Word: sukkah
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This is not the first time people have tampered with the sukkah. But never before has such a degree of effort, planning, and knowledge gone into the damage, and never before has it been so malicious. Not every act of damage to Jewish property can rightly be called anti-Semitism. But when an act is as deliberate and vicious as this one, we are fooling ourselves to think it can be called something else...
...also needed for the job itself. According to those who built the sukkah, the bolts were securely fastened with a wrench, and would have been impossible to remove by hand. To do so much damage, the vandals would have needed tools--wrenches, and flashlights if it took place before dawn--that most people don't have lying around just in case they decide to play a joke. Because the sukkah is located away from the main thoroughfare, the act was so time consuming, and the damage was so extensive, it is ridiculous to think the decision to vandalize...
...unusually malicious nature of the crime also points to an anti-Semitic motive. While the vandals left the sukkah structurally unsound, they gave no warning signals. There were no scrawled slogans, no spray-painted swastikas. There was not even any damage to the cloth walls or the bamboo roof. Such damage would have been easier to do, and would have sent a clear expression of hatred...
...destruction seems instead to have intentionally been done in such a way that the structure would stand--until someone leaned against the wrong pole, and had the roof crash down on her head. Jews who used the sukkah without noticing the damage, such as the children who were the first to enter the sukkah Saturday morning, could have been gravely injured or killed...
Perhaps this was the vandals' intention. Even if it was not--if they underestimated the lethal potential of their actions, or if they had other intentions than to leave the sukkah standing precariously--the injury they could have caused cannot be ignored. The fact that there was no visible, emotional message does not mitigate the incident; to the contrary, intentionally creating danger and leaving no signal is far more hateful and pernicious...