Greens staffer reprimanded for suggesting synagogue arson may have been ‘false flag’

Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi has reprimanded her chief of staff for suggesting last week’s Melbourne synagogue firebombing could have been perpetrated by supporters of an Israeli state to provoke outrage about antisemitism.

Antoun Issa, a former Guardian Australia journalist who works for the Greens’ antiracism spokeswoman, urged people not to rush to judgment about the motivation for the attack after the Coalition put pressure on Labor to declare it was terrorism.

Greens staffer Antoun Issa has been reprimanded for suggesting the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue could have been a “false flag” attack.

“It could very well be a white supremacist or someone enraged by the genocide or a Zionist false-flag,” he told his 15,000 Instagram followers on Monday. “They’ve done this before,” Issa added, without elaborating.

After this masthead asked Faruqi’s office about the post, the senator said the remarks were “inadvisable and inappropriate”.

“I do not agree with it, and have counselled my staff member about it,” Faruqi said in a statement. Greens leader Adam Bandt also called the post inappropriate.

Issa said: “In hindsight, I regret this post and it was inappropriate. This post was intended to be an academic exercise about the risks of ascribing blame for a crime before the police have come to their conclusions, especially given the prevalence of white supremacy and far-right extremism.”

Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi is the party’s antiracism spokeswoman.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Melbourne radio last Friday, the day of the attack, that it was an antisemitic hate crime. “I think an attack on a synagogue is an act of antisemitism by definition,” Albanese said.

Authorities over the weekend identified three suspects and deemed the act politically motivated, though the ideology of the trio remains unknown. On Monday, police described it as “likely a terrorist incident”.

The post from Issa, who is also a prominent pro-Palestinian commentator, follows several Greens MPs and candidates making comments aligned with a radical fringe of the Palestinian protest movement.

Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz.

Faruqi in July declined to answer repeated questions about whether Hamas should be dismantled if a Palestinian state was established. Greens NSW MP Jenny Leong apologised and donated money to a Jewish museum after invoking an antisemitic trope by suggesting Jewish groups feigned support for community campaigns to hook their “tentacles” into powerful networks.

Issa’s comments stand in contrast with those of Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network head Nasser Mashni who unequivocally slammed the arsonists on Sunday, saying the act was antisemitic no matter who was behind it.

“Our movement has no room for hate,” Mashni said at a Melbourne rally.

Sarah Schwartz, of the left-wing, largely anti-Zionist Jewish Council of Australia, condemned “conspiracy theories spreading online about the synagogue attack being an ‘inside job’.”

“Those using this language may not be aware of its antisemitic undertones. There are already enough people, including our politicians, trying to politicise this act of hate for their own agendas,” Schwartz said.

The Greens on Tuesday announced a new candidate who has argued Zionists were antisemitic, a day after federal police and ASIO called for public figures to use less heated rhetoric on Gaza.

Poet Omar Sakr is running for the Greens.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Writer Omar Sakr will run for the Greens in the Labor-held western Sydney seat of Blaxland, one of a group of suburban Sydney seats with large Muslim populations in which Labor will face pressure for its positioning on the Middle East conflict. Faruqi helped launch Sakr’s candidacy on Tuesday.

About a month after the October 7, 2023 attacks in which Hamas killed about 1200 people in Israel and kidnapped others, Sakr wrote on X: “I cannot and will not condemn Hamas. I will urge them to show restraint and protect civilians, but no more and no less than that.”

Responding to another post about whether the synagogue attack was perpetrated by a “Zionist”, Sakr wrote: “It would still be antisemitism. Zionists are deeply antisemitic, which is why they project it on everything, they misuse Jewish symbols in depraved acts.”

Zionism is a political movement dedicated to establishing a national home for Jewish people in the area that is now the state of Israel, which was founded in 1948. It is contentious because the establishment of the state led to the “Nakba” (the Arabic word for disaster) that displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

When questioned about Sakr’s comments on Wednesday, Bandt said he would not use the same language.

“Let me be clear about the Greens’ position,” Bandt said in a statement. “The enormity of the Holocaust must not be diminished. The Greens will continue to push for an end to the invasion and the occupation [of Gaza], as well as the recognition of Palestine and sanctions on the extremist Netanyahu government, and for a just and lasting peace where Palestinians and Israelis exercise self-determination under international law.”

Sakr did not directly respond to his questions about his previous posts on Wednesday, but said he “supported the Greens’ position on these matters”.

Labor has toughened its stance against Israel through both UN votes and sanctions against extremist settlers as Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks claimed tens of thousands of lives, provoking international condemnation and attracting war crime charges from the International Criminal Court.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Tuesday strongly rejected the idea that criticising Israel was illegitimate after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted Labor for its criticism of his war effort and said: “anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitic”.

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