Students at the Or Menachem yeshiva in Tzfat told reporters that police only responded to a graffiti attack on the grave of the Talmudic Rabbi Halafta when they believed the media would be covering the response.
The students who discovered the vandalism told the Hebrew-language Col.org website that police showed no interested in the swastika attack until the students said that reporters were already on the scene.
“At first, the officer I got on the phone tried to string me along, until I told her that the media was already covering the attack,” one student told the Chabad-linked website. “When I said that, they sent a squad car to investigate.
“The first question out of their mouths when they arrived was ‘where are all the reporters?,’” the student reported.
The anti-Semitic attack on the grave, located near the city of Carmiel, was reported Tuesday as the country celebrated Yom HaAtzma’ut.Rabbi Halafta lived in Tzipori during the composition of the Mishna, during first century.