The OTTAWA Police Service Crime Unit is investigating after the Holocaust National Monument was disfigured with red paint.
The concrete monument in the Kichi Zibi Mikan near Lebreton Flats was found sprinkled with red paint on Monday morning, including the words “feed me” painted in capital letters.
The cleaning teams of the National Capital Commission, which manages the monument, eliminated paint with pressure washing machines.
Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, denounced vandalism as an anti -Semitic. “This is pure hatred against the Jews,” he said Monday in an interview with CBC.
It is not known who disfigured the monument or why, but the slogan seemed to be a reference to Gaza, which the United Nations described Friday as the “most hungry place of the earth.”
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, told journalists in Geneva that Gaza is the only territory defined in the world where the entire population of two million people is at risk of famine.
“The help operation we have ready to roll is being placed in an operational force shirt that makes it one of the most obstructed help operations, not only in today’s world, but in recent history,” he said.
The UN and its partners have “tens of thousands of food palettes and other assists that save their lives” ready to enter Gaza, but it has only allowed to enter a “drip,” said Laerke.
“The aid has been paid by the donors of the world, who hope we give ourselves in their name. It is clear for customs, it is approved and is ready to move,” he said.
Lawrence Greenspon, an outstanding defense lawyer of Ottawa and co -president of the National Committee of the Holocaust monument, said Israel was not to blame for the situation in Gaza.
“It is time for world leaders, including our own prime minister, stop blaming Israel for the situation in Gaza. It is not a situation created by Israel, nor is it one that is being continued by Israel,” he said, blaming Hamas for intercepting help the enclave.
‘Disgusting and cowardly’
The deputy of Centro de Ottawa, Yasir Naqvi, called for the disfiguration of the Holocaust memorial “a shameful and anti -Semitic act of vandalism.”
In a publication on social networks, he wrote: “The National Monument of the Holocaust honors the memory of six million Jews and all victims of Nazi atrocities. Defacting it is not protest, it is hate and condemn it.”
Conservative vice president Melissa Lantsman described disfiguration as a “disgusting and cowardly act.”
Publishing online, he wrote: “Parliament is just a few steps away, that is where the dissent belongs. Defacting the sacred terrain in honor of the millions of victims of the Holocaust in the middle of the night with aerosol painting is not protest, it is vandalism. Someone that this pathetic deserves to be identified and responsible.”
A spokesman for the Center for Affairs of Israel and Jews (Cija), a group of Jewish Zionist Lobby, called Graffiti Vile and Antismitic.
“Since October 7, the Jewish community of Canada has been under siege, and too often, we are told that it is not about Jews, it is Israel. But this? This does not seem that it is Israel,” wrote the director of Cija Media, Nicole Amiel, in an email, referring to the 2023 attack led by Hamas in southern Israel.
