Pro-Palestinian activists defaced the Los Angeles National Cemetery on Sunday with graffiti that included the “red triangle,” a notorious symbol used by anti-Israel activists online to celebrate attacks on soldiers by the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
The red triangle, as pro-Hamas outlet Al Jazeera has explained, is also a video game-like visual symbol used by Hamas in propaganda videos of attacks on Israeli soldiers to point out terrorist targets, and embraced by radical anti-Israel activists. It also resembles the red portion of the Palestinian flag.
Painting a red triangle on a cemetery in which American soldiers are buried suggests support for killing American soldiers as well as Israeli soldiers. Radical anti-Israel propaganda of the sort issued by Iran often lumps the U.S. and Israeli militaries together.
The New York Post published video of the vandalism, which targeted one of the most important memorials in the nation, described by the Department of Veterans Affairs as the burial site of Medal of Honor winners and African-American Buffalo Soldiers, among thousands of other veterans of America’s wars, from the Civil War through the Vietnam War.
National Review added:
Protesters spray-painted “Free Gaza” on the entrance to the memorial and chanted “long live Palestine,” “there is only one solution,” “from the river from the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Biden, Biden, you’re a liar,” according to video footage of the event. Hundreds of protesters held signs that read “ceasefire now,” “stop bombing Gaza,” “end the occupation now,” “stop the genocide,” and more. One sign read “Zionist = Nazi.”
The protest also shut down Wilshire Boulevard, which is between Interstate 405 and Glendon Avenue, on Sunday afternoon.
“More proof that the people who hate #Israel, also hate America,” California [Democratic] congressman Brad Sherman said on X. “Here, at the Los Angeles National Cemetery in my district, they deface a cemetery for those who gave their lives to end slavery and protect the world from fascism.”
The graffiti appeared largely to have been cleaned up by Wednesday morning, though the protesters left a red triangle on property at a Los Angeles Metro construction site across the street from the cemetery.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.