A wave of vandalism and defacements directed at Ashkenazic Jews has spread to Jerusalem. It originated in Tel Aviv last week after police fatally shot a 29 year-old Oriental Jew, Shimon Yehoshua, in a clash with residents of Kfar Salameh, a slum neighborhood in the southern part of the city.
Swastikas and slogans, some of which read “Ashkenazis To Auschwitz and Treblinka”, were smeared on the home of Interior Minister Yosef Burg, on the walls of the Jerusalem Theater and on the Bank Leumi branch in the wealthy Rehavia district. Tires of parked cars were slashed in several Jerusalem districts last night.
Christian religious institutions were also smeared with swastikas and the warning “Get Out.”
President Yitzhak Navon condemned the vandalism and the shooting incident which apparently triggered it, in a statement yesterday. “The deep sorrow occasioned by the Kfar Salameh tragedy is shared by all of us, ” he said. “The full facts of this incident must certainly be investigated, but nothing can justify the criminal exploitation of this tragedy by irresponsible individuals.”
Tel Aviv police said they were summoned to Kfar Salameh because members of a large family hurled rocks at municipal workers sent to demolish a building declared unsafe, in which the family was living. They said they were fired on by Yehoshua and returned the fire, hitting him. He died at a hospital.
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