Mexican Synagogue Vandalized Twice With ‘Dogs’ Graffiti Amid UNESCO Vote Drama
— Vandals broke glass windows, smashed furniture, and painted graffiti on the walls of Mexico City’s Agudas Ajim synagogue in two separate attacks.
The attackers used red paint simulating blood to write the word “perros,” which means dogs, and the letter “A” for anarchy, in last week’s incidents.
The vandalism occurred after local Jewish leaders launched a public campaign to urge government officials not to vote in favor of a UNESCO committee proposal that denies Jewish ties to Jerusalem holy sites.
Mexico voted in favor of the resolution and the fight was apparently lost. However, on October 17, the country changed its vote to abstention and fired its Jewish ambassador to UNESCO, Andre Roemer, for protesting against the initial vote, according to a statement.
An unnamed organized group is believed to have perpetrated the synagogue attacks, according to local Jewish security officials who kept the security alert during the Sukkot festivities high in the Latin American nation, reported Iton Gadol news service.
Mexico is home to some 50,000 Jews, making it Latin America’s third largest Jewish population after Argentina and Brazil.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO