Los Angeles, CA – Los Angeles police are investigating antisemitic vandalism on several billboards facing major streets in heavily Jewish neighborhoods of the city.
The slogan “Zionists Jews control America” was printed on a large sticker plastered across two of the billboards. Another sticker on the same billboards read: @DEFENDTHEHUMANRACE. On Wednesday an Instagram page by that name was taken down. Its Twitter account, which has 23 followers and contains two posts, both anti-vaccine messages from January, remains online.
A local ADL official said its extremism experts are unfamiliar with the group.
A photo posted to social media shows a third billboard which does not name Jews or Zionists, but seems to play on a similar trope that falsely claims that Jews control international bodies. It calls for the abolition of “All corrupt institutions” including NATO, the World Health Organization and the Council of Foreign Relations.
The billboards appeared as the Los Angeles Jewish community began its observances of Sukkot and grapples with other incidents of antisemitism. Jeffrey Abrams, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director for Los Angeles, said his group has also been in contact with the LAPD about the billboards, which he said “create division and play on age-old tropes of Jewish control.”
One of the vandalized billboards advertises the law firm Jacoby & Meyers. A lawyer there told the Forward that it had called the billboard company which had in turn called the police.
