Anti-Semitic Graffiti Found in Small BC Park

Near the Hillside Centre mall in Victoria, B.C., playground equipment has been splattered with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Rabbi Meir Kaplan of Chabad of Vancouver Island received a call from a friend who had been passing through Clawthorpe Park, a children’s play lot at the corner of North Dairy Road and Clawthorpe Avenue.

When he noticed the out-of-place hate slurs, the man called Rabbi Kaplan to come and view the graffiti.

According to Victoria area police, the damage was caused sometime between 6 p.m. on May 10 and 5 p.m. May 11. Victoria city work crews have since removed the paint.

“It’s very, very shocking in the sense that it’s very unusual for Victoria, we have a quiet little town here, and very few incidents of anti Semitism,” Victoria area police told Shalom Life. “We’ve had the occasional anti-Zionist graffiti put on the wall of the JCC, but this is a kid who goes around spraying, according to police, anti-Asian remarks on Asian businesses and anti-Muslim remarks on Muslim businesses. This one in particular is just a very rare event, which makes it all the more shocking.”

According to police, the park is in an area where there have been a couple of drug houses at some point or other. “We don’t know very much about the inhabitants,” police have said.

“We’ve had a couple anti-Semitic things happen between kids at schools, we’ve called CJC and they’ve come in with their educational team and resolved things. But that’s been over the past five years. This in particular is just such an unusual incident.”

Police are still uncertain whether the perpetrator could be a resident in the area, but the confusion still exists.

“The only thing I can think of,” said police, “is that Chabad has only been here for a couple years now, and seeing an Orthodox Rabbi or anybody wearing ultra-Orthodox dress is quite unusual in Victoria.”

Apparently, this sort of thing is quite rare in Vancouver as well. “They don’t even have security on the JCC in Vancouver,” police told Shalom Life. “It’s just so laid back. We don’t bother with security here either it’s just such an unusual thing.”