An Orthodox high school in Tel Aviv was vandalized in an obvious hate crime, with slogans found early on Monday calling for the deaths of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and right-wing Jewish Home party chief Naftali Bennett.
“Bibi to the gas,” learn one in all the statements daubed on the partitions of the Bar Ilan yeshiva for arts and sciences, a spiritual high school for boys on Rothschild Boulevard.
Another slogan daubed in black mentioned, “Kahane is dead!” in reference to the far-right rabbi-politician Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in 1990. Alongside it, in crimson, was the phrase: “And what about Bennett?”
The vandalism additionally beneficial to “free Palestine,” and declared, “No pride in Apartheid.” The phrases “Antifa Zone” had been additionally scrawled on the constructing, a reference to the far-left American protest motion.
The chairman of the Tag Meir anti-racism group, Dr. Gadi Gvaryahu (L) vegetation a tree with the principal of the Bar Ilan yeshiva after a vandalism assault on May 21, 2018 (courtesy Tag Meir)
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of the Jewish Home party, accused the media of failing to spotlight the vandalism.
“A hate crime calling for the assassination of the prime minister and education minister on the walls of a school in Tel Aviv and for the Israeli media, it’s like it didn’t happen,” wrote Shaked on Twitter. “There are no push [notifications], no widespread coverage. Why are hate crimes only covered when the victim is on the left?”
The Tag Meir anti-racism group got here to plant an olive tree “as a symbol of peace and tolerance” with the school’s principal, Rabbi Benny Perl, the group mentioned in an assertion.
“We condemn all hate crimes and we came to the yeshiva in Tel Aviv, just as we come to any place where hate crimes and racism take place, in order to condemn, with disgust, the attackers and to strengthen those attacked,” mentioned the chairman of Tag Meir, Gadi Gvaryahu.
Perl, in an earlier Facebook put up, lamented sardonically: “If we were a mosque, Tag Meir would have come to give us a flower, the president would have come to carry the burden of his people, the media would have been compassionate and caressing… but we are a yeshiva.”
It was not instantly clear if the yeshiva had lodged a felony grievance, with some Hebrew information sources reporting earlier on Monday that the school administration was weighing whether or not to alert police to the vandalism.