Swastikas were scrawled on the walls of two synagogues in Bnei Brak on Saturday, with Israel Police opening an investigation on the antisemitic act of vandalism.
“A sense of shock and dismay has filled the community praying in Young Israel,” said the synagogue’s rabbi, Asher Landau. “Many Holocaust survivors, sons to Holocaust survivors, pray in this synagogue.”
Photos of Shira Banki, who was murdered in the Jerusalem Pride Parade in 2015, were scattered in front of the entrance to the Young Israel synagogue. Friday marked six years since the murder took place.
In 2005, Yishai Schlissel, a haredi resident of Modi’in Illit, stabbed several people at that year’s pride parade; he served 10 years in prison until he was released, just weeks before carrying out the 2015 attack, where he stabbed six people at the Jerusalem parade, including Banki, who died three days later.
Ori Banki, Shira’s father, called the use of his daughter’s image in the act of vandalism a “punch in the gut. This disgusting act is the opposite of what Shira believed in,” he father said in an interview with 103FM on Sunday. “Whoever did this is not only a criminal, he must have an issue with his grasp of reality.”
Labor MK and Reform Rabbi Gilad Kariv said on Saturday night: “The swastikas painted on the walls of the synagogue in Bnei Brak are a despicable, dangerous and disgusting act. The dumping of photos of the late Shira Banki on the spot only adds to the ugliness of the act and desecrates her memory and the message her parents have been carrying since her murder.”
United Torah Judaism (UTJ) MK Yakov Asher commented on the incident, saying: “The bullying rampage and spray-painting of swastikas on a synagogue in Bnei Brak on Shabbat is the rotten fruit of continued and unbridled incitement against everything that smells of Judaism and haredim.”
Asher expressed hope that he would be able to pass an amendment to expand the legal definition of racism to include incitement against haredim.
“These sights that came to the forefront of the city of Bnei Brak are a clear result of [Finance Minister Avigdor] Liberman’s incitement, which lasted for many months in an attempt to bring about division and polarization in the people,” said UTJ MK Uri Maklev. “Most of the Israeli public dislikes this, but the system of slander and defamation by the Left and media leads to terrible cases such as these. Such cases must not get on the agenda; this is not the first case that has taken place.”
Maklev said that he had contacted the chief of police to find out how they are dealing with the matter, and called on Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev to exhaust the investigation until it is completed.