Oakland police are investigating two different incidents of vandalism at the Chabad Center in the city. In both incidents, giant rocks were thrown at the window of the building, KGO reported.
Rabbi Dovid Labkowski, the rabbi of the synagogue, shared two surveillance videos showing one where someone picks up a rock and throws it at the window. The other shows someone coming by carrying a rock and then throwing it.
Two windows are damaged and one has cracks all over the panel. The rabbi said the panel was made up of thick ballistic glass he had installed recently over concerns about attacks on his congregation,
"To me, it is clear it is antisemitism," Rabbi Labkowski told KGO. "I am so outraged by this because this can happen again at any moment."
"What is stopping a terrorist from coming by?" he added. "We anticipated bullets you know, God forbid if an attack happens. We anticipated graffiti, but we didn't anticipate rock throwing."
The US has seen a sharp rise in incidents of antisemitism since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Oakland’s City Council was the site of a series of antisemitic speeches on November 27, when, during a vote on a resulting calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, anti-Israel activists denied that Hamas committed the massacre on October 7 and claimed that Israel murdered its own citizens to justify its military operation in Gaza.
Several weeks later, about 100 teachers in Oakland held an unauthorized “teach-in” for students from kindergarten to third grade in which they presented the Palestinian Arab side in the wake of the Hamas massacre of October 7.
Also in Oakland, a Jewish woman was harassed by employees of a coffee shop for complaining of antisemitic graffiti in the restroom.
In a video she took of the incident, the restroom mirror and walls have been defaced with carvings saying, "Zionism = Racism," "Free Palestine," and "Your neutrality is enabling genocide."
The employees who harassed the woman were later fired.