June 11, 2012
Yad Vashem hit with anti-Israel, anti-Semitic graffiti
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Workers clean graffiti sprayed at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on June 11. Photo by REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Vandals spray painted anti-Israel and anti-Semitic graffiti at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.
The slogans written in Hebrew, including “Hitler, thank you for the Holocaust,” “If Hitler did not exist, the Zionists would have invented him,” and “The war of the Zionist regime is not the war of the Jewish people,” were mostly found at the entrance to the museum and concentrated near the Warsaw Ghetto Square and the memorial to the deportees.
Police reportedly believe that haredi Jewish extremists, who are opposed to the state of Israel, believing that it should not be established until the arrival of the Messiah, are responsible for the crime, which occurred early Monday morning.
Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev, who is a Holocaust survivor, called the vandalism a “blatant act of hatred of Israel and Zionism,” and said that it “crosses a red line.”
