Vandals attacked two synagogues and a supermarket in a Jewish neighborhood this past week, leaving behind a swastika and “KKK” scrawled on the city’s oldest conservative synagogue.
Two men were caught on surveillance video carrying a backpack and leaving the area of Temple Emanu-el, which was desecrated with the swastika and KKK [Ku Klux Klan], and one of them was arrested, according to the Miami Herald.
It was the firth attack by vandals in the neighborhood this summer, despite increased police patrols.
“The message is clear. It’s a message of hate and intolerance, and whenever you have intolerance, you have problems,” Temple Emanu-el Rabbi Marc Philippe told the newspaper.
He also said that a letter was left in the men’s bathroom two weeks ago with a message of condemnation of Israel’s treatment of Arabs.
A surveillance tape showed two men walking in the area of the temple in the middle of the night this past week at around the same time police received an anonymous call that the place of worship has been vandalized.
Police arrested one of the men, identified as 43-year-old Maximo De La Cruz-De Jesus.
Last Saturday, a swastika and the letters KKK also were scrawled on a supermarket, and “Iraq” and “Hamas” were written on the wall of a synagogue.
