Swastika (illustration)
Swastika (illustration)Thinkstock

An image of a swastika was sent to the cell phones of students during an assembly at a suburban Chicago high school, JTA reported on Sunday.

The image was “air-dropped” on an Apple device on Friday morning to students attending the “Tradition of Excellence” assembly at the Oak Park and River Forest High School, according to the report.

The sender was later identified as a student who was in the auditorium at the time of the incident, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The incident follows two incidents of racist and anti-Semitic graffiti found on the school’s campus since the beginning of the month.

On November 2, racist and anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered outside the school building on a shed near the campus tennis courts. Days later, “hate-speech graffiti” including a swastika and racist and anti-Semitic comments, including “GAS the Jews,” was discovered inside a campus bathroom.

The school held a panel discussion November 7 with students, religious leaders and school board members titled “Community Conversation Around Hate Crimes: Coming Together for Change.” The program also was in response to recent hate-driven events, such as the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, according to JTA.

In a separate incident, a Jewish student at a Chicago public school, the Oscar Mayer Magnet School, found a swastika drawn on his locker last week, as well as what the school called other “derogatory symbols.”

The incidents in Chicago come at a time when the US is seeing an increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents.

Last week, the home of a Jewish family in Las Vegas was tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti. The incident happened days after several swastikas were discovered sprayed on the home of non-Jewish Las Vegas family. Police did not consider that incident a hate crime, saying it was more likely a random attack by teenagers.

In Los Angeles, police arrested a man who they say has been snatching wigs off the heads of Orthodox Jewish women in North Hollywood.

Police believe the man targeted the women because of their faith and are investigating it as a hate crime. He was arrested at his home in Sherman Oaks last Wednesday.

And, in New York, the New York Police Department last week circulated surveillance video of a group of preteens and teens who it says has carried out a series of recent anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn.

The incidents include a metal pipe thrown through the window of a synagogue in the hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg on November 3 during afternoon services on Shabbat.

The same day, police say, the group pushed a 10-year-old hasidic girl to the ground. In a separate incident, the group also knocked the hat off a 14-year-old hasidic boy.

The incidents took place just days after a number of synagogues and yeshivas were attacked in the same area.

Seven fires were set outside of Jewish facilities in South Williamsburg, and anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on another Brooklyn synagogue.