Horrific video shows hammer-wielding woman smash shop window with pro-Israel sign in Pittsburgh
Shocking surveillance video captures the moment a woman used a hammer to bash the front window of a Pittsburgh business that displayed a sign reading, “We stand with Israel.”
The hateful vandal approached Marvista Design + Build on Beechwood Boulevard in the heavily Jewish-populated Squirrel Hill neighborhood about 3:50 a.m. Friday and repeatedly struck the window where the sign hung, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Unable to shatter the glass, the woman left but returned a few minutes later and continued to strike it before grabbing the sign and then smashing the windows of a company truck.
When police arrived, the unidentified woman had already left.
Michael “Shlomo” Jacobs, 53, the business’s owner, said he was alarmed by the rage exhibited by the woman in the neighborhood, which contains the largest Jewish population in Pittsburgh.
“If you look at the video, the anger in those swings is deeply concerning for not only myself but for the Jewish community,” Jacobs told Fox News on Monday.
He said the sounds of the hammer hitting the window were so loud that neighbors reported hearing gunshots.
“The aggression that we are seeing right now and the antisemitism and the hate has escalated to an unbelievable level right now that we’ve never seen in our lifetime,” Jacobs said.
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He also reacted to the recent action by local US Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and four other progressive Democrats to introduce a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire “in Israel and occupied Palestine.”
The resolution does not mention Hamas terrorism and does not call for the release of the Israeli hostages whom the group abducted in its Oct. 7 attack.
Asked what his message would be to Lee, who represents Squirrel Hill, Jacobs said he wanted her “to stop stating things that are untrue.
“Hamas is a known terrorist organization. They have one mission and one mission only: to annihilate Jews and Israel, and after they’re done with Jews and Israel, [they] are going to come after Westerners,” he said.
Hateful graffiti also was spray-painted in public areas and homes across parts of Squirrel Hill on Oct. 31, four days after the five-year commemoration of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the Post-Gazette reported.
Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, 71, of the Lubavitch Center in Squirrel Hill called the incident at Marvista Design + Build “very unfortunate” but said that since the synagogue massacre, the community has come together.
“Hopefully it’s somebody coming from outside the community trying to do something like this to upset the beauty and the co-existence that exists in our community with everybody,” Rosenfeld told the paper.
Meanwhile, Jacobs said he has put up two more signs that say, “We Stand With Israel.”
“We are Jewish. We have a business in Squirrel Hill,” Jacobs told the Post -Gazette. “We serve the Greater Pittsburgh community — and I’m not going to hide.”
