Rep. Goldman’s Office Vandalized With Anti-Israel Graffiti

By Reuvain Borchardt

BROOKLYN — The district office of Rep. Dan Goldman was found vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti early Friday morning, along with several other nearby storefronts.

When Goldman staff arrived to the office on 9th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in Park Slope at around 8:50 a.m., they saw graffiti with the words “Free Palestine,” “Let Gaza Live,” and “Blood on Ur Hands” scrawled on the outside of the office and the sidewalk. Police were already there; they had been called because there was “similar graffiti on four or five other locations on the same block,” police clergy liaison Rabbi Joseph Friedlander told Hamodia.

Goldman is a pro-Israel Democrat who participated Tuesday in the “March for Israel” rally on the National Mall that drew nearly 300,000 Israel supporters calling for the American government to continue to support Israel, demanding the return of the hostages being held by Hamas, and protesting rising antisemitism during the latest Israel-Hamas war.

He was one of only 22 Democrats to join nearly all Republicans in the House who voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian American who has promoted the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which Israel-supporters say is a call to genocide.

In a statement to Hamodia on Friday, Goldman’s communications director, Simone Kanter, said, “Harassing, intimidating, and outright attacking the staff of a Jewish elected official at a time of rising violence and rampant antisemitism is dangerous and unacceptable.”

Goldman was in Israel for a family bar mitzvah on Simchas Torah, October 7, the day Hamas launched the war by entering southern Israel and killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians and many in barbaric fashion; injuring scores more; and taking approximately 244 hostage.

Antisemitic crimes have surged in the United States since the war began. From October 7-23, the ADL recorded a total of 312 antisemitic incidents, 190 of which it says “were directly linked to the war in Israel and Gaza.” In the same period last year, ADL says it received preliminary reports of 64 incidents, four of which were Israel-related.

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rborchardt@hamodia.com