After being awakened by their garage alarm, residents of a Montreal apartment building went down Monday night to find their cars spray-painted with red swastikas, a windshield broken, a pick-axe left on the floor, and envelopes with swastikas written on them, each containing a bullet, left on the cars.
In the envelopes was “a note that said one of these [bullets] will be in your head,” said a resident whose car was vandalized, Montreal’s CJAD News reports.
Another resident said this was the first violent incident at the building, in middle-class, multi-ethnic Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighborhood of Montreal’s West End, in the 15 years she’s lived in it.
“This is more than just some teenager running around spray painting – this is a racial, hate-motivated type of crime,” said Harvey Levine, a local Bnai Brith official. “These incidents have to be taken more seriously and when the culprits are apprehended they need to be charged with hate crimes.”
Montreal police said they were indeed treating the incident as a hate crime, but added that they had no suspects.
Several anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims in Montreal, including physical assaults on Jews in religious garb, were reported last summer when protests were held in the city against Israel’s war with Gaza.
Source: Haaretz
