For the second time this month, unidentified individuals sprayed pro-Palestinian graffiti at a synagogue in Barcelona.
The latest incident Wednesday, Israel’s Independence Day, was at the Chabad synagogue of the coastal city in eastern Spain. The graffiti on the sidewalk at the entrance to the synagogue read: “Why are they killing Palestinians.”
On April 17, Israel’s Holocaust commemoration day, the façade of a different synagogue in Barcelona was vandalized. The perpetrators wrote then: “Free Palestine from the river to the sea. Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” Both graffiti were in Catalan.
The Jewish Federations of Spain, FCJE, and Barcelona’s Jewish community in a joint statement called out political leaders in Barcelona and Catalonia, the semi-autonomous region whose capital is Barcelona, for allegedly failing to condemn the incidents.
“Mayor Ada Colau, President of the Government of Catalonia Pere Aragonès and the vice president of the Parliament of Catalonia, Alba Vergès, have not condemned those attacks,” the statement read. “They have not visited the sites of the attacks to express any solidarity.”
Colau has led an attempt to nullify a twin city agreement with Tel Aviv, citing Israel’s policies vis-à-vis Palestinians.
