London School Hit With Anti-Semitic Graffiti

By JTA July 3, 2015

Unidentified individuals scrawled anti-Semitic pejoratives at a Jewish elementary school in London.

The graffiti reading “F—- the Jews” was discovered this week at the Simon Marks primary school in the east London borough of Hackney, the Jewish News of London reported Wednesday.

A spokesman for the Jewish volunteer watch group Shomrim said: “It’s disturbing. They were nasty words. It’s being investigated at the moment – we’re checking out CCTV but no one has been caught yet.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a statement that the group was “deeply concerned” by the attack.

At a separate incident last week, two cars that were vandalized outside Skver Synagogue by a man wielding an axe or a hammer, according to Shomrim.

According to figures released Friday by the Metropolitan Police, anti-Semitic crimes rose last year by 138 percent over 2013, from 208 to 495, with some of the biggest increases occurring in the boroughs of Brent and Hackney.

“The alarming rise in reports of antisemitic incidents is disturbing and serves to emphasise the importance of acknowledging and then combatting discrimination which can cause British Jews to feel threatened and endangered,” said Jonathan Sacerdoti, director of communications at the grassroots Campaign Against Antisemitism group about the data.

Earlier this week, police ordered a group of neo-Nazis who planned to hold an anti-Semitic rally in the heavily-Jewish London area of Golders Green to move the event to central London.

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