A shul in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv was attacked with firebombs on motzei Yom Kippur. There was damage but Baruch Hashem; it does not appear to have been too significant.

Racial tensions are rising nationwide, with a number of cemeteries attacked over Yom Kippur, believed to have been perpetrated by Jews, as well as the mosque in Tuba el-Zangaria.

There have been widespread condemnations of the attacks from state leaders, the chief rabbis, and settlement leaders, but the silence following the latest attack against Kever Yosef did not merit widespread media coverage, as was the case with the shul above, the firebomb attack.

President Shimon Peres commented the recent vandalism attacks against religious sites in Israel, releasing the statement after the discovery of the attacks against a Muslim and Christian cemetery in Jaffa.

“It doesn’t matter whether Muslims, Christians or Jews – It’s an act of vandalism, it’s a crime, it’s against everything that the Jewish people stand for as a country and as a democracy. We have to make sure that every citizen and every home will be a safe place, but we carry also a spiritual responsibility and a historic one. One which means that everyone can pray to the lord in his own language, from his own prayer book, and that every holy place is holy for all of us. We have to make it secure, safe and respected.

I wanted to tell all our citizens, Muslims, Jews- because there were some attempts also to violate synagogue, and Christians, That it is the responsibility of the Israeli government to assure their holiness, to assure the easy approach to them, to assure the respect for every holy site. I am sure that our police will apprehend all the people who did this, the criminals, and we shall not let them walk free”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)