Just Days Before Holocaust Remembrance Day, More Swastikas Found at Syracuse University

Antisemitic graffiti depicting a swastika was found Friday in Marshall Square Mall, the Department of Public Safety reported Sunday. The graffiti was found in a men’s bathroom stall on the second floor of the mall, according to DPS bias incident report. Marshall Square Mall houses stores, restaurants and university classrooms. 

The incident is one of at least 22 racist, antisemitic and bias-related incidents to occur at or near SU since Nov. 7.

A swastika was found drawn in a snowbank near the 505 on Walnut, a luxury apartment complex on Nov. 14. Anti-Semitic graffiti depicting a swastika was found in Haven Hall two days later. 

Additional graffiti depicting a swastika was found in the lower level of Bird Library on Jan. 21. DPS has identified the individual responsible for the graffiti and referred the perpetrator to SU’s Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, DPS said in a campus-wide email. 

DPS will not share the perpetrator’s identity to comply with federal privacy laws, the department said.

SU professor Genevieve García de Müeller received a hostile, antisemitic email that referenced the Holocaust Nov. 19. She reportedly received “another racist threatening email” Dec. 20. The Syracuse Police Department is investigating both incidents.

DPS introduced a Bias Incident Reports website in late November to consolidate public safety updates. DPS previously provided alerts via email, but was advised by law enforcement that the repeated distribution of email notifications is likely to motivate copycats, DPS Chief Bobby Maldonado said in a campus-wide email Nov. 30. 

Monday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Belgium Paper Accusing ‘Zionists’ of ‘Playing Holocaust Card’

One of Belgian’s leading newspapers was excoriated by Israel’s ambassador in Brussels this week for publishing an opinion piece that amounted to what he called “cheap, distorted and devious antisemitism and anti-Israel drivel.”

The offending article — in the mass-circulation Flemish-language daily de Standaard — was authored by a Belgian journalist, Johan Depoortere. Titled “How the Zionists ‘Discovered’ the Holocaust,” the article’s appearance was timed to coincide with the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Illustrated with a photo of the followers of Neturei Karta — a miniscule group of ultra-Orthodox Jews who are bitterly opposed to the Zionist movement and shunned by the Jewish mainstream — Depoortere’s piece began with the observation that the millions of Jews exterminated by the Nazis cannot “protest if they are used to justify another injustice: a regime [Israel] that has imposed discrimination and apartheid in law.”

Several of the historical claims made by Depoortere in the article did not stand up under scrutiny. For example, he protested “[T]hat a people [the Palestinians] who did not participate in the massacre of European Jews by the Nazis have to pay the price for that crime or are accused of antisemitism,” with no mention of the alliance forged by the wartime Palestinian Arab leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, and the Nazi regime.

Depoortere also asserted that “the Holocaust occupies such a central place in the propaganda of the Zionist state,” describing this as a calculated response by the State of Israel to international criticism of its presence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem following its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.

“From that moment on, the Israeli propaganda and the defenders of Zionism played the Holocaust card uninhibited — also in our country,” Depoortere claimed.

The 75-year-old Depoortere spent several years as foreign correspondent for Belgian television, reporting from Lebanon, central America, Russia and Afghanistan among other locations.

Emmanuel Nahshon — Israel’s ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg — remarked on Twitter on Thursday that he had encountered the article while attending the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem. “Shame on you @destandaard!” Nahshon declared.

The controversy over Depoortere’s piece comes only a few months after another Flemish newspaper, De Morgen, published a viciously antisemitic article by its columnist Dimitri Verhulst in which he commented that “being Jewish is not a religion, no God would give creatures such an ugly nose.”

About 35,000 Jews live in Belgium.

Swastikas Found in New Zealand As Country Argues Over Not Sending Representative to Holocaust Memorial Ceremony in Israel

Neo-Nazi graffiti was discovered outside a synagogue in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

Yellow swastikas were spray-painted on and near Temple Sinai, also known as the Wellington Jewish Progressive Congregation. The word “Heil” was also painted.

“One swastika was painted on the synagogue, one on a nearby fence and several others on the footpath and a fence on The Terrace,” a Wellington City Council spokesperson told Newshub. “People looking after the synagogue were able to paint over the swastika really quickly before the council got there to help.”

Temple Sinai chair Matthew Smith told New Zealand Media and Entertainment, “Events in New Zealand over the past year and beyond have left us with a sense of insecurity and vulnerability. I’m upset by it and outraged by it—that we are targeted like that—but at the same time I’m not entirely surprised.”

The graffiti comes as Israel holds the Fifth World Holocaust Forum and will commemorate on Jan. 23 the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. New Zealand did not send any representatives to the event.

Gerry Brownlee, a foreign-affairs spokesperson for the opposition National Party, called the absence “disgraceful.”

“The Government has failed to send a single representative, not even the Governor-General or a Minister, to this significant event. We send Ministers and Members of Parliament to a number of events around the world, but not to this one,” he said. “The Holocaust was the most terrible crime against humanity; it is embarrassing New Zealand won’t be present at this event.”

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters accused Brownlee of “politicizing” the commemoration.

“Gerry Brownlee’s statement is belied by National’s past inactions, and it is disappointing to see politicizing of such an event,” he told Newshub in a statement in which he mentioned that New Zealand didn’t send a representative to the past two forums in 2010 and 2015.