LINCOLN PARK — About 50 cars parked on a three-block stretch in Lincoln Park were littered with handwritten antisemitic signs overnight Monday, the latest in a string of North Side hate incidents spanning at least four months.
The cardboard signs were placed on car windshields outside the homes of residents with Jewish names, said Brian Comer, president of the Sheffield Neighborhood Association.
The signs were found Tuesday morning on Magnolia Street between Clybourn and Belden avenues — an area with a large Jewish population — and quickly discarded by disgusted neighbors, Comer said.
“Whoever did this got specific information and targeted these blocks,” Comer said. “That’s concerning and unsettling.”
On Jan. 31, 50 antisemitic signs were placed on cars in the 2000 block of North Bissell Street, said Rabbi Mendy Benhiyoun of Chabad Lincoln Park. In early January, 50 signs were posted along Magnolia Avenue in Edgewater, police said. And in November, Jefferson Park residents reported finding antisemitic signs on cars in at least three separate incidents.
Nobody is in custody and detectives are investigating, police said.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) told Block Club police are investigating a possible connection between the incidents. All feature cardboard signs with similar handwriting telling people to go to websites “full of white supremacist hate language,” Hopkins said. The websites have been taken down, he said.
In an email, Hopkins encouraged neighbors with street-facing security cameras to contact his office. Video footage of the street reviewed by Block Club shows a man in dark clothing dropping items onto car windshields.
“This is not just a crime against our Jewish residents, it’s a crime against our neighborhoods,” Hopkins said. “We’re all taking this seriously and standing up against hate.”
Benhiyoun called for more resources to be devoted to the issue, which has been ongoing for months without an arrest.
“It’s making people in the Jewish community feel unsafe,” Benhiyoun said.
Hate crimes in Chicago have been on the rise since 2020, with 301 reported in 2023, a 47 percent increase over the previous year, according to police data. Anti-Jewish hate crimes are the third-most reported after anti-gay and anti-Black hate crimes, according to police data.
A swastika found Friday was drawn in a community space for Jewish students at Loyola University Chicago, according to the Sun-Times.
Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the trend of antisemitic signs “disgusting filth.”
He asked that Chicagoans not turn to antisemitism amid the city’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“While our organization and community has been outspoken against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the ongoing war crimes against Gaza’s civilian populations, and the surrounding propaganda that has fueled anti-Muslim hate here at home, we will at the same time not stand for the promulgation of hate against fellow Americans simply for being Jewish, with the same vigor we would when its against Muslims or anyone else,” Rehab said in a statement.
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
