SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - A sign celebrating the upcoming Hillel Jewish student center across from University of California, San Diego was recently defaced with an anti-Semitic message.
The message, which included the F-word, was discovered over the weekend. Its lettering resembled the Nazi swastika.
The sign, at the corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, announced the Glickman Hillel Center, a $15 million project the City Council approved last year after more than a decade of legal and other opposition.
Rabbi David Singer, Hillel's executive director, said he was disheartened by the image.
"There are opponents out there. There are those who don't like us. There are those who don't want us, but we are heartened by the hundreds of community members, of administrators, of friends across this county, who support Hillel and the work that we do with students," Singer said.
Singer said Hillel would alert the San Diego Police Department, the university, and the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL recently reported a 40 percent annual spike in anti-Semitic instances in San Diego County in 2017, with significant increases on college campuses, including U.C. San Diego.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL's national director, said in a statement in February that several events are leading to the increase in 2017.
"These incidents came at a time when we saw a rising climate of incivility, the emboldening of hate groups and widening divisions in society," he said. "In reflecting on this time and understanding it better with this new data, we feel even more committed to our century-old mission to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”
10News will have more details and the response to the incident on our 6 p.m. newscast.
