(x-post) ADL: Mural ‘highly offensive and anti-Semitic’

The Anti-Defamation League is forming a coalition in opposition to two murals that recently appeared on walls of Biggie’s Foodmart and gas station at East 55th Street and Cedar Avenue in Cleveland.

Anita Gray, regional director of the ADL, described the paintings as “highly offensive and anti-Semitic.”

In one image, the words “Talmudic Priests in Church” and “$ex with Minors Permitted” appear above a drawing of what Gray described as “a stereotypical Orthodox Jew” with his lips apparently on the private parts of a naked baby. The other mural, labeled “The Faces of Jesus,” includes the statement, “To Jews he’s a bastard who's in hell.”

“We are appalled by the intolerance and bigotry these signs convey,” Gray said in a statement on behalf of the ADL and the coalition. “The owner of this establishment has the right to have it decorated as he chooses, but we urge fellow members of the community to join us in saying, loudly and clearly, that such hate is not welcome here, and we categorically reject it.”

Gray said her office in Cleveland received a call May 28 from a neighborhood resident who was “mortified” by the images. The following morning, Gray notified Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s office and Blaine Griffin, executive director of the city’s Community Relations Board, about them.

more: http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local/article_dbe3d33e-ebfd-11e3-aa40-001a4bcf887a.html