From the AJN comes an indepth article on the Coogee Synagogue attack:

‘Antisemitic’ attack at Coogee shul
MARK FRANKLIN
30/6/06

NSW Premier Morris lemma and Opposition Leader Peter Debnam have condemned an attack on Coogee Synagogue last Saturday night, which the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies has described as antisemitic vio1ence.

A window at Coogee Synagogue was smashed as an intruder broke into the prayer hail leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The handle to a Torah scroll was snapped, a silver headpiece damaged and smeared in blood, and the curtain from the Aron Hakodesh (Holy Ark) stolen.

The attack believed to be the first ever at the shul since it opened in 1965 took place just 10 days ahead of the official opening of the shul ’s $1 million redevelopment, which officials said will still take place on July5 in the presence of NSW Governor Professor Marie Bashir and Sir Nicholas Shehadie.

Coogee Synagogue president Harry Scbnapp told the AJN: “It was really a very strong spiritual injury … It was not like ordinary property damage. It hurt more, it hurt inside. They didn ’t break all the other expensive things; they went straight for the Torah.”

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Knoll and Community Security Group (CSG) head Kevin Rothschild both said the targeting of the Aron Hakodesh and Torah decorations suggest the attack was motivated by antisemitism, but NSW Police have refused to speculate about the motive.

Detectives and forensics officers spent four hours at the synagogue on Sunday. Detective Inspector Joe Gassar told the AJN DNA from the blood would be crosschecked with the police database. Maroubra Police have also begun an investigation.

The shul’s Torah scrolls have been inspected and were cleared of any damage to the parchment or text.

lemma released a statement describing the attack as “disgraceful and cowardly”. He said it was “deeply disturbing” that a place of worship was the target of an attack.

Debnam said not only was it an unnerving attack on the Jewish community, but also an attack on the fabric of our society.

On a visit to the site on Monday, Debnam attacked the NSW Government ’s allocation of resources to NSW Police. “We need to make a point. We need to jail someone over this,” he said.

Knoll congratulated the police for “responding very quickly and very thoroughly” to the incident. He said he would be happy “when they find the perpetrators and arrest them”, although nobody has been jailed for an antisemitic attack on a shul in NSW despite countless firebombings during the first Gulf War in 1991 and both intifadas.

The shul ’s longstanding rabbi, Elozer Gestetner, who was in London at the time of the attack, said he was “deeply saddened” by the news upon his return.

The attack comes less than a month after vandals blew up the intercorn device at North Shore Temple Emanuel in Chatswood, and just over a year after Newcastle Hebrew Congregation was daubed with antisemitic slogans and had several stained-glass windows smashed on erev Pesach 2005.

Although the CSG said the attack did not raise the threat level against the Jewish community, it issued a warning that “the community should be aware of similar incidents that could take place at other Jewish institutions in Sydney.” Coogee ’s new renovations have increased its capacity from 350 to 450; 15 stained glass windows have been added, and new leather seats have replaced the old vinyl benches.

The congregation was founded by Holocaust survivors in a private home in the l950s, and the shul first opened in its current location in 1965. Rabbi Gestetner has served the congregation which has more than 200 families for more than 20 years.

And this spot on editorial:

Words are not enough.

THE attacks on two Sydney synagogues in the past month are cause for Australian Jews to be alert, if not alarmed. On Sydney’s north shore, vandals blew up the intercom device at the gate of the temple, and in Coogee, the refurbished shul was desecrated although, thankfully, the damage was not significant.

Nonetheless, any attack on any house of worship – Jewish, Muslim, Christian or other – must be condemned in the strongest possible terms, and we note the immediate support of political leaders in NSW in response to these two incidents.

Having said that, however, words are not enough. In the past 15 years, numerous synagogues across Australia have been attacked, including six in Sydney during the first Gulf War in 1991, several in Melbourne during the two intifadas, and the Jewish centre in Canberra, which was firebombed with Molotov cocktails three times several years ago. Even in Newcastle, the city’s sole synagogue was the subject of what has been described as the worst attack in its history last year.

On each and every occasion police have failed to arrest the perpetrators. The single exception is in Perth, when, following the horrific attack on Perth Hebrew Congregation (PHC) in 2004, the perpetrators were arrested and jailed. Moreover, as we report this week, the Federal Government has kicked in with $60,000 in funding for PHC’s security. However, no such offer was given to Canberra’s Jewish centre and only now, thanks to the Jewish Communal Appeal, has the Canberra centre’s security been upgraded.

But the crux is this: why have the police – state and federal – failed so dismally in their task of finding the perpetrators of these attacks? This failure not only means the attackers are still on the loose, but it sends a virtual green light for others to carry out copycat attacks.

It is high time this country’s law-enforcement agencies – armed with video footage and forensic information – apprehend the perpetrators. Aside from anything else, race-hate crimes cannot and should not be tolerated in modern, multicultural Australia.