Arsonists torched a first-grade classroom and scrawled racist graffiti on the walls of a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew school in Jerusalem late Saturday, the third time the school has been vandalized this year.
The vandals spray-painted the stone walls with slogans such as "Death to Arabs" and "There is no coexistence with cancer." They gathered books, toys, and crayon drawings and built a fire that left the classroom charred. They failed to light a second classroom on fire. No one in the buildings at the time and no students missed class on Sunday.
The attack was condemned Sunday by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat as a hate crime. Israel's justice minister, Tzipi Livni, promised that the assailants would be pursued. - Washington Post