Australia has seen a series of anti-Semitic incidents over the past year, including graffiti on buildings and cars.

A synagogue in Sydney was daubed antisemitic graffitiA day earlier, an independent synagogue in the New South Wales capital was vandalized with anti-Semitic elements, police said.

Earlier on Saturday, vandals spray-painted a red swastika outside the entrance to a downtown synagogue, while an anti-Semitic slur was painted on a house in Sydney’s affluent east, police officials said.

The incident came a day after an attack at the South Sydney synagogue in the suburb of Arawa in the early hours of Friday morning. A special police taskforce was set up late Friday to investigate the incident.

“This type of criminal activity has no place in Australia’s tolerant multicultural community,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday of the incident at the South Sydney synagogue.

“These are people determined to tear our community in two,” added Gov. Chris Minings.

“We will always condemn these actions for what they are – horrific and shocking.”

Australia has experienced a series of anti-semitic incidents Incidents last year included graffiti on buildings and cars in Sydney and an arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne that police characterized as “terrorism”.

The Melbourne synagogue attack in December prompted the government to set up a federal taskforce on anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents have increased in the country since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 and Israel launched war on Gaza.

Some Jewish organizations say the government has not done enough to respond.

The incident is still nervous Australia’s relationship with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Albanes’ Labor government of encouraging such attacks with “anti-Israel” policies.

“Unfortunately, this criminal act is inseparable from the anti-Israel spirit that pervades Australia’s Labor government,” Netanyahu wrote on X in December, referring to the synagogue arson attacks.

Australia’s attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, who is Jewish, said Netanyahu was “absolutely wrong” to link the attack to government policy.

“Australia has remained a close friend of Israel since the Labor government recognized the State of Israel when it was created by the United Nations,” Dreyfus told state broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last month.

“Right now, that remains the position.”