World News

In Melbourne, masked men set fire to a storied synagogue. In Sydney, a synagogue was defaced with red swastikas spray painted along the fence, while a day care center was torched and scrawled with antisemitic slurs under the cover of night.

A rash of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks has rattled the Jewish community in Australia, home to the largest proportion of holocaust survivors outside Israel.

The latest attack was on the day care in Sydney, which was reported early Tuesday. In a statement Tuesday, the head of Australia’s federal police said that his agency was investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” had paid locals in Australia to carry out some of these acts. But he did not give evidence or further details.