Anti-Semitic pejoratives scrawled on London Jewish school

Graffiti reading “Fuck the Jews” was discovered June 29 at the Simon Marks primary school in the east London.

By JTA

JULY 4, 2015 02:26

Members of the Jewish community in north London (photo credit: REUTERS) — Members of the Jewish community in north London

(photo credit: REUTERS)

Vandals scrawled anti-Semitic pejoratives on the gates of a Jewish elementary school in London.

The graffiti reading “Fuck 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 that were vandalized outside Skver Synagogue by a man wielding an axe or a hammer, according to Shomrim.

Figures released Friday by the Metropolitan Police show that anti-Semitic crimes rose last year by 138 percent, from 208 in 2013 to 495 in 2014, with some of the biggest increases 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 emphasize the importance of acknowledging and then combating 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.