Police Investigate Desecration of Graves
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
JERUSALEM – Israeli police were investigating yesterday the daubing of the words “Hitler” and “Nazi” on the graves of some of the Jewish state’s most prominent figures.
The tomb of Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated by a right-wing extremist for proposing that Jewish settlers give up land to Palestinians, was among those desecrated in a series of attacks over the last 10 days.
While “murderous dog” was written across his grave, the graffiti on others was even more inflammatory.
Police blamed ultra-nationalist Jews for the graffiti, saying it was a protest against this July’s controversial withdrawal of all Jewish settlers from Gaza.
The incidents revealed the growing tension within Israel between the secular left and the religious right in the run-up to the withdrawal.
The attackers used black paint to write slogans in Hebrew across the grave of Rabin and his wife, Leah, in Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl cemetery, one of the most important in the country.
“We think right-wing extremists were responsible but no arrests have yet been made,” a spokesman for Jerusalem police said.
Prime Minister Sharon, who has been threatened verbally by anti-withdrawal protesters, joined Israel’s president, Moshe Katsav, in condemning the graffiti.
“All legitimate forms of protest are acceptable, but dishonoring the dead is not,” their statement said.
In the other graffiti incidents, the Jerusalem monument to Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement that led to the creation of the Israeli state, was daubed with the message “Neo-Nazi Hail Beilin.”
This referred to Yossi Beilin, a left-wing politician vilified by right-wing Jews for supporting the principle of land being exchanged for peace.
Also in Jerusalem, the graves of a dozen Israeli soldiers were sprayed with the words “Hitler the brain.” In southern Israel, “Hitler” was sprayed on the grave of David Ben Gurion, the country’s first prime minister.
It raises the possibility that the graffiti, which has appeared over the last 10 days, was the work of different groups including neo-Nazi sympathizers among the large Russian influx that has arrived in Israel since the demise of the communist regime.
