(JNi.media) Police are searching for individuals who carved anti-religious hate messages and large swastika on cars in a parking lot outside an apartment complex on the University of California Davis campus last Saturday. CBS interviewed Matthew Davidson, who snapped a picture of a large swastika keyed into the hood of 11 cars, along with the message “[Expletive] Jews.”
“It’s just shocking for me as a Jew to see such hatefulness right outside my doorstep,” Davidson said. His roommate’s tire was slashed, which she only discovered after getting onto the freeway. “It jeopardized her life,” he told CBS. “She was on the freeway and her car in danger, and everyone in the car in danger.”
“I am deeply troubled and disappointed that the campus community has experienced another incident that included damaged property and, even more grievously, offensive and disparaging slurs,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a statement. “This is conduct most unbecoming and completely against our principles of community.”
Last January, swastikas sprayed in red paint on the home of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi at UC Davis. A coalition of students and campus organizations condemned the act, declaring that “anti-Semitism, along with all other forms of hate, including, but not limited to, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, still exist and are rampant trans-nationally and on our university campuses.” Since then there have been at least two more anti-Semitic acts, but no expressions of Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, or misogyny.
Chancellor Linda Katehi also stated that “each of us has a responsibility to build and maintain a culture and climate based on mutual respect and caring. No matter what religious, political or personal beliefs we hold, as members of a university community we have an obligation to treat each other with respect and dignity.”
Still, it appears that of all the many religious, political and personal beliefs, so far only Jews have been targeted.
