NSW Premier Chris Minns has said he wants Mossad-linked Jewish security organisation conducting armed patrols of public events, despite police repeatedly warning that doing so would damage social cohesion.
Mr Minns told a Budget Estimate hearing last week that wants a trial allowing members of the controversial Community Security Group (CSG) to carry firearms in public, echoing statements he made after the Bondi Islamic terrorist attack.
Earlier this year the Premier transitioned NSW Police’s Operation Shelter, which was tasked with combatting anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia”, into a new Armed Response Command unit, which has 250 officers with access to long arm rifles and is assisted by 60 civilian Multicultural Liaison Officers.
But Mr Minns said on Wednesday he believed the Jewish community would not feel safe unless they were being protected by armed CSG members.
“Given Jewish community groups and security groups are already armed … for certain select events where there is a high risk of a potential mass shooting event, I think it needs to be trialled,” Mr Minns told ABC News.
He then made similar comments in the Senate hearing, saying the CSG was “already armed and protecting Jewish places of worship, community groups, centres, schools and synagogues”.
“I think it needs to be considered is that many people in the Jewish community will not go to public places unless there’s someone there who’s armed who can protect them,” he said in response to a question from Robert Borsak from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party.
Police Association NSW president Kevin Morton raised concerns about Mr Minns’ comments, saying he was confident the new Armed Response Command was able to protect the Jewish community.
“Only one organisation is given charge to protect the people of NSW and that is the NSW Police Force,” Mr Morton told The Australian.
“If one organisation is given permission to arm, where does it stop?”
The CSG is overseen by Jewish community peak body the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and is funded by the Council for Jewish Community Security (CJCS) NSW, which in turn operates under Australia’s most powerful Jewish lobby group, the left-wing Executive Council of Australia Jewry (ECAJ).
The ECAJ, the CJCS, and the NSW JBS also receive government funding, and the ECAJ alone was handed $124 million in taxpayer funding to provide “enhanced security for the Jewish community” in the Federal Budget in May.
Both the NSW JBD and the ECAJ, which are affiliated, have successfully lobbied Mr Minns to pass a series of new “hate-speech” and unconstitutional anti-protest laws, and NSW JBD President David Ossip regularly appears alongside the Premier at public events.
The CSG’s links to Israeli intelligence agencies Mossad and Shabak were confirmed when a tribunal last year ruled against a Jewish Australian Defence Force officer who lost his security clearance because ASIO found he was more loyal to Israel than Australia.
The officer joined the CSG and trained with them in Israel, and the tribunal heard he admitted to ASIO that he knew the Israeli government-funded CSG training courses were used as a recruitment pool for Mossad.
Another former CSG member told Deepcut News last year that “CSG has a long history as a recruiting ground for Israeli intelligence agencies” and has “an open two-way line of communication with these intelligence agencies”.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson told the royal commission into anti-Semitism in May and June that the force had serious reservations about arming the CSG in public, saying community protection was the responsibility of police.
“I think isolating a particular group for additional powers within our community is problematic. It creates a disconnect between groups. It can cause friction between groups if one particular element of society is afforded privileges that others aren’t,” he said.
He also told the commission that it could be looked upon as “showing favouritism” and that “allowing certain areas of society, no matter what those areas are, to have special privileges in relation to their security, would further fracture situations, which are fairly tenuous, and relationships that are fairly tenuous, between different groups”.
NSW Police has also previously contradicted claims by Mossad that Iran was behind alleged attacks on Jewish synagogues and businesses in Sydney and Melbourne.
ASIO boss Mike Burgess said last year that the spy agency had “credible information” an alleged attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea was conducted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) acting through a “layer cake of cut-outs”, including overseas organised crime, and was aimed at “messing with social cohesion”.
That alleged attack was used by federal and state governments to justify new “hate speech” laws, was instantly labelled an “act of terrorism” by police, and resulted in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committing more than $30 million for restoration and security.
After ASIO’s Iran assessment pro-Israel journalist Sharri Markson reported that confidential sources had confirmed Mossad assisted with the investigation, which also blamed Iran for the firebombing of kosher restaurant Lewis’s Continental Kitchen in Bondi.
Mossad then claimed to have identified a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp leader responsible for both Australian attacks, although it refused to confirm whether it had provided information to ASIO prior to Mr Burgess’s announcement.
But during the same week NSW Police said in a statement to parliament there was no evidence of the involvement of Iran or any other foreign agents in the 13 most serious attacks on the Jewish community in NSW since October 7, 2023, confirming they were all criminal con jobs like the Dural caravan hoax.
Mossad also immediately blamed the Bondi massacre on Iran, but Australian police have alleged the father-and-son Islamic terrorists were inspired by ISIS.
Header image: Left, Chris Minns at a memorial for victims of the Bondi Islamic terrorist attack. Right, Mr Minns with Mr Ossip (NSW premier).
