Antisemitic bomb threat was a hoax — the political overreaction was real

A string of antisemitic hoaxes was exploited by both major parties; neither deserves to be in power next political term, writes Tom Tanuki.

ON 29 JANUARY of this year, we first learned about a caravan full of explosives found in outer Sydney with a cartoon Acme bomb box inside with the words, "this is antisemitic" written on it (more or less).

What happened in the months following that discovery – and the associated spate of ten or more other paid-for attacks that went with it – became such a ringing indictment on both of our mainstream political parties that I believe it’s unconscionable to deliver either of them a mandate for another political term.

Two weeks out from the election, I want to make sure we all remember it.

There’s a lot more at stake this election than is contained in these hoaxes and the response to them. I believe that anyone with a conscience must know and care about the unfolding Gaza genocide, but this nonsense really does contain multitudes.

If you care about the right to protest, neither the Liberal Party nor the Labor Party deserve a mandate as a result of their conduct over these hoaxes. If you care about civil liberties in Australia or around the world, they don’t deserve a mandate. If you care about truth and integrity, they don’t deserve a mandate.

Weaponising antisemitism

A campaign by right-wing Liberals to link Muslims with fascism and anti-genocide demonstrations to antisemitism is on shaky ground.

Consider the timeline.

From October 2024, when a Jewish deli in North Bondi was set on fire, right through to February 2025, incidents of violent or intimidating antisemitism were being enacted via a network of petty criminals, allegedly being paid to act by one organised crime figure abroad. Synagogue fires, swastikas, antisemitic graffiti and so on.

None of the petty crims knew a damned thing about antisemitism. There was a guy called "James Bond" instructing them on encrypted comms platforms. The person who bought the caravan posted an ad for it on Facebook Marketplace.

It read:

'Looking for a caravan for sale hit me up if U have one cheers.'

Not masterminds. Not hate criminals.

In the thick of these incidents unfolding, the head of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) made a public statement on 21 January — one week before any public announcements about the caravan had been made. The AFP said it was investigating whether foreign organised crime figures were paying people to do these attacks.

So we know that state intelligence and federal law enforcement were familiar with the actual nature of these attacks from that time. Not enough to go public with it, granted, but certainly enough to brief political figures behind closed doors within both the Labor Government and the Liberal Opposition.

We also know they were issuing briefings because later, on 11 March, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of deliberately avoiding a late January briefing from the AFP after the bomb caravan announcement. This was a briefing where, as Burke was implying, Dutton would have learned to rein in his rhetoric.

So to be clear: we know that from at least 21 January onwards, any Labor or Liberal party figure engaged in this discourse was highly likely to have known these incidents weren’t authentic homegrown examples of antisemitic hate crimes. They would have been to briefings, or their colleagues would have been to them. (Dutton sent a minister to the briefings, for example.)

That didn’t stop NSW Premier Chris Minns from fronting a press conference on 29 January to describe the incident as "terrorism".

He said:

The community is very concerned about the rising number of antisemitic attacks in our community, escalating to the point where there was a mass casualty event...

Anyone attempting terrorism, violence, or hatred in our community will be met with the full force of the law.

It didn’t stop him from introducing three laws on 5 February to combat antisemitic terror:

one about criminalising racist speech, rather than being punishable by civil legislation;
one about banning protests and increasing NSW’s authoritarian "move-on" laws near synagogues; and
another about banning swastikas posted near synagogues.

Civil liberties organisations, activists and the public decried these laws.

Dutton isn’t just exploiting antisemitism — he’s driving it

Following a history of racism, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is now carrying on Israel’s ethnonationalist rhetoric and fuelling antisemitism in our country.

Just a day later, the Albanese Government passed its Hate Crimes Bill under mounting pressure from the Liberals. The Bill introduced a raft of mandatory minimum sentences for ‘terror offences’, financing terrorism and displaying hate symbols. The Federal Government agreed to break its own policy on mandatory sentencing laws – the kind condemned by civil liberties organisations – in order to pass the bill swiftly with Liberal backing. This occurred after mid-election attacks on Labor’s stance on antisemitism had gained ground following the Dural caravan announcement.

Meanwhile, Minns’ three draconian state laws were rushed through NSW’s Parliament and passed on 20 February. Let’s be clear: Minns is state-level Labor, whereas I’m writing about the Federal record of the Labor and Liberal parties in light of the upcoming election. But these anti-protest and anti-democratic laws are ones for which Albanese explicitly expressed his support. He did so in December after the Adass synagogue firebombing, and he reiterated his support for them later on 4 February 2024 during a Canberra doorstop. Well, after the abovementioned security briefings were available to him.

By 21 February, the source which reported the bomb caravan as a terrorism plot was discredited. This meant only the hoaxes remained as a viable explanation for the incidents. We learned this timeline more recently from a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the response to the hoaxes.

Two days after we knew investigators had eliminated any working possibility that the nature of these incidents was anything but a hoax, Dutton and Minns were both attending a Sky News antisemitism summit.

At that event, Minns showed off his new laws again, two days after the possibility of the terrorism plot that inspired them had been discredited.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) spokesperson Alex Ryvchin talked about declaring a "national emergency", banning student encampments and removing academic freedoms, as well as toughening up the Migration Act to deport people they think are antisemites. Both mainstream political parties essentially co-signed Ryvchin’s fascist policy recommendations by attending the Sky News event.

Dutton was quick to start repeating Ryvchin’s deportation talk in the media, once again two days after the possibility of the terrorism plot that inspired them had been discredited.

These hoaxes were exposed throughout March, and that’s fresh in our minds as we head into the election. So I won’t dig that up again. All I want to make clear is that the organised crime figure who allegedly paid for these incidents was on to something, in his own way.

Liberal and Labor were both so eager to seize on a narrative about the insidious rise of unchecked antisemitism in this country that they took whatever bullshit was fed to them and used it. The drug dealer gave them what they were evidently desperate for, and they used what they were given to dismantle protest rights and threaten civil liberties, despite being highly likely to have known the circumstances fed to them would soon be discredited.

As a result, neither of the major parties deserves a mandate to run anything in this country.

I suggest we vote for the few parties and Independent candidates that have vocally stood up against the genocide and the raft of authoritarian domestic laws rushed through here to stifle local anti-genocide activism.

Our mainstream bipartisan overlords are pretty plainly shit-scared that this is exactly what many of us will do.

Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.