Police believe “foreign actors” are paying local criminals to carry out crimes amid a surge in anti-Semitic incidents.

Australia is investigating suspicions that funding from abroad is behind a surge in anti-Semitic crimes.

Detectives are investigating the matter antisemitism Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday that attacks across the country have led to the conclusion that foreign actors paid local criminals to carry out the attacks. However, he declined to comment on the questionable source of funds.

“It’s important that people understand where some of these attacks are coming from, and it appears…some…are being carried out by people who don’t have a specific problem, are not driven by ideology, but are paid actors ,” Albanese told reporters.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police “believe criminals-for-hire may be behind some of the incidents”.

He added that investigations were ongoing to determine “who paid these criminals, where these people are, whether they are in Australia or overseas and what their motivations were”.

Arson

The comments came after state police chiefs met to discuss an increase in anti-Semitic crimes in Australia since the “anti-Semitism” epidemic. war The conflict between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, and has surged in recent months.

In December, masked arsonists firebombed a synagogue in the city of Melbourne. saboteur Arson set fire to a Sydney childcare centre, set fire to cars in a Jewish neighborhood and splattered red paint and graffiti on a city-centre synagogue.

Sydney and Melbourne are home to 85% of the country’s Jewish population.

After a fire at a Sydney nursery, New South Wales police said the number of detectives in Strike Force Pearl, set up to investigate anti-Semitic crimes, had doubled from 20 to 40.

Detectives arrested 33-year-old Adam Edward Moule on Tuesday night and charged him with trying to burn down a synagogue in Sydney’s inner-city Newtown on January 11. Police said his accomplices were also expected to be arrested soon.

Kershaw told federal and state leaders at a briefing on Tuesday that police are investigating the involvement of young people in recent incidents and whether they were radicalized online and encouraged to commit anti-Semitic acts.