On Sunday, Philadelphia police said that over 100 Jewish gravestones had been vandalized at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in the northeastern Wissinoming neighborhood. The damage was by discovered by a man visiting his family’s gravesites early Sunday morning. Three of the gravestones damaged belonged to the man’s family.
Police believe that the gravestones were vandalized overnight Saturday.
This comes less than a week after vandals damaged over 150 Jewish gravestones at the historic Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.
We condemn “this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetrate it in the strongest possible terms,” said Vice President Mike Pence following the Missouri incident. Notably, Pence volunteered to clean up the damage left by the vandals in St. Louis.
While the Trump administration’s gesture of solidarity with the Jewish community was praised by religious leaders, the White House has done little to combat the rising tide of anti-Semitism in recent months.
Nonetheless, the administration’s stance on Israel coupled with its symbolic overtures to community members has been a breath of fresh air following eight years of an administration that not only adopted anti-Semitic tropes as official policy against Israel, but fanned the flames of far-more pernicious anti-Semitism from the Left.