Australia’s federal police have said they are investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” are paying criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.
There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents.
Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes.
“We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs,” Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said, adding that it was possible that cryptocurrency was involved.
The digital currency can take longer to identify, Mr Kershaw said.
The commissioner said police were also investigating whether young people were carrying out these crimes and whether they had been radicalised online.
However, Mr Kershaw cautioned, “intelligence is not the same as evidence” and more charges were expected soon.
Last week, a man from Sydney became the first person to be charged by the federal taskforce, dubbed Special Operation Avalite, over alleged death threats he made towards a Jewish organisation.
Albanese said Tuesday’s incident at a childcare centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Maroubra was “as cowardly as it is disgusting” and described it as a “hate crime”.
“This was an attack targeted at the Jewish community. And it is a crime that concerns us all because it is also an attack on the nation and society we have built together,” he wrote on social media.

South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol has made his first appearance at his impeachment trial, where he denied ordering the arrest of lawmakers during his attempt to impose martial law.
Parliament voted to impeach Yoon last month, and last week the Constitutional Court began a trial to decide whether to permanently remove him from office.
Yoon is also facing a separate criminal investigation into whether he led an insurrection. He has been detained since last week.
Security was tight on Tuesday as Yoon was transported by van from the detention centre, where he is being held, to the Constitutional Court.

Bob Dylan’s draft lyrics for his 1965 song Mr Tambourine Man have sold at auction for $508,000 (£417,471) in the US.
The lyrics on two yellow sheets of paper are three typewritten drafts of the song – but not the final version. The work in progress also features the folk-rock legend’s notes by hand in the margin.
The song is one of Dylan’s most famous hits and the draft pages were among 60 items belonging to the singer that went under the hammer in the city of Nashville.
A 1968 oil painting created and signed by Dylan, and a 1983 Fender Telecaster electric guitar owned and played by him, were also on sale.