Mohommed Farhat, 22, caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage two years ago by vandalizing cars and property in New South Wales, Australia, spray painting them with “F— Israel” and “PKK coming,” but a judge ruled that this was not antisemitic and that he should not be put on a terror watch list.

The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is a Kurdish armed militant group that is designated by the United States, Turkey, the European Union and other nations as a terrorist organization.

Farhat pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison.

In a ruling this week, Justice Desmond Fagan said that criticism of Israel should not be conflated with hatred of Jews and rejected the state’s bid to put Farhat on a terrorism watch list.

Prosecutor Patricia McDonald argued that evidence taken from his phone and his acts of vandalism pointed to a path of extremism for the Hezbollah-tattoo-sporting vandal. Fagan countered that discussions between young men expressing their hostility to Israel as a result of what he said were Israel’s actions impacting their families did not constitute not antisemitism. He pointed out that thousands of people in NSW express hostility to Israel, including Jews.

“You are treating all Jews as monolithic,” Fagan told the prosecutor.

“It’s quite wrong to treat all Jews as supporting Israel, because they don’t,” he added. “But you treat a statement of hostility to Israel as a statement of hostility to the Jewish people, which it is not.”

But as critics have pointed out, half of the world’s Jews live in Israel, and hate against Israelis is also unacceptable. It remains to be seen if the judge will eat his own words one day. An obvious radical like Farhat may one day go further than defacing cars.