent threat that it is.”
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip has welcomed the 14 arrests made this week.
Those charged include criminals for hire, drug addicts, teenagers and former bikie middleman Moosawi.
Ossip said the criminals who arranged and carried out the attacks “sought to take advantage of already strained social cohesion and unprecedented levels of antisemitism by targeting the Jewish community for their own personal benefit”.
“This is reprehensible and had a chilling effect on the Jewish community,” he said, adding that the findings of the investigation into the Dural caravan incident “should not in any way diminish the summer of fear and anxiety which the Jewish community experienced”.
President of the Zionist Federation of Australia Jeremy Leibler said the wave of organised attacks “was intended to rip apart the Jewish community’s social cohesion and sense of safety, and the perpetrators largely have achieved that aim”.
“These attacks only happened because of the rise in intolerance and hatred in Australia that has been allowed to fester. Clearly, they were intended to leverage that hatred in order to spread fear.”
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said while it is now clear that there was no threat from the caravan incident at Dural, “This despicable event was designed to spread fear in the Jewish community and provoke division.”
In a joint statement, NSW Premier Chris Minns and Police Minister Yasmin Catley said police have worked around the clock to get to the bottom of these crimes.
“There is no mistaking that these acts have wrought fear and anxiety in our Jewish community and we will not tolerate this, not now, not ever,” they said.
“Police will allege that those arrested for the most serious of these crimes had criminal and financial motives. But nobody should be in any doubt, we have endured a summer of hateful, vicious incidents such as vile antisemitic graffiti attacks and many of these appear to have been motivated simply by nasty, racist hatred. We can never accept that.”
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