Police Reveal “Fake Terror Plot”, After Politicians Spread False “Antisemitic” Motivation

So, it’s official, the spate of so-called “antisemitic” attacks that took place on Gadigal land in and around Sydney commencing in October 2024 and continuing until 2 February 2025, were an elaborate hoax coordinated by domestic and offshore criminal elements, who paid “offenders working in the criminal gig economy” to perpetrate the crimes.

Yet, what we’ll perhaps never be privy to is how those coordinating the crimes considered that staged attacks against the Jewish community might hold enough political capital to whip up a storm to distract law enforcement and send the establishment into a spin.

During a press conference on Monday, NSW deputy police commissioner Dave Hudson outlined that his agency’s Strike Force Pearl had executed eleven search warrants and three firearm prohibition order searches across the Greater Sydney region at 6 am that morning to arrest 14 individuals in relation to fake terror incidents, none of whom were expected to harbour any antisemitic ideology.

Australian federal police deputy commissioner Krissy Barrett then spoke to the press about Operation Kissinger, a NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) inquiry, to confirm that earlier suggestions that a caravan found on a property in the northwestern Sydney suburb of Dural was a setup were true and that this had been understood “within hours” of its 19 January discovery.

The reason the JCTT did not inform the public about the caravan full of explosives on finding it, or elaborate upon the full details when its discovery was leaked to the press ten days later, was that they suspected it “was an elaborate scheme contrived by organised criminals”, and they didn’t want to tip those behind it off to the fact that they were on to them.

The 10 March announcement regarding the reasons why police kept mum about the caravan inquiry while it was underway is generally understood by the public, however what’s now causing consternation is why the Minns government decided to promote the incident as a “potential mass casualty event” and term it “terrorism”, ten days after it was understood to be a likely setup.

A convenient distraction

“Very quickly following the detection of the caravan, it was identified that there was strong and significant crossover between Strike Force Pearl and Operation Kissinger,” said NSW police deputy commissioner Hudson on Monday.

This meant there was evidence linking the obviously staged caravan incident to the spate of “antisemitic” graffiti and arson attacks that, as of Monday, we now know were all part of an organised crime plot to provide certain individuals arrested over serious criminal offences with a bargaining chip to lessen their punishment on conviction.

“It is apparent that the incidents being investigated by both Pearl and Kissinger were orchestrated by an organised crime element and were conducted to further their own causes,” Hudson, who first flagged the “setup” scenario publicly on 30 January. “None of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology.”

Section 23 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) permits courts to provide a sentencing discount to an accused for assistance provided to police in regard to the offence they’re being sentenced in respect of or any unrelated crime. And this discount can be up to 25 percent of the overall penalty handed down.

“Those creating fake terror threats, including using antisemitism to elicit a desired response from law enforcement or the courts, face being charged for creating fake plots,” AFP deputy commissioner Barrett made clear on Monday, “unfortunately for them, they will face the full experience, capability and dogged determination of terrorism investigators.”

A convenient terror scare

Barrett outlined that the “fake terrorism plot” consisted of ringleaders, who haven’t been apprehended as yet, organising local criminals to find a caravan, load it with expired forty-year-old explosives, devoid of any detonator, along with antisemitic messaging and leave it in a location to later allow someone to inform police of a pending antisemitic attack plot to achieve their own gains.

The reason the confirmation that the caravan threat was a fake has so upset the constituency, and especially the local Jewish community, is they’d been caught in the gripes of a fear campaign over December and January, and despite the AFP understanding “within hours” that the incident was likely staged, the political establishment then ran with a terrorism version of events ten days later.

NSW premier Chris Minns on Tuesday had to run a gauntlet of questions regarding “the public benefit” of his decision to describe the incident “as terrorism at the time” the caravan was revealed to the public.

Minns then told the press that “once it was revealed in the newspapers” the threat had to be taken “incredibly seriously”, and that it’s reasonable to assume that the NSW police and the state government should investigate the incident for “the worst possible potential exposure to the public”, and he added that the caravan came amongst other firebombings and attempts to burn synagogues.

“So, based on all that information, the attacks prior to and after the discovery of the caravan it would have been negligent not to take this incredibly seriously,” Minns said, as he avoided directly answering, and he added that when the “motivations of those… responsible came to light” he wasn’t in a “position to hold a press conference to say, ‘By the way, the circumstances have changed.’”

These lines of inquiry continued for 13 minutes on 11 March, as Minns fielded similar questions regarding his decision to highlight the potential antisemitic terror plot, despite his being briefed on inquiry developments every three days. The premier added that he couldn’t tell reporters when he’d actually been informed that the caravan was a ruse, as he’d have to double check his notes.

A convenient political tool

Prime minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that he’d “known for some time” that the caravan full of expired explosives with no accompanying detonator to set them off was a hoax to reporters on Wednesday. However, he failed to pinpoint when he was told, but he said he’d decided to stay out of the matter to allow law enforcement to solve the crime.

“While it was a hoax and the motivation was about criminal activities and not related to those issues,” Albanese told the press on 12 March, “the fear that it created was very real, and it is absolutely understandable that people felt that fear.”

But while both Labor leaders, Albanese and Minns, have been quick to highlight that the so-called antisemitic attacks being staged bore no relevance upon the impact the wave of crimes had upon Jewish Australians who believed them to be legitimate attacks at their height, they’ve avoided addressing the lawmaking bonanzas both politicians conducted in response to the incidents.

Not only did the Minns government pass three pieces of severe law-and-order legislation in response to the fake antisemitic attacks, but the Albanese government permitted the addition of draconian minimum sentencing amendments to be added to the swag of federal hate crime laws he was rushing through in response to the fake antisemitic crimes.

“This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event, there’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism,” Chris Minns told the press directly after the explosives in the caravan incident had been leaked to the press.

“There’s bad actors in our community, badly motivated, bad ideologies, bad morals, bad ethics, bad people,” the NSW premier added at a point in time when its uncertain if he was already aware that the Joint Counter Terrorism Team considered the caravan incident was a red herring.