Strong action on Iran now – but where was Anthony Albanese when a synagogue was burning?
The Prime Minister’s decisive action in expelling the Iranian ambassador over firebombings in Melbourne and Sydney has been welcomed by the Jewish community but stands in stark contrast to his muted response to the attacks as they occurred.
ASIO’s confidence that Iran was behind the attacks on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea and Lewis’ Continental Kitchen at Bondi Beach is also in strong contrast to the early claims by police about who might be responsible – or even whether they were acts of terrorism.
The Prime Minister was swarmed and heckled by a group of angry Jewish community members outside the Adass Israel Synagogue when he visited the charred ruins four long days after the arson attack in December last year.
Many in the community felt Albanese was not doing enough to deal with what was then already a string of targeted attacks, hate speech and escalating anti-Semitism.
“Off to Kooyong to play tennis, mate,” yelled one.
That was a reference to the Prime Minister’s decision to keep to his scheduled appointments in Perth that weekend, campaigning in battleground seats and playing tennis at the Cottesloe Tennis Club, rather than heading straight to Melbourne.
While Albanese unequivocally condemned the attack in a statement, his failure to quickly acknowledge it was an act of anti-Semitism was seen as the latest in a run of poor judgment calls and bad optics for the government.
Albanese and security officials finally capitulated to three days of demands to tackle anti-Semitism, setting up a joint police-intelligence taskforce into hate crimes towards Jewish Australians and declaring the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue a likely terrorist attack.
Only days before, the Prime Minister dismissed calls from former deputy Liberal leader and prominent Jewish Australian Josh Frydenberg for a police taskforce devoted to stamping out anti-Semitism,
After Albanese’s attorney-general at the time Mark Dreyfus conceded Australia had experienced the highest level of anti-Semitism in a year in his lifetime, the Prime Minister announced Special Operation Avalite to investigate threats, violence and hatred towards Australian Jews.
In NSW, police were already being accused of failing to tackle the rising number of arson and graffiti attacks in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, treating them in a piecemeal fashion rather than an organised attack on the Jewish community.
When police first began investigating the fire at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi they said there was nothing to suggest it was a “targeted attack”, despite the kosher deli being owned by the family of Israeli immigrant Harry Gilovitz.
It soon emerged that former bikie boss Sayed Mohammed Moosawi was alleged to have been behind that attack and an earlier attempt to burn down a similarly named brewery, which the culprits had mistaken for the kosher deli.
After they realised the first arsonists hit the wrong target, police allege, Moosawi – known to his alleged guns-for-hire as “James Bond” – took matters into his own hands and destroyed the deli himself.
The former Nomads chief, one of 14 people swept up and arrested in city-wide raids following the series of anti-Semitic attacks across Sydney, has been charged with knowingly directing the activities of a criminal group.
Moosawi, who denies the arson allegations, was last month released on bail after being able to come up with a $2m surety required by the court.
On Tuesday Moosawi, through his lawyer, also denied any involvement in or that he was directed in any way by the Iranian government to carry out any arson attacks and that he was “not even aware of the existence of such a group let alone being linked to the group”.
Law-enforcement authorities announced the formation of the AFP Special Operation Avalite against anti-Semitism after the Adass Israel Synagogue attack. But it wasn’t until late in January that the nation’s police chiefs, including those from the states and territories, agreed to establish a dedicated anti-Semitism co-ordination group to exchange intelligence and collaborate on responses.
By early March all 14 of the alleged offenders arrested by Strike Force Pearl over the arson and graffiti attacks had been charged.
But then NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson and AFP Deputy Commissioner Krissy Barrett made the stunning announcement that those attacks, and the discovery of an explosives laden caravan in Dural, had all been part of a “criminal con job”.
The “fabricated terror plot” was a foiled bid by an overseas-based organised crime kingpin to use as a bartering tool to reduce their sentences or drop charges, police said.
Hudson was very clear that the 14 people arrested under Strike Force Pearl were directed by the same “offshore” criminal figure that masterminded the caravan plot.
The kingpin was later alleged to be Sydney gym owner Sayet Erhan Akca, an avowed anti-Semite, who fled Australia by boat while on bail over an alleged 600kg drug importation.
But police were clear that there was no evidence of a “foreign state actor”.
Now, according to ASIO director-general Mike Burgess Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind at least one of the Sydney attacks – though not, it seems, the caravan plot – and had enlisted middlemen and criminals to mask its involvement.
It has yet to be explained how – or whether – Akca was one of those middlemen.
But it seems that for the police, at least, there is still a lot of catching up to be done.
Anthony Albanese is playing catch-up after the revelation that Iran was behind at least two acts of anti-Semitic terror perpetrated on Australian soil – and so are many federal and state police.