A car displaying a “Happy Hanukkah” sign was set ablaze early Thursday morning in what police are calling a “suspicious fire” in the Jewish suburb of St Kilda East, Melbourne, AFP reported.
The vehicle, which was parked in a house driveway, was empty when it was torched. Photographs broadcast by Australia’s ABC News showed the car badly scorched, with its Hanukkah display destroyed.
Occupants of the nearby home were evacuated as a precaution. According to a statement from Victoria Police, “Detectives have identified a person who may be able to assist with their investigation and they are actively searching for and making enquiries into their whereabouts.”
The arson comes amid rising concerns over antisemitic incidents in Australia following the mass shooting at a Hanukkah festival on Bondi Beach, in which 15 people were murdered.
Rabbi Effy Block, of the local Chabad of St Kilda, described the incident as “clearly an antisemitic attack.”
“Thank God no people were harmed,” he told AFP. “But this is a continuing escalation, where we see these events happening again and again. My Jewish community in St Kilda and Melbourne do not feel safe in their own homes and country,” he said.
Even before the Hanukkah massacre in Sydney, Australia had seen a sharp wave of antisemitism, including the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.
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.