Police in Clayton, Missouri, are investigating after finding what they said was “antisemitic graffiti” alongside three cars that were set on fire in the St. Louis neighborhood.
The street was graffitied with the phrase “Death to the IDF,” according to drone footage shared by a local news outlet that obscured a portion of the graffiti including the identity of the intended target.
The police department said in a statement that it believed that the victim was “specifically targeted” and it was investigating the incident as a hate crime.
Leo Terrell, the Trump administration’s domestic antisemitism czar, wrote on X that the “horrific antisemitic attack” targeted a local resident who recently returned home after serving in the Israeli army, adding, “Hateful graffiti outside the family’s home accused him of being a murderer.”
The alleged target has not been publicly identified. But according to public records, the block is home to a family whose son recently completed two years in the IDF and has spoken in the area about his service in Gaza and Lebanon. At least one public appearance was targeted by protesters, according to a first-person account published on a local nonprofit news site.
Six major Jewish organizations in St. Louis condemned the arson incident in a joint statement.
“This is more than vandalism,” they said. “It is a hateful act of intimidation and only the latest example of what happens when antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric are normalized.”
Jordan Kadosh, the local director of the Anti-Defamation League, which signed the statement, told First Alert 4, a news station, that he saw the incident as an inevitable outgrowth of messaging used in pro-Palestinian protests.
“When you hear somebody say ‘globalize the intifada’ this is what it looks like,” he said. “It looks like burned out cars on suburban streets on America. This is not confined. When somebody says they want to take this fight to Jews around the world they mean everywhere.”
The incident comes as Israeli soldiers have faced an increasing backlash abroad, amid mounting concerns about the conduct of the Israeli army in Gaza. Some are facing war crimes inquiries, fueled by activists who have documented what they say are criminal acts by specific soldiers; two soldiers were recently questioned by police in Belgium, in which the activists said was a breakthrough case. Individual soldiers who have not been accused of misconduct say they have faced assaults and discrimination when traveling.
The phrase “Death to the IDF,” meanwhile, has grown more prominent in pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent months; crowds chanted it at recent concerts in England and Australia.
The incident in Clayton marks a rarer example of such incidents in the United States. Hundreds of “lone soldiers” from the United States are serving in the IDF at any given time, though the precise number is hard to track.
