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Friday March 28, 2008

Palo Alto JFCS hit with swastika graffiti

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Spray-paint wielding vandals left their mark on a Jewish Family and Children’s Services building in Palo Alto earlier this month. Amid gang-like graffiti and tags were a small swastika and the words “F— Jews,” occupying a space roughly the size of a 45 rpm record.

“I was surprised. I’ve been here for 25 years and this is the first time this has ever happened to us,” said Diane Wasson, a JFCS office manager.

The March 15 or 16 vandalism caused roughly $700 in damage to JFCS signs, and was reported to the Palo Alto Police Department. Greg Murphy, the JFCS director of facilities, said he noticed similar graffiti on neighboring buildings.

“It’s pretty obvious that some group did a bunch of tagging throughout the neighborhood,” he said.

Murphy said the JFCS hasn’t suffered any graffiti — anti-Semitic or otherwise — since several vans were defaced about five years ago in San Francisco.

In April of 2005, vandals broke into Chabad of the Greater South Bay’s Torah Academy in Palo Alto and wrote “Jihad” and several obscenities on the walls.

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