Jewish symbols spark violence as Australia’s antisemitism spirals, exposing global hatred Israel confronts daily.
Another chilling antisemitic incident has shaken Australia’s Jewish community. In the early hours of Thursday morning, a car displaying a “Happy Hanukkah” sign was deliberately set ablaze in the Jewish suburb of St Kilda East, according to reports cited by AFP. The vehicle was parked in a private driveway and was empty when it was torched, narrowly avoiding loss of life.
Images broadcast by ABC News showed the car severely burned, its Hanukkah message destroyed—an unmistakable signal that the attack targeted Jewish identity, not property. Residents of the nearby home were evacuated as a precaution, while Victoria Police confirmed the fire is being treated as suspicious. Investigators say a person of interest has been identified and efforts are underway to locate them.
The attack comes amid a disturbing surge of antisemitic violence across Australia, following the mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach that murdered 15 Jews. Effy Block, rabbi of Chabad of St Kilda, did not mince words, calling the arson “clearly an antisemitic attack.”
“Thank God no one was hurt,” Rabbi Block said. “But this is a continuing escalation. Jews in Melbourne no longer feel safe in their own homes or their own country.”
This incident is part of a broader pattern. Even before the Bondi Beach massacre, Australia saw firebombings of synagogues, antisemitic graffiti, and vandalism in Jewish neighborhoods across Melbourne and Sydney. The Adass Israel Synagogue was firebombed. Synagogues in Allawah and Newtown were defaced with slurs and swastikas. Cars were tagged with explicit hate messages. Each incident met with condemnation—but the violence continues.
The pattern mirrors what Israel has warned the world about for years: when antisemitism is tolerated, excused, or masked as political grievance, it metastasizes into terror. Israel stands on the front line confronting this hatred directly; Jewish communities abroad increasingly bear the consequences of global indifference.
A menorah on a car should never be a target. That it is—again—demands action, not platitudes.
