‘Death to Palestine’: Islamophobic graffiti sprayed in woman’s driveway referred to police

Police on Saturday confirmed detectives were investigating after the offensive graffiti was reported on Friday.

Manessis said the council worker who cleaned the graffiti off her driveway revealed he had cleaned similar messages off a nearby street weeks earlier.

The mother of four said she did not fear for her safety following the vandalism and intended to join protesters marching through Melbourne on Sunday.

“If anything it’ll make me louder,” she said. “It won’t silence us.”

Wolahan, the federal member for Menzies in Melbourne’s north-east, said the matter had been referred to police and called on expressions of hate, like this, to stop.

“I have seen reports of reprehensible anti-Islamic graffiti in my electorate. I have reached out to local police, who are investigating. The line between the legitimate expression of highly charged emotions and ugly hate looks like this,” he said.

Islamophobia Register, which records, reports and analyses incidents of Islamophobia Australia-wide, said the graffiti was part of a massive uptick in recorded incidents since Hamas’ attack on October 7.

“The victim, a non-Muslim woman named Rita Manessis, believes she was targeted as she’s shown open support for the Palestinian cause,” the organisation said in a statement.

It knew of other Islamophobic incidents throughout Australia, including multiple incidents where women had hijabs pulled off, and a physical attack on a family, who the register says were called “black Muslim refugees” by their assailants.

Islamophobia Register also said it had observed a 39-fold increase in incidents at university campuses.

“Nowhere in Australia is immune to the scourge of Islamophobia,” the group said.

Senior federal minister Tony Burke labelled the graffiti “disgusting” and said all forms of hate speech were wrong.

“I won’t repost the images but I have seen disgusting examples of graffiti [that] is dehumanising of Palestinians and other examples that are clear Islamophobia circulating online. Bigotry is always wrong. All forms of hate speech are wrong. It’s not freedom of speech,” Burke wrote on social media platform X.