Residents in at least three cities across the country found antisemitic flyers outside their homes on Sunday, according to authorities.
The flyers distributed overnight in neighborhoods in and around Denver, San Francisco and Miami all appear to be similar in nature, according to local NBC affiliates and regional officials.
“Every single aspect of the COVID agenda is Jewish,” many, if not all, of the flyers said. Listed on the paper were government officials who have played a part in managing the pandemic and the flyers say are Jewish, according to local NBC affiliates and regional officials.
Many of the flyers were placed in plastic baggies and weighed down with rice or pebbles before they were thrown onto lawns and stoops.
In the Denver metro area, “white supremacist and anti-vaccine propaganda was also distributed locally with the antisemitic messages,” according to the Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Region.
The Denver Police Department told NBC News its Bias Motivated Crime Unit was investigating the flyers, which were left outside of homes in the Country Club neighborhood.
The flyers in all three states appear to have been distributed by “a loose network of individuals that engages in antisemitic stunts to harass Jews,” said the Anti-Defamation League statement. “They work alone, in small cliques and occasionally travel across the country to work together in larger teams.”
“It is especially despicable and disgusting that a group of antisemites would choose to distribute hateful, antisemitic propaganda just one week after the hostage situation at the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas,” ADL Mountain States Regional Director Scott Levin said.
On Jan. 15, four people, including a rabbi, were taken hostage for more than 10 hours at Congregation Beth Israel. They were all released safely, and the man who was holding them died.
“It is important to expose this type of hateful activity and to shine a light on the increase in antisemitism in Colorado and across the country,” Levin said.
In Miami, police had a lead on who might have distributed more than 200 flyers in residential neighborhoods Mid-Beach and North Beach. After increasing patrols at religious institutions, police said they found a rental car a suspect or suspects might have used while spreading the flyers.
Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber shared a photo of the flyers in plastic baggies on Twitter. “There is no place for this in our community & we will do all we can to make that point clear,” he said.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said: “As the Mayor of our beautifully diverse, inclusive and caring community, and the first Jewish Mayor of Miami-Dade County, antisemitism and all acts of hatred and bigotry cut especially close to my heart.”
A media relations officer with the San Francisco Police Department told NBC News that its Special Investigations Division was also investigating antisemitic flyers left in the Pacific Heights neighborhood Sunday.
NBC Bay Area reported that the flyers had the same wording and list of names as the ones left in Denver and Miami.
San Francisco District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani said the people responsible for the flyers would be “held accountable.”
“Let me be very clear: this kind of antisemitic hatred has no place in our city,” she said. “Our communities have been terrified by the rise in hate crimes, and we must do everything we can to stand against it wherever it occurs.”
The flyers, and the way they were distributed, resemble some that were found in a Missouri City, Texas, neighborhood in December.
At the time, County Judge KP George said: “Let me be clear: The anti-Semitic flyers placed in Fort Bend aren’t just unacceptable, they are reprehensible and have no place in our society. I and all of our diverse communities stand with our Jewish Brothers and Sisters, now and always, against hate.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
