MILWAUKEE: Controversial mural featuring a Nazi swastika over a Jewish Star of David keeps getting vandalized

Yet the Palestinian Muslim owner of the building refuses to take it down. A mural in Milwaukee, which shows a Nazi swastika intertwined with a Jewish Star of David, is drawing condemnation as well as continuous vandalism.

WPR The mural, which has since been vandalized, includes the text “the irony of becoming what you once hated” and suggests Jewish people are perpetrating another Holocaust against Palestinians. It depicts a bombed-out city where drones fly overhead, as women hold children and a swing set sits empty. The Milwaukee Jewish Federation described the mural, which is located on a privately owned building in the city’s Riverwest neighborhood, as “horribly antisemitic” in a Facebook post Thursday.

Syracuse University Assistant Professor Britt Tevis said It’s obvious that the image is going to contribute to further pain on the part of American Jews.”  Tevis said she’s troubled by the way that the mural visually combines a Nazi symbol with the Star of David.

“To my eye, the mural intentionally attempts to implicate Jews writ large for the actions of the Israeli government, and it does so by taking a universal Jewish symbol, the star of David, and attempts to merge it with a swastika,” she said. “This effort to blame global Jewry for the actions, specifically, of Israel is something we’ve seen for decades, really since the establishment of the state of Israel.”

“The conflation of Jews with Nazis is partaking, whether knowingly or not, in the minimization of the Holocaust, which is really a part of this larger movement of Holocaust denial,” she said.

The mural is causing concern, especially for those who live and work in the area.

One man said his wife is Jewish and is horrified by what she saw. My wife lost family – her grandmother and grandfather’s generation – most of them died in gas Chambers. So to see  something like this as if there’s any way to  equate what’s going on now with what happened  then is it’s it’s outrageous it’s unconscionable as far as I’m concerned.

A rabbi and his son, who together vandalized a controversial mural depicting a Star of David and swastika in Milwaukee, were sentenced on Wednesday.

FOX6Now Court records show 74-year-old Peter Mehler pleaded no contest on Wednesday to misdemeanor criminal damage to property. He was fined $50. Zechariah Mehler, 43, pleaded guilty to the same misdemeanor count in December. He was given a withheld sentence on Wednesday and ordered to serve 25 hours of community service. Judge Jack Davila also ordered the father and son to pay $1,000 total in restitution to the Muslim property owner, Ihsan Atta.

In September 2024, police said surveillance video showed the Mehlers taking an axe and a sledgehammer to the mural while Zechariah gave the camera “double middle fingers.” Police said Zechariah came back to finish the job with a pry bar the next day. The Mehlers called the mural a hate crime.

The judge warned that comments not related to the crime would not be tolerated in court Wednesday. Davila interrupted Atta, who acknowledged his support for Hamas and later walked out of court after being warned a second time, only to be brought back by deputies.

The Mehlers’ attorney said it was shameful they were even in court – calling the mural’s purpose to incite violence against Jewish people. He also said the Mehlers knew what they did was wrong in the eyes of the law, but they felt they had a moral obligation. “I was convinced it would eventually escalate into violence against my community, here, throughout the United States, throughout the world. I don’t believe, sitting here almost two years later, that I’ve been proven wrong,” Zechariah said.