Australian antisemitism ‘left unchecked’ after Oct. 7, says intel chief

Australian intelligence chief tells royal commission that the country left antisemitism “unchecked” after Oct. 7, leaving Jews to become increasingly targeted for violence and harassment.

By World Israel News Staff

Australia’s domestic intelligence chief told a royal commission Monday that antisemitism was allowed to grow unchecked after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, helping create an environment in which violence against Jewish Australians became more likely.

Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, gave evidence as the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion opened a new phase of hearings focused on the December 14, 2025, Bondi Beach attack, in which 15 people were killed at a public Hanukkah celebration.

“There is no doubt that the war in the Middle East invoked a range of emotions in Australia,” Burgess said, according to SBS. He said some of the “violent aspects” and “behaviors, including antisemitism,” were, in ASIO’s view, “left unchecked,” became “normalized” and “gave more permission for violence.”

Burgess said Jewish Australians were “on the receiving end” of that shift, as antisemitic incidents moved from threats and intimidation to attacks on people, businesses and places of worship. Reuters reported that such incidents included vandalism and arson targeting homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles before the Bondi shooting.

The inquiry heard that the security climate was one factor behind ASIO’s decision in August 2024 to raise Australia’s terrorism threat level from “possible” to “probable.” Burgess said the Gaza war was not the direct reason for the change, but that the conflict had contributed to an atmosphere in which politically motivated and communal violence became more plausible.

The Bondi attack is being examined as both a security failure and a broader test of Australia’s response to antisemitism. Counsel assisting the commission, Richard Lancaster SC, said there was no evidence that police or intelligence agencies had specific warning that an armed attack would target the Hanukkah event. “In that sense, it was a surprise attack,” he said.

Still, the commission heard that Jewish community security officials had warned police about elevated risks ahead of the event. Reuters reported that a Jewish private security group, CSG, provided New South Wales Police with its own threat assessment and requested a static police presence at Bondi, citing the visibility of Jewish attendees and the open-air setting.

New South Wales Assistant Commissioner Leanne McCusker acknowledged that no police threat assessment had been prepared for the event. “I see no reason why a threat assessment could not be completed for that event,” she said, adding that such an assessment would have allowed security measures to better match the threat level.

Burgess also told the commission that ASIO had concluded Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind two antisemitic attacks in Australia: one on a kosher restaurant in Sydney and another on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue.

He said Iran was probably behind more incidents, but the agency could not reach the same evidentiary threshold in every case.

“We do believe there are more, we just can’t quite get there in terms of our level of assessment,” Burgess said. He said the IRGC uses “proxies and agents” to “bring harm to Jewish people wherever they are in the world.”

Burgess defended ASIO’s allocation of resources before the attack, saying the agency had shifted more attention to espionage and foreign interference after the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate reduced counterterrorism leads. But he said “at no time” did ASIO leave serious threats “uninquired or uninvestigated.”

The commission’s second hearing block is expected to continue for three weeks, though most of the evidence will be heard behind closed doors because of national security concerns and ongoing criminal proceedings.

SBS reported that only about two and a half days of the hearings are expected to be open to the public.

The inquiry has already heard evidence about the scale of antisemitic incidents in New South Wales. ABC reported that police figures showed hate-crime incidents against Jewish people rose from 40 in 2020 to 841 in 2025.

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