For almost two years, Mohommed Farhat has been in prison after he pleaded guilty to 15 offences in connection with property damage, including spray-painting “Fuk Israel” on cars in Sydney’s east and setting another vehicle alight in late 2024. This week, the New South Wales supreme court justice Desmond Fagan ruled that police, lower courts and various state agencies all incorrectly labelled Farhat’s actions antisemitic, meaning he was treated more harshly. Fagan wrote in his judgment, released on Tuesday, that “Fuk Israel” was “a curse against a foreign state”.
He also criticised the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism as “detached from reality” and “inept”. Farhat’s case came before Fagan this year when the state tried and failed to cast him as a future terror threat based on what Fagan called the same “misconception” about his motivation. During a July hearing, Fagan told the parties: “This proceeding against this man seems to me to have been derailed and gone completely haywire right from the beginning by the police representation to the magistrate and submissions to the magistrate and again to the district court judge that this content was antisemitic.
And it’s erroneous.” On Wednesday, Fagan said that the case appeared to be a “serious miscarriage of justice”. Farhat, then 20, was remanded in custody in November 2024. He and a co-offender had spray-painted slogans on cars, defaced buildings and set alight a vehicle that was destroyed in Woollahra.
The graffiti included “Fuk Israel” and “PKK coming” – a reference to the Kurdistan Workers Party. Farhat pleaded guilty to the property damage offences but insisted he was recruited to do the graffiti by an unknown person. He said he was told what to write and was paid money and promised drugs.
The incident was the first of a spate of graffiti and arson attacks in Sydney’s eastern suburbs that summer which the Australian federal police later determined were carried out by paid criminals and orchestrated by organised crime figures. The magistrate determined the property offences were antisemitic and handed Farhat an aggravated sentence – 20 months in jail with a non-parole period of 10 months. He was due to be released on parole from early December 2025.
The magistrate set the parole period with a note that Farhat would be “better served with an extended period of supervision on parole, particularly around drug and alcohol and mental health interventions”. But the parole order was later revoked after a successful application by the commissioner of corrective services and the crown. The state then applied for a one-year extended supervision order (ESO) under the Terrorism Act, which would have subjected Farhat to 55 conditions on his release from jail.
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