Antisemitic graffiti cleaned up
After seeing a photo on social media of a hateful antisemitic message daubed on a brick wall of mailboxes in Clayton, the Jewish owner of a Melbourne cleaning company acted swiftly to ensure it was removed.
The Jewish owner of a Melbourne cleaning company acted swiftly to remove a hateful antisemitic message daubed on a brick wall of mailboxes in Clayton on Thursday.
Heshy Adelist who runs HGA Cleaning solutions, says he saw the words “Kill Jews. Jew lives here” sprayed on a wall with mailboxes in front of a group of units on social media.
He was on a job at the time but told the client he had to go and take care of the vile message.
“I just drove straight to Clayton, it was like a half an hour drive and I told my wife I was going to be home a bit late today,” he told The AJN.
Workers from the City of Kingston were already on the scene waiting for Council cleaners to arrive, and when Adelist asked if he could do it himself, they said,“Go crazy”.
“We had a little discussion, not about what’s going on overseas, just what’s happening in Australia, it’s all about just hate right now. So that was one of the main reasons why I think the council was on top of it because they want to get rid of this stuff as soon as possible,” he said.
Adelist says he did the work for free simply because it was the right thing to do.
“I’ve been getting SMS, emails, Facebook messages, someone calls me at 1:30 am to thank me. I’ve even had a lot of non-Jewish people call me which was really nice, that just shows really that we have support and that there are nice people out there” Adelist said.
Brighton MP James Newbury, drew attention to the graffiti on social media, saying “We cannot remain silent as the disease of antisemitism spreads. As soon as the community raised this shocking instance, I felt that it had to be called out.
He said it was incredibly heart-warming to know that not only did the community condemn the outrageous crime, but that a good Samaritan, HGA Cleaning Solutions, cleaned the site.
“Our community is filled with good people, and we all need to work together and use our collective voices right now” he said.
Dvir Abramovich, Chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission said, “This is not just graffiti scrawled by evil people who seek to instil fear in our communities, it is an assault on our sense of safety”.
He hopes Victoria Police are able to identify and charge those responsible.
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