Arabic version: محكمة ترفض وصف معاداة السامية في قضية تخريب بسيدني

According to ABC News, the NSW Supreme Court has found that Mohommed Farhat, who admitted to vandalism offences in Sydney’s east, was not acting as an “antisemitic bigot” but as a “vandal for hire”. The court dismissed the State’s application for a year-long extended supervision order to begin when his jail sentence expires.

Farhat, 22, pleaded guilty to 15 offences connected to vandalism in Woollahra in November 2024. Vehicles were sprayed with slogans including “F*** Israel” and “PKK coming”. He had been sentenced to one year and eight months, with an expiry date in October 2026. A successful supervision application would have imposed 55 strict conditions that the court said would have been highly restrictive of his liberty.

Justice Desmond Fagan found that Farhat had been “incited and directed” by another person to carry out the crimes in exchange for $4,000 and an unspecified quantity of drugs. The judge said Farhat did not intend to express hatred of Jewish people. Justice Fagan described the “F*** Israel” slogans as crude expressions of political hostility to Israel and a curse against a foreign state, rather than antisemitic statements under the ordinary Australian understanding of the term.

The judge said the slogans’ location in an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents did not give them an antisemitic character. While the damage, vulgarity and intimidatory effect increased the seriousness of the offences, he found there was no antisemitic implication. Justice Fagan also said police statements, intelligence reports and prosecution submissions had adopted the antisemitic characterisation without sufficient analysis, leading to a wrongly applied label and injustice to Farhat.

In his reasons, Justice Fagan criticised the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance formulation on antisemitism as verbose and imprecise, saying it did not reflect established Australian usage. Farhat had previously said drugs and negative influences had taken over his life at the time of the offending, and that he did not understand the impact on Jewish and Turkish communities.