Australian Police Foil Antisemitic Attack After Finding Explosives, List of Jewish Targets

"Australian police announced on Wednesday that they foiled a potential mass-casualty antisemitic terrorist attack after discovering a caravan in a suburb of Sydney filled with explosives and material containing details about Jewish targets.

The announcement came amid a wave of antisemitic incidents, including arson and graffiti, in Australia recent months that has alarmed the country’s Jewish community.

Law enforcement officials said police discovered a list of Jewish targets and a cache of Powergel, a mining explosive, in a trailer located in the outer suburb of Dural on Jan. 19.

According to New South Wales state Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson, there were enough explosives to create a bomb with a blast zone of around 40 meters, or 130 feet.

‘This is certainly an escalation,’ Hudson said in a press conference, commenting on the recent spate of antisemitic crimes in the greater Sydney area, where businesses and vehicles have been torched and buildings vandalized with graffiti.

‘The use of explosives … have the potential to cause a great deal of damage,’ he added...

Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s bloody invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

In the past two months alone, at least half a dozen incidents were reported in Sydney. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned the latest plot as ‘intolerable’ in a post on the X social media platform..."