
A swastika was pray painted behind the vehicle of a Jewish man who had parked his car in a West Kelowna, British Columbia mall parking lot.
The incident took place on Wednesday morning, the same day the government of Canada was holding a national summit on anti-Semitism.
The anti-Semitic graffiti prompted an investigation by West Kelowna law enforcement, reported Global News.
“The swastika was put directly behind the vehicle of a Jewish man, who was understandably very upset when he saw it,” said West Kelowna RCMP Sgt. Joel Glen.
“Racism of any kind has no place in our community and will not tolerated. We are conducting a fulsome investigation into this incident, and appeal to anyone who witnessed it to come forward.”
The Jewish man, who did not want his name revealed, told the Castanet news site that after finishing work at a physiotherapy clinic he found the swastika directly behind his car.
“Someone has to have seen me at work wearing my yarmulka because I usually don't wear it in public just in terms of comfort and I like wearing different sort of hats. I don’t feel so safe," he said.
“Between 9:30 a.m. when I pulled in yesterday and 11 a.m. when my colleague arrived after the fact she told me that at 11 a.m. it was already there. It was behind my car, it was not there when I pulled in, yet at the end of the day it was there.”
The man, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, thinks it could be one of his clients.
“Mind you then why would they want to continue being treated by me. However, in proximity to the business, someone needs to have known it was me in terms of being openly Jewish,” he said.
He added that police told him there was not much they could do, and that there were no cameras covering the area where the incident took place.
“I hope the perpetrators are found and… (that it is) not just blown off and not just nonchalantly ignored,” he said.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)