Clandestine protestors took to the streets of Los Angeles with spray cans of paint, which is a very traditional Los Angeles way of making oneself heard. The topic this time is Hamas and Israel’s terrible war. Headlines around the graffiti declare that the LAPD is investigating a “possible” hate crime in LA’s Hasidic Jewish Fairfax District.
To say “Free Gaza” is not a hate crime; it is a call for an oppressed people to be free. To say “Israel’s only religion is capitalism” may not be incorrect, and disagreement with a corrupt government is certainly not hate. Spray painting on a mural honoring the history of the Los Angeles Jewish community is probably anti-semitic. Spray painting stuff around places of worship and in a traditionally Jewish neighborhood seems intended to scare Jewish folks, which is very anti-semitic.
Israel and Judaism are not the same things. Hamas and the Palestinian people are not the same things. It is possible to be Jewish or Palestinian and just want the suffering to end, and not to wish harm or fear on anyone.
Police responded to the 400 block of North Fairfax Avenue, where earlier in the day images posted on X, formerly Twitter, showed the wall of the Jewish restaurant’s parking lot painted with the words “Free Gaza” and “Israels only religion is capitalism” in white graffiti.
“How many dead in the name of greed?” read another message under a black-and-white picture of the Canter’s Deli storefront.
The words were scrawled under the Fairfax Community Mural, by artist Art Mortimer. Unveiled in 1985, the mural showcases the history of Los Angeles Jews through enlarged photographs from the earliest days of the Jewish community in the city…
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The location of the second incident is near the synagogue Congregation Bais Yehuda, where Rabbi Yosef Mishulovin told The Times that he had gone Wednesday morning to pray when he saw graffiti there that also read “Free Gaza.”
Mishulovin said he found similar graffiti later that morning in front of his store, Chabad-Atara’s Judaica, where the message “Free Gaza” was spray-painted on the walkway.
