Police are investigating a graffiti attack on several buildings on Rutgers University’s main campus in New Brunswick, including a Jewish community center and a fraternity house, as a bias crime.

On Saturday morning, swastikas were found spray-painted on Rutgers Hillel. They were also painted on the porch and front door of Alpha Epsilon Pi, an historically Jewish fraternity.

The attacks come just days after Israeli housing minister Natan Sharansky was pied by a member of the NJ Solidarity Movement moments before his on-campus speech, which transpired, incidentally, only two weeks after Rutgers cancelled the National Student Conference of the Palestinian Solidarity Conference which was to be held there.

The school’s president has issued a statement reading,

These insensitive acts are an affront to all of us in the university community. They violate the code of human decency that we must uphold in order to engage each other in an enlightened, intellectual and socially aware environment. As we vigorously defend the right of individuals and groups to express their views and opinions in a civil manner, we can never, for a moment, tolerate those who would commit acts that intimidate or physically harm others.

I dunno, I just think it was a little dumb to cancel that conference and then invite an Israeli leader to come and speak on campus, especially after what went down at Concordia last year. It’s not that the activists behavior should be tolerated or necessarily even forgiven… It’s just ultimately a provocation on the university’s behalf. The school should’ve expected this backlash, and thus, in the spirit of truly being fair, cancelled the Sharansky talk as well.

As for the activists…well, if they’re going to denounce Israel for being racist, they should equally be denouncing the behavior of their fellow activists as demonstrated by these attacks. I’m still waiting to see a statement from NJS on the subject however.