Victoria State Police car on duty on a street of Melbourne, Australia, in 2013. (Getty Images)

(JTA) — Police in the Melbourne, Australia, area have arrested a man who they say threw a “packet of bacon” at someone who interrupted his attempts at antisemitic graffiti.

The arrest, announced Tuesday, is the latest in a string as police crack down on antisemitic incidents in Melbourne and Sydney, home to Australia’s two largest Jewish communities.

The incident took place in a park on Jan. 31, the Victoria Police said in a press release. A 68-year-old man was seen allegedly scrawling “prejudice motivated graffiti” on a fence when “a passerby approached the male offender and was spat on and had a packet of bacon thrown at him,” the statement said. He was charged with three crimes including “offensive graffiti.”

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“There is absolutely no place at all in our society for antisemitic or hate-based symbols and behaviour,” the police statement said. “Police will always treat reports of such crime seriously.”

The mayor of the suburb where the incident took place said it was a “cowardly” attack meant to stir fear in local Jews who are already reeling from the arson of a prominent synagogue in December.

Officials in Sydney say they believe actors paid by foreign governments are behind many of the recent antisemitic incidents there.

Bacon and other pig products, which are not kosher to eat under Jewish law, have been used in antisemitic assaults before and have historically shown up in antisemitic imagery. In January 2020, an upstate New York woman was charged with a hate crime after allegedly throwing pork at a local synagogue in the middle of the night.

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