(JTA) — Two swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish fraternity’s house at the University of California, Davis, two days after the student senate passed a divestment resolution targeting Israel.
The swastikas were painted on the off-campus house of Alpha Epsilon Pi sometime early Saturday morning.
“I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that this happened right after divestment,” AEPi vice president Nathaniel Bernhard told the California Aggie student newspaper.
The nonbinding advisory resolution was passed Jan. 29 by the Associated Students of U.C. Davis by an 8-2 vote with two abstentions. It calls on the University of California system to divest from “corporations that aid in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in Palestinian territories,” the Aggie reported.
In separate statements, U.C. Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said the university opposed divestment and condemned the anti-Semitic graffiti.
“Nothing rivals a swastika as a more potent or offensive symbol of hatred and violence toward our Jewish community members,” Katehi said.
Davis now joins several schools in the University of California system — at Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Irvine and Riverside — in passing resolutions supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. A similar resolution had failed to pass the student senate at U.C. Davis last May.
The U.C. Board of Regents, which controls the university system’s investment portfolio, has said repeatedly that it does not intend to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
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