If my headline sounds a bit weird that's because this is a pretty weird story. There have been a series of arson and vandalism attacks in Sydney Australia and now police think the suspects were paid to carry out the attacks by some unknown person who gave them the name "James Bond." Police don't know if James Bond is the pseudonym for a domestic anti-Semite or an international one.
The Free Press published a story a few days ago about the string of attacks which was written by Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
...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 neighbors 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.”
That's the most recent attack but not the most damaging.
...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 day care center in Sydney was set on fire, the fence spray-painted with that slogan, again: “Fuck the Jews.”
Of course you don't have to go to Australia to find angry leftists using vandalism to make a point. You can find anti-Semitic vandals on dozens of elite US college campuses. What's odd about the Australian vandals is that they don't seem to be doing this out of personal conviction. They aren't true believers in the Palestinian cause. On the contrary, there's some indication they were carrying out these attacks for money. That comes from a court case against two men charged with an arson attack on a brewery that did $65,000 worth of damage.
A court has been told that one of the men arrested by police investigating anti-Semitic attacks in Sydney told officers he torched a Bondi brewery because he owed drug money and threats were made to his life.
Guy Finnegan, who set fire to the Curly Lewis brewery in Bondi in October last year, told police he was given an ultimatum by an individual and was acting under duress...
Details emerging in the case of his co-accused, 37-year-old Craig Bantoft, reveal the pair were expecting to be paid...
The agreed facts tendered to court in Bantoft's matter include messages between him and Finnegan over the encrypted app Signal, where the pair appear to be taking instructions from someone known by the alias of 'James Bond'.
Neither of these low level crooks has identified who James Bond is but investigators can't rule out that he's part of some international group paying these creeps for the attacks. And that may explain another odd aspect of these cases: The arsonists don't seem to know what they are doing. As mentioned above, Alex Ryvchin hasn't lived in the house that was targeted for months and the family that lives there now isn't Jewish. Similarly, the guys who tried to burn down the brewery may have been given the wrong address.
Detectives are investigating whether the Curly Lewis brewery in Bondi may have been collateral damage in a mix up with a Kosher deli on Curlewis Street in the same suburb.
There's a task force working to connect all of these cases but obviously if the money man (or group) is located overseas that will make it harder to find them much less prosecute them. So far, nine people have been charged with 59 offenses in this series of anti-Semitic attacks. None of them appear to have any political or religious motives for the attacks.
Leftist MP Jenny Leong: ''NO POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS MOTIVATIONS.'' pic.twitter.com/w7wgIHQN1T
— Drew Pavlou (@DrewPavlou) January 23, 2025
