Published: 10 July 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
AS MY HUSBAND and I were taking our regular after-dinner walk, I stopped dead in my tracks. My hand flew to my chest, like a character in an overly melodramatic play.
My husband turned his head to follow my gaze. There, spray-painted across a free-standing brick wall on the other side of the street, were the semi-literate and fully offensive words “DIE JEWISH.”
Despite the profusion of anti-Semitic graffiti blasted across newspapers and social media every day, there is a surreal feeling when you encounter it yourself in your own neighbourhood. This was our home — the same street we have traversed hundreds, if not thousands, of times in the past few months, confined to the distance our feet could cover during the pandemic.
Suddenly this expanse of my telescoped world was defaced with hatred. And we were the target of that hatred.
I called the police, but after long minutes of waiting, I gave up. We went home and I emailed my member of Parliament, trying to impress upon him the offensive nature of the graffiti as well as the importance of his timely response. I received an auto-reply.
My husband uploaded incident reports on the police and city council websites. We waited to hear that there would be some plan of action — that the anti-Semitic message would be removed immediately. Would my concern be taken seriously? Would anyone act on it?
Then it occurred to me to contact some of the most helpful, proactive women I knew: my fellow members of Nisa-Nashim, a network made up of Jewish and Muslim women across the United Kingdom.
FULL STORY I’m Jewish; she’s Muslim: we took down anti-Semitic graffiti in less than a day (JTA)
Photo: Police captured this image of graffiti found Wednesday on a synagogue in Irvine, California, in November 2018. The profane words have been blurred out
