Ties have soured since Australia last week decided to conditionally recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, and after Netanyahu called his Australian counterpart a 'weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia's Jews'
Australian police said earlier this week that they could not rule out further arrests and believed that the arson attack had been orchestrated from abroad. Police also said a string of antisemitic attacks in Sydney last year was the work of a criminal gang
According to a study of Australian universities, 91 antisemitic incidents were reported on campuses in the first semester of 2024, just in the state of Victoria. Only 11 incidents were recorded on university campuses in 2023, nine of which were after October 7, with only one incident in all of 2022
Mohammad Sharab, an anti-Israel activist involved in the February kidnapping of an Australian man, was seen wearing the Hamas emblem at a rally in Melbourne.
During an anti-Israel protest in the Australian city of Adelaide on Sunday, protesters pushed an Australian man who filmed the rally and tried to get past the march