Nine News Australia<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Security has been upgraded at Jewish sites in Sydney including synagogues, schools and places of business, and authorities are adopting increasingly tough language against those accused of antisemitic crimes. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is completely disgusting, and these bastards will be round up by New South Wales Police,\u201d said NSW Premier Chris Minns on Tuesday, hours after a childcare center near a synagogue was torched. <\/p>\n
Some Jewish groups have accused the government of being slow to respond, a claim advanced by the leading opposition party, which has given the attacks \u2013 and the response to them \u2013 an extra political dimension just months before a federal election. <\/p>\n
Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton told Sky News Wednesday the rise in antisemitic attacks \u201cwas entirely predictable because of what we saw on the steps of the Opera House.\u201d <\/p>\n
He was referring to the events of October 9, 2023 \u2013 two days after the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel that started the Gaza war \u2013 when hundreds of demonstrators waved Palestinian flags to protest a decision to light up the Sydney Opera House in the colors of the Israeli flag. <\/p>\n
Dutton has repeatedly criticized Albanese for what he says was a \u201cweak\u201d response to the protest, and continues to push the government to escalate the issue. Albanese, who\u2019s due to call an election in the coming weeks, denies he\u2019s been slow to act. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need to do is to bring the country together, not look for difference, not look for division, not look for political advantage,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
A similar message was sent Wednesday in a joint statement by multi-faith and human rights groups that said Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians had also been targeted by hate crimes. <\/p>\n
\u201cPolitical leaders should condemn recent hate crimes and acts of discrimination. However, they should not seek to politicize racist attacks for political gain,\u201d the statement said. <\/p>\n
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) condemned the attacks in a statement Thursday, saying they were part of a wave of \u201cracism-driven hate crimes\u201d across the country. APAN said many Palestinians and their supporters did not report harassment and abuse against them for \u201cfear of retribution and inaction.\u201d <\/p>\n
Michelle Berkon is a member of Jews Against the Occupation \u201948, a minority group of Jewish Australians who condemn the Israeli government\u2019s actions in Gaza and actively support the Palestinian cause. <\/p>\n
She said it was \u201cvery malicious\u201d to suggest, as some have, that Palestinians or their supporters were behind the antisemitic attacks. \u201cWho stands to benefit from this? It\u2019s certainly not the Palestinians, is it?\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Authorities insist that the theory of \u201coverseas actors\u201d paying local criminals is just one line of inquiry. They\u2019re also looking into whether any young people have been radicalized online or encouraged to commit antisemitic acts. <\/p>\n
The 10 people arrested so far by NSW Police are aged between 19 and 40. One of the two men who exchanged text messages over the Curly Lewis Brewing fire, a 31-year-old man, was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in prison, with a non-parole period of 10 months. <\/p>\n
Lewis, whose caf\u00e9 was burned to the ground, said the sentence was too lenient, calling it \u201coutrageous.\u201d \u201cHe should be given the full sentence of 10 years,\u201d she said. Police said they would appeal the sentence. <\/p>\n
On the heels of a national cabinet meeting, involving all state and territory ministers, police commissioners across Australia met and issued a joint statement, saying a strong policing response is needed now more than ever to keep the community safe. <\/p>\n
Max Kaiser, executive officer of the Jewish Council Australia, says policing alone won\u2019t address the broader issue of racism in Australia \u2013 that requires education and a community approach that brings together different faiths. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that there obviously is some form of targeted police response to these particular incidents,\u201d he said. \u201cBut unfortunately, there\u2019s a strong intersection between a law-and-order, tough-on-crime response and politics in Australia.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone wants the perpetrators to be caught, and the attacks brought to an end, if that\u2019s possible, but the underlying issues are still there, and they can\u2019t be solved through more arrests.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lewis wants the perpetrators to pay for what they did, with a hefty sentence behind bars. \u201cThey destroyed our thriving business of 55 years,\u201d she said, of the caf\u00e9 started by her parents, one of the first in Sydney to offer kosher food. <\/p>\n
But she\u2019s been heartened by the response of suppliers and community members who\u2019ve rallied around the caf\u00e9, helping it to reopen, albeit with fewer staff and a steep drop in trade, just three weeks later. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe one thing that really, really stunned me was, right from the beginning, after the fire, people would come up and say, \u2018Tell us what we can do. We can clean, we can do whatever you want,\u2019\u201d Lewis said. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone wanted to help, and it was fantastic.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
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Sydney restaurateur Judith Lewis couldn\u2019t save the mezuzah, a framed parchment inked with Hebrew prayers, that was hanging in her family\u2019s caf\u00e9 when arsonists set it alight in the early hours one Sunday in late October. The symbol of Jewish faith was badly damaged in the blaze that destroyed Lewis\u2019 Continental Kitchen, which had served <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}