An Australian judge ruled Monday that the man who set fire to a Melbourne synagogue while worshippers were inside was motivated by mental illness, not antisemitism, JNS reports.
Magistrate Malcolm Thomas found that Angelo Loras, 35, who doused the front door of the East Melbourne Synagogue with flammable liquid and ignited it on July 4, was in the grip of a delusion after failing to take his schizophrenia medication.
Loras, who pled guilty to arson and recklessly placing people at risk of death, was eligible for release Monday due to time served. Around 20 worshippers were inside the synagogue for a Friday night dinner at the time of the attack.
The arson occurred on the same night as a disturbance at a Melbourne Israeli restaurant, which sustained extensive damage.
Jamie Hyams, Director of Public Affairs at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, told JNS after Monday’s ruling, “This is a difficult one because there do seem to be genuine mental health issues, but it’s perhaps worrying that Mr. Loras, who was born in Iran, came to have a bag with flammable liquids and something to start a fire with, that he came to choose a synagogue out of all the available buildings, and that he came to be there on a Friday night and was trying to gain entry. We certainly hope this was indeed just an unfortunate coincidence, and that there will be no repeat.”
Australia has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents since the October 2023 start of the Israel-Gaza war.
In early December of last year, the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced in September that the Iranian government was behind that attack, as well as another attack against the country's Jewish community.
Days after the arson at Adass Israel, a car was set on fire, and two properties were vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, which has a substantial Jewish population.
In another incident, the words "F- the Jews" were spray-painted on a car in Sydney.
In early January, the Southern Sydney Synagogue in Allawah, a suburb of the city, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti.
A day later, the Newtown synagogue, located in Sydney’s inner west, was vandalized with red swastikas that were spray-painted across the building’s front wall.
In another incident, a home in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, previously owned by Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was vandalized.
In February, a video surfaced of two Australian nurses, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, stating they would refuse to treat Israelis and would send them “to hell”.
As a result of the video, the two have been banned from working with or providing services to participants of the country’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for two years.