Anti-Semitic Graffiti Found on Two WeHo Businesses

Anti-Semitic graffiti was found on two businesses in West Hollywood in a span of three days.

According to TV station KTLA and Wehoville.com, the words “Hitler was right” and a five pointed star (perhaps an attempt to render a Star of David) were found spray-painted on The Bayou WeHo restaurant on Dec. 29. On Dec. 31, the letters “GD” and “LK” were found spray-painted with Stars of David on the Block Party WeHo clothing store; it’s unclear what the letters are supposed to mean.

West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station Service Area Lt. William Moulder told Wehoville.com that the police are investigating the graffiti and that the graffiti is “worrisome in light of the increase in attacks against Jews across the country.”

Bayou owners Matt Chase and Graham Norwood told the Journal in an email that their team removed the graffiti later on Dec. 29 and urged the perpetrator to never do it again.

“West Hollywood is too strong of a community and will always overcome these attempts at voicing hate,” Chase and Northwood wrote.

Congregation Kol Ami condemned the graffiti in a Dec. 31 Facebook post.

“We decry the anti-Semitic graffiti scribbled on two West Hollywood business including one [Block Party] owned by our member Larry Block,” they wrote. “This has no place in our city of welcome and diversity and we stand with our member and ask our neighbors and friends and family to fight this kind of hatred and bigotry and every kind of racism and bigotry everywhere and especially in our own backyard.”

West Hollywood Mayor Pro Tempore Lindsey Horvath wrote in a Dec. 31 Facebook post, “Hatred has no place in our City. We must stand together with our Jewish community members to keep them safe and protect them from harm.”

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Los Angeles similarly said in a statement to the Journal, “The reported vandal attacks add to the anxiety the Jewish community is already experiencing in light of the recent spate of anti-Semitic incidents. ADL works with law enforcement and schools to respond to and prevent hate incidents. We encourage people to report them to us and remain vigilant.”

American Jewish Committee Los Angeles Regional Director Richard Hirschhaut told the Journal in a phone interview that the graffiti was piggybacking off prior recent anti-Semitic incidents in the Los Angeles area, most notably the vandalism of Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills on Dec. 14.

“Our challenge is to raise our own voices and to lock arms with our neighbors and with people we know… and with people for whom we have bridge building to do and some familiarity to create,” Hirschhaut said. “That should be a broader communal resolution for 2020 as we begin a new year that we really re-dedicate ourselves as Americans to finding common ground and exposing and rebuking and punishing the haters among us.”

UPDATE: Block wrote in an email to the Journal that his initial “feelings were [to] clean the window and move forward and probably would not have reported it but the media connected the dots to the other Hitlerspeak a week ago at the Bayou on the next block.   Hard to imagine this is 2020 and still the same saying from years back – can’t we all get along?”