‘Free Palestine’ scrawled on Los Angeles synagogue

“It seems that the perpetrators waited for congregants to enter and then sprayed the graffiti so that when they come out they should see it,” wrote Rabbi Yonah Bookstein.

By World Israel News Staff 

A Los Angeles synagogue located in the Fairfax district was vandalized on Wednesday morning. A photo on Twitter showed the graffiti, scrawled in red spray paint, reading, “Free Palestine.”

The tweet stated that the Baba Sale Congregation had been vandalized shortly after 5 a.m., when morning prayers were in progress.

“It seems that the perpetrators waited for congregants to enter and then sprayed the graffiti so that when they come out they should see it,” wrote Rabbi Yonah Bookstein of the Pico Shul, a different Los Angeles synagogue.

Police are reportedly investigating the incident.

Zev Opos, who is on the board of directors of the congregation, says that three female witnesses saw three men in hoodies drawing on the synagogue, according to the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. One of the witnesses described one of the suspects as “a tall African-American man,” Opos said, according to the Jewish newspaper.

On its website, the Journal shows video footage from the congregation documenting a hooded man carrying out the spray-painting, before driving off in a vehicle.

In his interview with the newspaper, Opos said that until now, there had only been “small graffiti incidents” at Baba Sale.

“We’re a Jewish house of worship that’s located 7500 miles from the Middle East where this conflict is taking place, and we came under attack solely for being Jewish,” Opos said, “because we as a congregation, we don’t take any political positions and we’ve never made any political statements,” he told the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

“Working with law enforcement on this shocking act of vandalism on a synagogue,” tweeted ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Los Angeles.

“As our annual audit reflects, anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in CA. Vandalism is never OK, blaming all Jews as a way of criticizing Israel is clear anti-Semitism,” the organization stated.

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