The discovery of the swastika comes days after the Hamas attack on Israel and is similar to a hate incident that occurred on campus in 2021.
Someone painted a swastika in the boys’ bathroom on the Torrey Pines High School campus this week, school officials said, just days after a gruesome attack on Israel by Hamas sparked a new war.
The hate incident is identical to one the school saw more than a year ago, when two swastikas were painted on the walls of a boys’ bathroom at the school in December 2021.
“It is with deep sadness that I share with you that today there was a hate crime incident on our campus,” the school administration wrote in a letter to families Wednesday. “We will follow up with the full power of our authority…we do not tolerate anti-Semitism, hate crimes or hate speech of any kind.”
A spokesperson for the San Dieguito Union High School District, which includes Torrey Pines High, declined to provide further details about the incident, saying it is an active investigation.
Fabienne Perlov, regional director of the San Diego Anti-Defamation League, said her organization has been speaking with the principal of Torrey Pines and that the school has been addressing the issue promptly. He said the school participates in his organization’s No Place for Hate program, where students and staff plan campus efforts to combat bias and harassment.
“Jewish students should feel safe in their learning spaces,” Perlov said.
San Dieguito students, parents and community groups had raised concerns about anti-Semitism and other incidents on the district’s campuses, which have seen a number of hate incidents in recent years.
In at least three separate incidents during the 2021-22 school year, racial and anti-gay slurs were painted on the San Dieguito Academy campus, and swastikas were painted in the boys’ bathroom on the Torrey Pines campus.
And in the fall of last year, many expressed concern about a photo of Adolf Hitler that a teacher had posted in his seventh-grade classroom at Carmel Valley Middle.
Anti-Semitic incidents, including vandalism, assaults and harassment, have been on the rise nationwide since the start of the pandemic, according to the ADL’s annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents. Last year there were 3,697 such incidents, the highest number ever recorded by the ADL, up from 2,717 the year before. About 520 of those incidents were recorded in California.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents reported to ADL San Diego so far this year has increased 65 percent over the same period last year, Perlov said. So far, 51 anti-Semitic incidents have been reported since January.
“At ADL, we are really redoubling our efforts to address the problem because we know that attacks on the Jewish state often lead to harassment, vandalism and violence against Jewish people in the United States and around the world,” Perlov said.
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