Freehills partner Damien Hazard is under investigation for tweeting about the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue

Herbert Smith Freehills partner Damien Hazard, inset, took to social media over the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue last Friday.

Herbert Smith Freehills has launched an internal investigation into one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a “deeply offensive” tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler, a prominent partner at Arnold Bloch Leibler and president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Hazard, who at HSF has worked closely with Goldman Sachs Australia (headed by Josh Frydenberg), lashed out at Leibler online following the arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue on Friday morning, accusing him of politicising the incident and daring to link it to the Jew-hate that, in Leibler’s words, has been “displayed on the streets of Melbourne every week for over a year”.

“Never too soon for @jeremyleibler to just invent a link with anti-genocide protests,” Hazard said, indicting Leibler with “cynically politicising this crime” and sowing a “life long disinformation campaign” that conflates the “genuine evil of anti-semitism with the basic humanism of condemning Israeli genocide”.

The preponderance of the evidence is definitely working against Hazard at the moment. Law enforcement agencies have declared the synagogue attack an act of domestic terrorism, as has Anthony Albanese, who spent Monday scrambling to repair his relationship with Australia’s appalled Jewish community, sick as they are of watching him wiggle through the raindrops hoping to stay dry.

Meanwhile, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, soaking in Labor Kool-Aid, keeps insisting to the Jewish community — his community! — that the government’s doing a bang-up job standing with them on anti-Semitism, a position no one could seriously hold without a gun jammed in their back.

Mark, buddy, blink twice if you need rescuing.

Leibler, unsurprisingly, didn’t much care for Hazard’s take, and neither did Hazard’s employers at HSF, who’ve unearthed more unfortunate posts that he’s published, loud and proud, in his own name, over the past year. Judging by the firm’s response he could get bing-bonged any minute.

HSF chair and senior partner Rebecca Maslen-Stannage told us: “We were shocked to learn on Friday evening of this deeply offensive post, and very sorry that it was written. These comments could not be more at odds with our firm’s respectful and inclusive culture.”

Maslen-Stannage confirmed that Hazard was contacted (“quickly”) and the post was “removed the same evening”, and our assumption is that he was told to get rid of it.

“We are treating this matter with the seriousness it deserves.”

Leibler, from what we hear, was given an apology, although he declined to comment when we contacted him.

“We have also become aware of previous posts,” Maslen-Stannage said, which doesn’t augur well for Hazard. He joined the firm in 1996 and became partner in the corporate division in 2006. And finally: “We have engaged our own internal investigation, in alignment with our values, and this work is in progress.”

Presumably HSF’s clients and Jewish employees won’t be too pleased about this development, which explains why the firm’s moving so fast to roll out the support. Meetings have already been held with leaders of its Jewish network to make sure they feel “supported at this difficult time”.

Then again, the timing of Hazard’s tweet and the daubing of HSF in this awful colouring happens to coincide with a planned merger with New York litigation specialist Kramer Levin, whose two name partners, Ezra Levin and the late Arthur Kramer, are Jewish.

Levin, wouldn’t you know it, was inducted into the Bronx Jewish Hall of Fame in 2016. And Kramer – fun fact – started the business because white shoe law firms wouldn’t take Jews in the 1950s – even those from an Ivy League school.

Awkward! We’re sure Hazard will feel right at home if the merger proceeds. A vote is scheduled for both firms in February.