(JTA) — Vandals scrawled anti-Semitic pejoratives on the gates of a Jewish elementary school in London.
The graffiti reading “F*** the Jews” was discovered June 29 at the Simon Marks primary school in the east London borough of Hackney, the Jewish News of London reported Wednesday.
“It’s disturbing,” said a spokesman for the Jewish volunteer watch group, Shomrim, which posted an alert on Twitter. “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.
Also on June 29, two cars were vandalized outside the Skver Synagogue by a man wielding an axe or a hammer, according to Shomrim.
Figures released Friday by the Metropolitan Police showed that anti-Semitic crimes rose last year by 138 percent, to 494 incidents from the 208 reported in 2013. Some of the biggest increases were seen in the boroughs of Brent and Hackney.
Jonathan Sacerdoti, the spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said the “alarming rise” in such incidents was disturbing.
It “serves to emphasise the importance of acknowledging and then combatting discrimination which can cause British Jews to feel threatened and endangered,” he said.
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.
