The Seattle Police Department’s bias crime unit is reviewing vandalism at Be’er Sheva Park—named for Seattle’s sister city Beersheva in Israel—after “long live Oct. 7" was spray-painted in red on the park’s welcome sign.
The vandalism comes after anti-Israel protesters disrupted a fair celebrating Seattle’s sister city relationships and interrupted Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s address, calling on her to end the city’s relationship with Beersheva. Wilson said that she agrees with the protesters, who accused Israel of “genocide,” but that sister city relationships are with people, not with governments. (JNS sought comment from Wilson.)
The park, which is at the edge of the Orthodox Jewish community, has been repeatedly vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti. Each time, it has been quickly cleaned up either by individuals or by the Seattle Parks and Recreation department.
A police officer dispatched to the park in South Seattle on Sept. 30 saw a woman using graffiti remover to clean up a concrete sign that reads “Be’er Sheva Park” and the word “community” engraved in multiple languages, including Hebrew, per the police report.
On the sign, someone had used red spray paint to scrawl messages, which the officer described as antisemitic, including “victory to Palestine,” “death to Israel” and “long live Oct. 7,” as well as “an upside-down triangle spray-painted with red paint.”
“This symbol is also associated with antisemitism,” the police officer stated in the report.
The police department could not find any surveillance cameras in the area that would have captured the incident.
The woman who was cleaning the sign was using graffiti removal spray, according to the police department. “Where she had sprayed the graffiti, paint was starting to run. It was apparent she was attempting to clean the graffiti from the sign,” the officer wrote.
The department contacted Seattle Parks and Recreation to clean up the graffiti. Detective Brian Pritchard of the department told JNS that the incident has been referred to a colleague with expertise in graffiti.
Christina Hirsch, communications manager for the city parks department, told JNS that “crews removed the graffiti located at the park.”
“I believe some private or right-of-way locations may have also been vandalized, in which case those locations would be handled outside of our department,” she said.
When graffiti reports in the Find It, Fix It app are flagged as race or hate, they are “automatically flagged for police,” she told JNS.
