Targeted for Being Jewish: Swastikas Spray-Painted on a Jewish Family’s Home in Australia

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Unknown vandals spray-painted swastikas and hate-filled graffiti on the fence of a Jewish family's home in Adelaide, South Australia, in the early hours of Saturday morning. South Australia Police opened an investigation and launched a search for two suspects captured on security cameras arriving at the scene in a dark-colored vehicle before approaching the property. Police stated that the family was targeted because of their Jewish identity and made clear that the attack constituted an antisemitic act with no place in Australian society.

The head of the family, Rusty Sverdlov, spoke to N12 and described how, despite the shock of discovering the vandalism, he made a deliberate decision not to remove the graffiti from the fence. His reasoning was unambiguous: he wants the public to confront the severity of what happened and see with their own eyes what his family endured. "All the neighbors and all the friends offered to help me clean the fence," he said. "If I clean it, I'm covering it up — I'm basically erasing it. I want everyone to see what was done to my family, that we were marked as a target. This is not a public Jewish institution; they want to get to families and children."

Sverdlov described the moment he grasped the true nature of what he was looking at: "I saw graffiti and thought to myself, 'the neighborhood has deteriorated so much' — but then I started to read what was written, and suddenly I saw a massive swastika right in front of my eyes and realized this was something else entirely. This Shabbat became, for me, a dividing line between before and after — just as October 7 was."

Superintendent Scott Fitzgerald of South Australia Police confirmed that security footage from a neighboring property recorded a dark-colored vehicle arriving at the scene, from which two individuals emerged and approached the family's home. "We want to speak with those people," Fitzgerald said. "We believe the use of these symbols and messages was motivated by the fact that the residents are Jewish. There is no place for antisemitism in South Australia, and we condemn these actions in the strongest possible terms." Fitzgerald also announced that police would increase patrols in the area to bolster the family's sense of security.

Sverdlov used the incident to level sharp criticism at the Australian government, arguing that the policies led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have fostered, in his view, an environment in which antisemites feel emboldened to act openly. "I want these swastikas to remain there as long as possible," he said, "so that the entire world can see the reality of Australian policy."

The incident comes just two days after The Australian newspaper published an investigation presenting testimony from patients and medical professionals documenting a surge in antisemitism within Australia's healthcare system since October 7. According to the investigation, Jewish patients in several cases suffered deliberate harm during medical treatment — leading many in the Jewish community to avoid seeking care altogether and to conceal their identity out of fear.