Gaza Politics Comes to Venice — and a Jewish Billboard Is Defaced

WESTSIDE - A billboard promoting the safety and security of Jewish students has been defaced and desecrated by a pro-Palestinian message, simply stating, "Free Gaza." 

The billboard is located here in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice, at the corner of Lincoln and North Venice Boulevards.

The signage was purchased by Jew Belong (www.jewbelong.com) , a New York–based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that combines Jewish outreach with a highly visible campaign against antisemitism. 

Jew Belong has two principal missions, and that is to make Judaism more accessible to less-observant Jews and reach out to what they describe as disengaged Jews, people that identify as Jewish, but don't regularly attend synagogue or participate in Jewish religious life. 

The second is fighting antisemitism through strategic outdoor advertising in locales such as Times Squarein Manhattan. 

This is what has made Jew Belong nationally recognizable with its trademark hot-pink-and-white billboards that display deliberately provocative messages about antisemitism and Jewish identity.

The organization has launched 2,120 billboards in 42 states since 2023.

The organization was founded by Archie Gottesman, a New York advertising/marketing executive. The concept originally focused on making Judaism feel less intimidating and more relevant to Jews who were disconnected from organized religion.

With the rise in antisemitism since October 7, 2023, Gottesman has increasingly put the organization's financial resources into its public antisemitism efforts. They identify as politically non-partisan. Its work is more accurately characterized as Jewish identity plus anti-antisemitism advocacy, rather than conventional political or partisan activism.

The billboard here in Venice states "Being Jewish shouldn't require campus security."

The word "security" was covered by the graffiti which simply states, "Free Gaza." 

Los Angeles County is home to roughly 565,000 Jewish residents (ranking as one of the largest Jewish populations in the world outside of New York and Tel Aviv). Venice sits within the Westside region of Los Angeles, which accounts for about 26% of the county's total Jewish population according to demographic studies by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. 

While Venice's mid-20th-century working-class and Holocaust-survivor population has largely shifted, active local touchpoints remain such as The Pacific Jewish Center (Shul on the Beach), an Orthodox synagogue on Ocean Front Walk and the Open Temple (progressive) on Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

No group or individual has taken responsibility for the graffiti laced message as of this writing which occurred sometime last week according to sources. 

It took quite an effort to the scale the property and reach this rooftop billboard structure that required plenty of time and incentive to produce and spray paint. 

(Nick Antonicello is a thirty-three-year resident who covers all things, Venice. A longtime contributor to City Watch LA, he can be contacted via e-mail at [email protected])