Australian judge says anti-Israel graffiti is not Jew-hatred

A man who pleaded guilty to vandalizing cars with the words “Fuk Israel” did not commit an act of Jew-hatred, an Australian Supreme Court judge determined in a ruling publicly released on Monday.

The man, Mohommed Farhat, was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison in November 2025, backdated to February of that year, for vandalizing cars and building walls in Woollahra, in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, with the words “Fuk Israel,” “PKK” (a reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey), “PKK is coming” and a middle-finger followed by the word “Israel.” Farhat also set a vehicle ablaze, per the judge’s ruling.

The New South Wales government had requested a one-year extended supervision order for Farhat, arguing that he is a terror risk. Desmond Fagan, a judge on the New South Wales Supreme Court, stated in his ruling that “a curse in those terms is not antisemitic, either self-evidently or by any degree of analysis or construction.

“It is a crude political expression of contempt and dismissal of a foreign state,” he wrote.

Fagan denied the state’s request. The state is considering an appeal, according to the Guardian.