Police are searching for the person who spray-painted anti-Semitic graffiti on the wall of a synagogue in Tarzana this week.

The vandalism at the Mishkan Torah synagogue was reported to the Los Angeles Police Department shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, the same day a masked figure zip-tied Turkish flags to the gates of two private Armenian schools in the San Fernando Valley.

Many have described the display of the flags as an act of hate, intended to intimidate the community and discredit the Armenian genocide.

It is not clear what specifically was spray-painted at the Tarzana synagogue, but police are treating the case as a hate crime, Officer Drake Madison said.


It is not clear whether the two incidents are related.

“It’s really hurtful. I mean to all the members here, they’re being hurt with such a thing that somebody passed by a synagogue and wrote such a thing on the wall,” Executive Director Rabbi Shomo Haghighi told KCBS-TV Channel 2.

Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield posted a photo on Twitter from the Anti-Defamation League Wednesday night that read “No place for hate,” in reference to the vandalism.

“We await news from LAPD about their investigation, and my staff and I stand ready to assist if there is anything we can do to help,” he wrote.


hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @Hannahnfry