NSW ‘seeking urgent advice’ on controversial court ruling that found anti-Israel vandalism was not antisemitic

NSW Government Weighs Appeal After Judge Rules Anti-Israel Graffiti Was Political Speech, Not Antisemitism

Wanderstayfinder.com – The New South Wales government is moving quickly to determine whether it will challenge a Supreme Court decision that has upended the state’s attempt to keep a young man under extended terror supervision after his release from prison. Justice Desmond Fagan’s written judgment, released on Tuesday, concluded that the act of scrawling “Fuk Israel” across parked cars and igniting another vehicle in Sydney’s eastern suburbs constituted political commentary rather than antisemitism — a finding that has sent shockwaves through both the Jewish community and government corridors in Sydney.

The Case Behind the Ruling

Mohommed Farhat, now 22, pleaded guilty in late 2024 to fifteen offences connected with property damage in Woollahra. Among the charges were counts relating to writing slogans on vehicles and setting one car alight. Following his conviction, the state sought a one-year extended supervision order under the Terrorism Act, arguing that Farhat posed a continuing threat upon his expected parole release in early December 2025. Fagan rejected that application, finding the risk of Farhat committing a serious terrorism offence to be “insignificant.”

Central to the judge’s reasoning was intelligence material placed before the Supreme Court showing that counter-terrorism police, just three weeks after Farhat’s November 2024 arrest, had concluded he was not ideologically driven. Instead, they determined he had been recruited and paid to produce the slogans. That information, Fagan found, was never passed to the prosecution team, nor to the magistrate who handed down Farhat’s sentence. It was also withheld before the state moved to characterise Farhat — who bears a Hezbollah tattoo on his neck — as a terror threat warranting post-release supervision.

Fagan described the cumulative effect of those failures as what appeared to be

“a serious miscarriage of justice.”

The judge noted that lower courts and several state agencies had incorrectly categorised Farhat’s conduct as antisemitic, a mislabelling that, in his view, led to Farhat being treated more harshly than the facts warranted. Farhat remains in custody despite his original parole eligibility date having passed.

Drawing the Line Between Anti-Israel Sentiment and Antisemitism

A substantial portion of Fagan’s judgment was devoted to parsing the distinction between criticism directed at Israel as a state and prejudice directed at Jewish people as a group. He was sharply critical of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which had been cited in the crown’s evidence. That definition is currently being pushed into Australian institutional practice following the appointment of special envoy Jillian Segal, whose government-backed plan states:

“The envoy will work with state and federal governments to require the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to be used across all levels of government and public institutions to inform their practical understanding of antisemitism.”

Fagan’s scepticism toward the IHRA framework lands at a moment when Australian governments are actively embedding that definition into policy language. His judgment suggests that adopting the definition wholesale, without judicial scrutiny of its boundaries, risks conflating legitimate political dissent with bigotry — a distinction the court found the state had failed to make in Farhat’s case.

Jewish Community Reaction

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the country’s peak Jewish representative body, responded swiftly. It labelled Fagan’s decision an example of dangerous judicial “activism” that warranted formal review. The council argued the ruling sidestepped

“the community impact”

of sustained anti-Israel vandalism, suggesting that the court’s narrow legal framing overlooked the lived experience of Jewish residents who have reported feeling targeted by such acts.

Government Response and the Appeal Question

On Thursday, a government spokesperson confirmed that Attorney General Michael Daley was

“seeking urgent advice about the prospects of an appeal”

over Fagan’s refusal of the extended supervision order. When asked about the judge’s specific findings regarding police and inter-agency failures, the spokesperson pointed to the independence of the judiciary as a foundational principle of NSW governance and noted that the government had taken “strong action against antisemitism and hatred.” Because the matter remained before the courts and the attorney general was still obtaining legal advice, no further comment was offered.

Police Minister Yasmin Catley and Corrections Minister Anoulack Chanthivong were also approached for comment on the operational failures identified in the judgment. No separate statements were issued.

Parliamentary and Watchdog Scrutiny

Greens MP Sue Higginson moved quickly to place the police failures under formal examination. On Thursday she wrote to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission requesting an urgent investigation into how NSW Police handled the Farhat matter. In her letter she expressed being

“gravely concerned systemic or deliberate maladministration has resulted in a severe miscarriage of justice.”

She added that the

“material failure of police to provide critical evidence to the court has resulted in Mr Farhat’s prolonged and quite possibly wrongful incarceration, as well as serious errors of fact and law.”

Lecc chief executive Peter Johnson SC acknowledged the request during Thursday’s budget estimates hearing, confirming the commission was considering it. NSW Police, in a Friday statement, said the matter was

“currently under internal police investigation and as such no further information can be released to the media at this time to protect the integrity of the investigation.”

Broader Implications

The ruling sits at the intersection of several contested questions in Australian public life: where the line falls between state criticism and ethnic hatred, how intelligence agencies share information with prosecutors and courts, and whether extended supervision orders under the Terrorism Act should be available where the underlying conduct was, in the judge’s words, paid-for political theatre rather than ideological terrorism. For Farhat, the immediate consequence is continued detention beyond his original release date while the state decides whether to appeal. For policymakers, the judgment complicates the ongoing effort to codify a single institutional definition of antisemitism across government and public bodies. And for the broader community, it raises the question of whether a court’s willingness to second-guess the labels applied by police and prosecutors signals a necessary correction or an overreach into executive discretion.