Police unable to explain why they dismantled antisemitism taskforce

It’s a toss-up which has been more disturbing at the Royal Commission this week: the evidence inside the hearings or the frightening response outside.

The daily hearings have highlighted a litany of failures by the NSW police in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre. In parallel with these lapses, however, the public has learned that Jews who gave evidence to the Commission about their lived experience of antisemitism have been subjected to online hatred as a result of coming forward to testify. Research has found more than 1,000 posts and comments directed towards the Royal Commission and witnesses.

After a week of testimony from the heads of intelligence, security and police services, the community is faced with a conundrum: is there something rotten within the NSW police, or is it merely guilty of a series of clumsy mistakes, the product of poor judgment and communication? Either way, Jews have paid a heavy price for its failures.

At Tuesday’s hearings of the Royal Commission, the public was told that in the lead-up to the Bondi terror attack, NSW Police dismantled a taskforce, “Operation Shelter”, set up in 2023 after the October 7 Hamas attack to combat antisemitism, share intelligence and patrol high-risk Jewish events. The Jewish community was not told of the decision.

Police commanders giving testimony refused to say who made the decision or why.

However, in NSW Parliament yesterday, the NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley maintained that Operation Shelter “never ceased”, despite evidence given to the Commission that it did not exist at the time of the Bondi terror attack.