Jewish groups warned police about ‘hate preachers’ multiple times before Bondi massacre

Australian Jewish groups repeatedly warned federal and state law enforcement agencies about radical Islamic hate preachers before last month’s Bondi massacre, but saw little action despite examples of clerics calling jihad the ­“solution” to the conflict in the Middle East, and describing Jews as “evil” and “cursed”.

This masthead can also reveal the Minns government was warned by antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal in February that its changes to racial incitement laws were “utterly unworkable” because they were too focused on the “likely effect” of conduct rather than the conduct itself.

Following the alleged terror attack, in which two gunmen killed 15 people at a Jewish celebration in Bondi, politicians and law enforcement agencies have promised a crackdown on so-called “hate preachers”.

No arrests have been made but this week AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett referred to a “flying squad of hate disruptors” who were focused on “high-harm, high-impact, politically motivated violence” and were examining a host of sermons which potentially incited hated against the Jewish community.

But Jewish groups including the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Jewish Board of Deputies have been raising concerns about rhetoric from some hardline preachers since the most recent outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East more than two years ago.

Along with radical cleric Wissam Haddad, this masthead has been told specific concerns were relayed to authorities about the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, as well as some clerics linked to Salafist group ASWJ.

They include a sermon given by a cleric linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir, Brother Mohammed Trad. First reported by The Australian, in late 2023 he called for “Muslim armies” to be the “final solution” to the conflict in Gaza.

During the sermon, which was given at the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown, run until recently by Haddad, Trad said the war in Gaza “has to be a spark for the Muslim community and the final solution”. Muslims, he said, should unite under a leader who “implements the sharia and sends Muslim armies to defend the lands of Islam”.

The Al Madina Centre, which Canterbury-Bankstown Council announced would be shut down last month, has long been linked to radical preachers.

In October 2023, after Hamas’ invasion of Israel, a cleric known only as “Brother Ismail” called Hamas “freedom fighters and warriors”, said jihad was the ­“solution” and praised the flags of ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

“If the Australian government likes it or not, if the ASIO likes it or not, if they want to deport me from Australia or not, jihad is the solution for the Islamic nation,” he said. “There is no other way to defend Muslims and erase this humiliation from the Islamic nation, but fighting for the sake of Allah.”

That sermon prompted NSW Police to launch an investigation, but the probe was dropped after officers determined he had not breached any laws.

This masthead was unable to contact Trad. Others, such as, Sheik Ahmed Zoud, who in December 2023 gave a sermon at the Masjid As-Sunnah mosque in Lakemba in which he said Jews “loved to shed blood” and “ran like rats” from Hamas terrorists on October 7, apologised after legal threats from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

The Minns government has since strengthened hate speech legislation by establishing a new section of the Crimes Act called 93ZAA, which made it a crime to intentionally and publicly incite hatred towards another person, or group of people, on the grounds of race. The law includes an exemption for quoting religious texts.

The laws were criticised at the time, and went against advice from the NSW Law Reform Commission which had baulked at new vilification laws partly because, it argued, terms such as “hatred” were too imprecise. This masthead reported this week that they had only led to two charges since they took effect in August.

However, this masthead can also reveal that in a submission made while the new bill was being drafted Segal urged the government to change “incitement” to “promote” hatred to ensure the law “captures the form of conduct which parliament intends”.

“Whilst the term ‘incite’ has been used in s93Z of the act and in civil vilification provisions for some time, it is utterly unworkable because it fixes the threshold of liability on the likely effect of the conduct on the audience, rather than the conduct itself,” the submission from the envoy states.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Attorney-General Michael Daley said the government had been “engaging” with the antisemitism envoy, and that the offence of inciting racial hatred would be subject to a review after 12 months.

“We have been very clear about the fact there is more work to do to prevent hate speech,” the spokeswoman said.

The issue of so-called hate preachers has come into focus since the Bondi shooting because of links between one of the alleged gunmen, Naveed Akram, and members of a Sydney ISIS terror cell which had been associated with preachers such as Haddad.

This masthead revealed last month that as far back as a decade ago senior members of Sydney’s Muslim community had urged police to take action against Haddad.

Ran Porat, an academic at Monash University who also works as a research associate for the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, said while law enforcement may have taken the threat of Islamic extremism seriously, it could be difficult for the legal system to grapple with the threat.

Some clerics, he said, spoke in “a sort of code”, with “certain sayings, or contexts” that were not immediately obvious to laypeople. He used the example of clerics referring to “the enemies of Islam”.

“They may not say ‘the Jews’, but those in the audience know they are speaking about Jews, or else mainstream Australians, or gay people,” he said.

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