The northern California home of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive Tikkun magazine, was vandalized for the third time in less than a year.
Tuesday’s attack came a day after Lerner presented the Tikkun Award for ethics to South African Justice Richard Goldstone at a celebration of Tikkun’s 25th anniversary attended by more than 600 people at the University of California, Berkeley.
Goldstone, author of the U.N. report on the Gaza war that said Israel had committed acts approaching war crimes, has come under fire from many segments of the Jewish community.
The vandalism, which was discovered Wednesday morning, included several posters of Lerner dressed as a Nazi carrying away an innocent Jew identified as the State of Israel. Goldstone was mentioned as well in the posters.
The first act of vandalism against Lerner occurred early last May and also included posters attached to his door and the fence around his house. It occurred just days after Lerner announced that Goldstone would be this year’s honoree. The second attack was reported to police but not made public, the magazine said in a statement.
Police are calling Tuesday’s attack a hate crime due to the content of the posters, according to the magazine. The first case was investigated only as an act of vandalism because the police said Lerner was being attacked for his politics, not his religion.
“Anyone concerned about civil liberties should be concerned about this pattern of attacks on the private home of a magazine editor. And for those who believe that there is a new tone of civility in the Jewish world, well … it obviously has not impacted on right wing Zionist extremists,” read the statement from the magazine, which examines Jewish life from a left-progressive perspective.
“There is no reason to believe, and we do not believe, that American Zionists as a whole either intended or approve of this kind of activity,” the statement continued.
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