Swastika spray-painted on Brooklyn bus stop ad calling for end to anti-Semitism
A vandal spray-painted a pair of swastikas across a Brooklyn bus stop, scrawling one over an ad denouncing anti-Semitism, and authorities are hunting for the suspect behind the hate-fueled messages left in broad daylight.
“This must stop,” said Stacy Stewart, co-founder of the group JewBelong. “This type of hate followed by the deafening silence from supposedly good people should be abhorrent to anyone who stands for justice. You don’t have to be a historian to know that to be quiet about hate doesn’t stop the haters.”
The Borough Park anti-Semitism awareness ad, defaced Thursday afternoon with white spray paint, invoked the Holocaust amid the recent spate of Jewish hate crimes across the city.
A video captured a second swastika sprayed on the inside of the stop, the suspect casually sitting down to wait for a bus afterward.
“We’re just 75 years since the gas chambers,” read the ad’s message. “So no, a billboard calling out Jew hate isn’t an overreaction. #EndJewHate.”
According to a report last month from the watchdog Anti-Defamation League, hate crimes against Jews in New York State soared to the highest level in 2021 since the group began tracking the incidents in 1979. The numbers included 161 cases involving swastikas.
The annual assessment of hate reported 183 harassment incidents, 182 reports of vandalism and 51 assaults — a 325% jump from the dozen reported in 2020. Attacks on Jewish institutions increased as well, from 44 two years ago to 62 incidents targeting synagogues, schools and community centers, the report said.
Stewart noted that while Jews make up just 2.4% of the U.S. population, they are the targets of 58% of America’s hate crimes.
“The fact that our sign was spray-painted with a swastika, let alone in broad daylight, isn’t surprising,” said Stewart. “For more than a year now, Jews being spat on, slammed into cars and worse has become normalized.”
