An Israeli flag hung outside of the Mount Washington business Kitchen Design by Idan was recently spraypainted with red paint by vandals. An American flag next to the Israeli flag remained untouched.
The business, at 6072 Falls Road, is owned and operated by Idan Tzameret, an Israeli-American and avid runner who was profiled in Jmore last fall after taking to local streets running with an Israeli flag.
A Beth El congregant who lives in Pikesville with his wife and two children, Tzameret, 44, started running with the flag after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.
“I started doing it just to keep my sanity,” Tzameret, who was born on the Jordan Valley moshav, or agricultural village, of Fatzael and grew up in the town of Maaleh Efraim, told Jmore last October. “It gets my mind clear. That’s how I deal with it. Being an Israeli abroad is very hard.”
The flag desecration at Tzameret’s business took place at the same time as pro-Palestinian rallies and encampments at Johns Hopkins University and other college campuses around the country. In addition, the student-government association at Towson University this week passed a resolution for the TU Foundation to divest from companies “involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Also, in recent months pro-Israel lawn signs and flags at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and Suburban Orthodox-Toras Chaim Synagogue in Pikesville were vandalized.
Speaking to Fox 45 on Monday, May 6, Tzameret said, “Looks like they tried to put the beginning of the swastika, but it was rainy and windy on Saturday night, so my guess was that they didn’t finish the job. … I expected it to happen eventually, but it still doesn’t feel great.
“It’s also very symbolic because yesterday was also the Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel and it’s a pretty big day. I come from a family of Holocaust survivors so having the flag sprayed with a swastika is pretty personal,” he said.
A former officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Tzameret pledged to replace the Israeli flag in the near future.
“They are welcome to come and confront me personally,” he said of the vandals on Fox 45. “I will have a conversation with anyone, but again I am not going to spray red or green or whatever color on a Palestinian flag, and they don’t have the right to do that to my property or my flag. There’s no room for hate, there’s no room for antisemitism.”
For any tips or information about this crime, call Baltimore County Police at 1-866-7LOCKUP.
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