Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus speaks to the media during a press conference in Sydney, Friday 31, March 2023. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect

Australia’s government announced on Tuesday a ban on doxxing — the act of leaking someone’s personal information online — responding to its use against Jewish professionals who support Israel.

The measure follows pro-Palestinian activists distributing last year a document listing the names of nearly a 1,000 Jews who were members of a “group chat” in the popular online messaging application WhatsApp, prompting waves of hate mail.

“The increasing use of online platforms to harm people through practices like doxxing, the malicious release of their personal information without their permission, is a deeply disturbing development,” Australia attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said in statements quoted by Associated Press. “The recent targeting of members of the Australian Jewish community through those practices like doxxing was shocking, but, sadly, this is far from being an isolated incident.”

The prohibitive measure will mandate the levying of fines on doxxers and require social media companies to remove from their websites the information they illicitly procured and shared, Associated Press reported.

Daniel Aghion, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, commended the government’s action and committed to “working with the government to ensure the full extent of the harm caused is understood and that the new laws effectively protect Australians from this shameful and dangerous practice,” AP added.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, hundreds of attacks on Jews — digital, political, and physical — have taken place in Australia since Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. Antisemitic activity has risen over 400 percent, including explosions of hate such as November’s attack on a Jewish man in a park in Sydney, as well as vandalism and threats of gun violence.

Last week, far-left politician Jenny Leong spread conspiracies about the “tentacles” of a so-called “Jewish lobby” and “Zionist lobby” influencing policy, an insidious expression of antisemitic demagoguery that was once limited to the fringes of the political spectrum but has now become mainstream in the pro-Palestinian movement.

“They [the Jewish and Zionist lobby] rock up to every community meeting and event to offer that connection because their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power and I think that we need to call that out and expose that,” Leong declared.

Australian leaders have called on the country to reject antisemitism, while in January the Federal Parliament passed legislation banning Nazi paraphernalia and the pantomiming of Nazi salutes in public.

“This is the first legislation of its kind and will ensure no one in Australia will be allowed to glorify or profit from acts and symbols that celebrate the Nazis and their evil ideology,” Mark Dreyfus said in a statement.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.