Victoria police have charged a man over an alleged Christmas Day arson attack on a rabbi’s car in Melbourne.
The car, with a billboard reading “Happy Chanukah” on its roof, was firebombed on Christmas morning.
Police arrested a 47-year-old Richmond man, on Tuesday morning.
The man faces multiple charges including six counts of criminal damage by fire, six counts of shop theft, three counts of obtaining property by deception, two counts of attempted theft from motor vehicle, theft from a motor vehicle and burglary.
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The man is scheduled to appear before the Melbourne magistrates court on Tuesday.
Emergency services responded to reports on Christmas Day that a car was on fire in the driveway of a property in St Kilda East, in Melbourne’s south-east.
Rabbi Effy Block, from the Chabad of St Kilda, said the targeted car belonged to a friend of his who is also a rabbi.
No one was inside the car at the time, but the occupants of the house – a woman and three children – were evacuated as a precaution, police said.
The incident came less than two weeks after the alleged terror attack that targeted Jews celebrating Hanukah at Sydney’s Bondi beach and claimed 15 lives.
After the car was firebombed, Naomi Levin, chief executive of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, said “the Australian Jewish community remains on edge”.
“This is a continuation of the daily fear the Jewish community has had to live in for the past two years, and even more so after Bondi,” Levin said at the time.
After the alleged arson attack, the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said in a statement posted online that she had been briefed by police about what “the community rightly fear is an antisemitic incident”.
“This is not what any family, street or community deserves to wake up to on Christmas Day in Australia,” Allan said.
“This little car has been driving around town spreading the Hanukkah and holiday cheer. I even saw one drive past when I was in Caulfield on Monday afternoon.”
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