Why would senior University of Queensland academic John Quiggin accuse Israel of Sydney caravan terror plot?

When criminals and academics unite against them, it might be difficult for Jewish Australians not to develop a persecution complex.

On Monday, a few hours after the Australian Federal Police said an explosives-filled caravan containing a list of Jewish targets was a “criminal con job”, one of the country’s prominent academic economists promoted a theory about the culprits: the Israeli Government.

“If you ask who has benefited from these fake attacks the answer is clear: they have bolstered support for the Israeli government and for the claim that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic,” Professor John Quiggin of the University of Queensland wrote on LinkedIn.

“If you then ask which globla [sic] organisation has the greatest capacity to run this kind of operation, while maintaining deniability and ensuring that no one is actually hurt, the answer is clear.”

After being asked by The Nightly if he was referring to Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, the professor quickly posted an updated theory.

He said the plot could have been orchestrated by Russia or Israel.

Conspiracy theory

No public information suggests any government was involved. The Federal Police’s Deputy Commissioner responsible for national security, Krissy Barrett, was explicit on Monday.

She said criminals overseas organised the fake threat as bargaining leverage with authorities.

The suggestion the Jewish state would conduct or threaten violence against other Jews for nefarious purposes is a type of conspiracy theory with a long history.

That it comes from an academic of Professor Quiggin’s standing is an example of the deeply entrenched hostility towards Israel among the left which has flourished during Israel’s bloody war with Hamas.

The professor is no obscure intellectual at a third-tier university. A columnist for The Guardian website, he holds the title Australian Laureate Fellow, which means he has been funded by the Australian Research Council to pursue world-class research. The Academy of the Social Sciences and other prestigious academic organisations have granted him membership.

“As I hope should be obvious, I have no evidence beyond what has been published,” Professor Quiggin told The Nightly on Tuesday. “I am merely offering conjectures.”

His university did not respond to request for comment.

Turning point

The discovery of the caravan was a turning point in the fight against anti-Semitism. Made public on January 29 by The Daily Telegraph, it was one of the driving forces for the introduction of minimum jail sentences for threatening violence against specific groups, a measure designed to protect Jews.

Parliament passed the changes a week after the caravan plot became public.

The Coalition supported the change, and got the government to agree to include threats against religious buildings, which included Sydney’s Central Synagogue, which was on a list found in the caravan with a note saying “f... the Jews”.

For those who looked closely, though, there were signs something was off. On February 4, the day before the hate crimes changes were introduced in Parliament, the Australian Jewish News reported: “Police are also looking into whether the caravan may have been planted to be found.”

Even the reporters who broke the story were wary. There was no detonator in the caravan, which was left partially blocking a country road until a resident towed it away for safety.

“Why would someone leave all this stuff out there in Sydney’s north west and leave these notes in there?” Daily Telegraph chief reporter Josh Hanrahan said at the time.

Others with more experience felt the same way.

Roman Quaedvlieg, a former Border Force head and ex-senior policeman, was troubled by how and where the caravan was found. “When I first heard about the caravan being discovered it felt wrong,” he said on Tuesday. “I couldn’t comfortably reconcile it with a legitimate attempt.”

The fear spreads

Without an authoritative voice to challenge the perception a horrific act of terror was being planned against Jews, fear spread. In Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where many Jews live, a friend of independent MP Allegra Spender described trying to shield her primary-school aged children from the threats the adults around them felt.

“They don’t understand why there are police constantly outside the schools, or why the guards have increased,” the friend said, according to Ms Spender. “They don’t understand why they can’t go on excursions anymore, why they’re not playing sport with others, or why they’re being told not to wear the school uniform in certain public places.”

At the same time, the mandatory sentences introduced on behalf of Jews may have triggered guilt in a community that knows well how legal systems meant to protect rights can suppress them.

One of the few community leaders to raise concerns was a well-known Jewish lawyer, drawing on the community’s long support for Indigenous Australians, a group likely to suffer when sentencing judges lose the discretion to consider personal circumstances. He asked not to be publicly identified because he did not want to seem ungrateful to the government and opposition for their support.

The news from the police on Monday was positive, in a weird way. None of the 29 people arrested by the NSW Police anti-Semitism taskforce, Pearl, including 14 on Monday, have “displayed any form of anti-Semitic ideology,” Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said.

The fact some perpetrators of anti-Jewish crimes are not neo-nazis or militant Islamists might make the problem sound a little less worse. But underlying the problem is a political environment that allowed a “rise in intolerance and hatred . . . to fester,” according to Jeremy Leibler, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Like all Jews, Mr Leibler is relieved the caravan plot was fake.

But he would like to hear what is happening in the investigation into what may have been the worst anti-Semitic attack in Australian history, the destruction of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue on December 6.

Maybe Professor Quiggin thinks that was an inside job too?