As co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, I spend my days advoc­at­ing for my country’s Jewish community — which numbers around 120,000 people. And since 7 October 2023, I have woken many times to news like this. Staff, journ­al­ists, and politi­cians have all called in the small hours to inform me that a synagogue is burning, or that cars, daubed with antisemitic slogans, are on fire, or that yet another Jewish business has been van­dal­ized.

But the most recent target of antisemitism in Australia is a building that was, until two years ago, my home — a white­washed semi in Dover Heights, a com­fort­able Sydney suburb. This won­der­fully ordinary place, which sheltered me, my wife, and our three small daughters from a global pandemic, was set on fire and van­dal­ized. One of the arsonists also scrawled “Fuck Jews” on the side of a nearby car.

The family we sold the house to — who are not Jewish — were inside at the time, asleep. For­tu­nately, they weren’t harmed. They didn’t speak to the journ­al­ists who descended the next morning, but one of my former neigh­bours did speculate, “We think it was a case of mistaken identity”, meaning the per­pet­rat­ors had meant to target my family and me. That day, I also got a call from Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, the province in which Sydney sits. He told me that if the per­pet­rat­ors weren’t targeting the house in the hope it was mine, it would be “one hell of a coin­cid­ence.”

The police are currently invest­ig­at­ing the incident as an antisemitic hate crime. No arrests have yet been made.

It was our former neigh­bours — a Jewish couple in their 80s who had happily lived in the house adjoining ours for decades — who told us exactly what happened.

Both husband and wife woke in the small hours of Friday morning to the sound of an explosion. The former got out of bed to look out the window, and saw colossal flames. Two cars were on fire — one on the curb, one on the driveway of my old home. And my elderly neigh­bours’ car had been van­dal­ized: “Fuck Jews” was scrawled on one side of it, and “Fuck Israel” on the other. After calling the fire depart­ment, he went out with a hose and started fighting the flames himself.

Security footage of the attack was later released. In the video, you can see two people wearing hoods and masks. One pours flammable liquid from my old house all the way across the road, then lights a match and leaps back as it explodes into flame. The other is spray-painting my old garage.

My wife and I visited the scene the next day, and it was dev­ast­at­ing to see walls that had kept us safe for five years — walls I white­washed myself — covered in bright red paint meant to look like blood.

But as I said, nothing about any of this surprised me. For 15 months, Australia’s Jewish community has been con­tinu­ously reeling from attacks like this. On 9 October 2023, two days after Hamas murdered hundreds of Israelis, around 1,000 pro-Palestine activists gathered on the steps of Australia’s most iconic landmark, the Sydney Opera House — which had been lit up with the colors of the Israeli flag to show solid­ar­ity—and yelled “fuck the Jews” and “fuck Israel.” Even the organizer of the protest acknow­ledged that there were “vile antisemitic attendees”. There were also reportedly shouts of “gas the Jews”.

Since then, Australia has seen a huge uptick in antisemitic attacks. For instance, in February 2024, activists and journ­al­ists shared the contact details of hundreds of Jewish academics and creatives on social media — details taken from a WhatsApp group set up by and for Jewish pro­fes­sion­als in the wake of 7 October — in the interest of exposing “Zionists.” (Some of the Jews who were doxxed did not identify as Zionists.) Trolls sub­sequently used those contact details to harass and abuse Jews. After his name appeared on the list, 33-year-old musician Joshua Moshe received what his wife, Maggie May, described as “a level of hatred that I could never have expected from my community”.

At the time, the couple ran a gift shop together in Thornbury, a hipster suburb of Melbourne. Maggie May, who was con­vert­ing to Orthodox Judaism at the time, said that they were bombarded with antisemitic abuse “by telephone, by post, by people coming to the store and screaming at us, by email, on both our private Instagram accounts. It was relent­less.” Even­tu­ally, they relocated their store to another neigh­bor­hood.

A few months later, in June 2024, a Jewish member of par­lia­ment — the grandson of a refugee from Nazi Germany — was targeted. Activists smashed the windows of his office in Melbourne, and tried to light it on fire. The per­pet­rat­ors wrote in red paint on the door, “Zionism is fascism.”

Then, just over a month ago — before dawn on December 6, 2024 — the Orthodox Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne was doused with flammable liquid and set on fire. No one has been arrested for this horrible act of arson. And just over a week ago, another synagogue — this one in Sydney — was defaced with red swastikas.

Finally, at 1 a.m. local time on Tuesday, a daycare center in Sydney was set on fire, the fence spray-painted with that slogan, again: “Fuck the Jews.”

“The scene of a torched-out childcare centre on the same block as a synagogue is com­pletely heart­break­ing,” said New South Wales premier Minns — who called the attack a “vicious hate crime.”

But too often, instead of unequi­voc­al con­dem­na­tion of antisemitic attacks, the reaction in Australia has been to quibble. For instance, after the 9 October 2023, rally in Sydney, a national debate raged over whether anyone had actually shouted, “Gas the Jews”. Pro-Palestine activists argued — and a police invest­ig­a­tion even­tu­ally concluded—that people had actually been shouting, “Where’s the Jews,” as if this altern­at­ive is accept­able. Even the leader of the protest didn’t dispute that antisemitic acts had occurred, but this fact was drowned out during the debate.

From politi­cians, we tend to get plat­it­udes. The common refrain is that these attacks are “un-Aus­trali­an,” as if they run contrary to who we are as a country. I’d like to believe that. After all, my parents were Soviet refuseniks, who arrived in Australia from Kyiv in the late ’80s, when I was 4 years old. I grew up being told stories about what it is like to live in a place where Jews were treated with suspicion, where it was not safe to even speak about being Jewish. I have relatives who were yelled at in the street for being Jewish. I have relatives who died in pogroms. For my family, Australia was our salvation. For three decades, it was our haven, a place where Jews didn’t have to hide.

But the Jews I speak to today don’t recognize our country anymore. The children of Holocaust survivors have told me they’re glad their parents aren’t alive to see what Australia has become. Members of my community have beefed up the security around their homes, putting bars on windows, fearing an attack. Some are nervous about wearing a Star of David necklace in public. Others wonder if they should take down the mezuzahs from their front doors. They debate removing their kids from Jewish schools, or at least telling them to change out of their uniforms before walking home. My youngest daughter is now 5, but until recently, I was picking her up from a preschool that has an armed guard. No one wants to live this way.

For 15 months, I have shrugged off questions about my own safety. But this is harder to do now that my old home has been attacked. Difficult con­ver­sa­tions will be taking place in many Jewish homes in the coming months, including my own. We know how antisemitism can escalate. It won’t end with arson. The question before Aus­trali­ans now is: Will someone get killed before it does?