Hasta La Gadget!

Cleanup efforts are underway after a Jewish community center and a church in northern Virginia were targeted by vandals in an anti-Semitic attack this week during Passover.

Detectives are reviewing evidence collected at the scene and working to identify a suspect, according to a press release from the Fairfax County Police Department. Police believe the buildings were defaced between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. Tuesday.

Local police were alerted around 7 a.m. Tuesday that swastikas and hate speech had been spray-painted on the grounds of the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, in Fairfax, and Little River United Church of Christ, in Annandale.

Jeff Dannick, the executive director of JCCNV, called the vandalism “deeply disturbing” in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the timing of the attack was especially unsettling.

“During Passover, when the Jewish community around the world is celebrating a time of freedom for our people as well as those who are affected by hate today, a crime like this heightens the reason that organizations like our own exist to bring communities together through messages and actions of peace, acceptance and inclusion,” Dannick said.

Little River United Church of Christ was defaced during Holy Week in the days leading up to Good Friday and Easter. Pastor David Lindsey told The Associated Press that he wasn’t surprised the church was targeted, given its history of inclusiveness.

A power-washing company began removing the graffiti Tuesday, and volunteers came to the church Wednesday to help clean.

The Jewish community has experienced a rise in anti-Semitic abuse in recent months. Since the start of 2017, at least 80 JCCs in the U.S. and 10 Jewish day schools have received a total of more than 120 bomb threats. A 19-year-old Israeli-American accused of making the majority of the threats was arrested last month.

In February and March, vandals knocked over hundreds of headstones in Jewish cemeteries in New York, Pennsylvania and Missouri. 

Not even Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close confidant, is immune from the apparent surge in anti-Semitism. He’s been targeted by internet trolls in a wave of online attacks since assuming more responsibility in Trump’s administration.

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