Nearly two dozen headstones at an Ohio Jewish cemetery were defaced with “sickening” antisemitic graffiti over the weekend.
Officers discovered 23 headstones with graffiti scrawled on them in red spray paint after they were notified of the damage by a passerby at around 10:20am on Sunday, Brooklyn Police Department said.
The vandalism is believed to have taken place at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in Brooklyn, Ohio, sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to police.
No arrests have been made.
It comes amid a rise in hate crimes and incidents across the country targeting Jewish and Arab-Muslim communities since Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 people and took hundreds hostage across the Gaza border in an attack on Israel on 7 October.
Retaliatory air strikes by Israel launched since the attack have left over 11,000 Palestinians dead, and have prompted a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
The vandalism at the cemetery came as the war entered its fifth week.
The Jewish Federation of Cleveland, a nonprofit organization focused on the health and vitality of the Jewish community, condemned the vandalism, calling it “absolutely sickening”.
“It is absolutely sickening that anyone could have so much hate for the Jewish people that they would desecrate Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery,” the group said in a statement posted to X. “This cowardly act to violate the memory of our elders only confirms what we already know: the hatred of the Jewish community here and around the world now is at a level not seen in generations.”
The Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in Brooklyn, Ohio, where 23 headstones were vandalised with antisemitic graffiti— (Google Maps)
Volunteers from the local Jewish community gathered at the cemetery on Sunday and cleaned the graffiti from the headstones by hand.
The Anti-Defamation League said last month it had recorded a “significant spike in antisemitic incidents” since the 7 October attacks.
The organisation said 312 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault were recorded between 7 October and 23 October, compared to the same period last year when there was 64 reports.
The ADL added that more than half of the recent incidents were directly linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, said on Thursday it had received 1,283 requests for help since the attack as of 4 November, compared to 406 the previous year.
The US Justice Department raised the alarm bell regarding a spike in anti-Muslim hate crime last month after a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death by his landlord in an apparent “targeted” attack that was sparked by “on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis”.
The US Department of Homeland Security also warned last month of an increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate attacks occurring in the US amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“Targeted violence attacks may increase as the conflict progresses,” the department said.
