Police in suburban St. Louis are investigating an arson and graffiti attack that targeted vehicles at the home of US citizen who served in the Israel Defense Forces. As police search for a lone-wolf perpetrator who left anti-IDF graffiti next to the burning vehicles, various public officials, organizations and media outlets rushed to describe the wrongdoing as an “antisemitic hate crime,” fueling ongoing debates about the definition of antisemitism and the problematic concept of “hate crimes” in general.
The attack took place in the western suburb of Clayton at around 3am on Tuesday, leaving three cars heavily damaged after an unspecified means was used to set them ablaze. The arson was accompanied by graffiti sprayed on the street. St. Louis station First Alert 4 shared a drone-acquired image of one of two messages: “DEATH TO THE IDF.” The outlet chose to blur the other message, saying it was “targeted at a specific individual.” However, in an X post condemning the attack, Leo Terrell, Chairman of the DOJ Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, said the graffiti “accused him of being a murderer.”
BREAKING:
🇮🇱🇺🇲 An Israeli soldier with US citizenship was attacked in Clayton, Missouri, his vehicles were set on fire and destroyed.
Graffiti outside the family’s home called for death to the IDF. pic.twitter.com/ZBOe3MRL6q
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) August 6, 2025
There were no injuries and, as this story is written, the IDF soldier has not been identified. Police sources told First Alert 4 they believe the attack was carried out by a single individual, but apparently have no suspect yet. They’ve asked the FBI and St. Louis Regional Bomb and Arson Unit to help with the investigation, and are soliciting tips from the public.
By all indications, this Clayton, Missouri resident was targeted because he recently served in the IDF as that organization carried out a widely-condemned campaign in Gaza characterized by a massive civilian death toll, the deprivation of food and medicine, the purposeful and vast destruction of residences, schools, hospitals, farms and other civilian architecture, and explicit ambitions of ethnic cleansing voiced by senior Israeli cabinet ministers. That’s certainly not to justify the violation of the victim’s property rights, only to rationally explore the question of the criminal’s motive.
“This landscape of destruction looks otherworldly. Yet it’s not. It is this world. And what is happening may yet come to define one of its darkest eras. One that casts a stain on humanity that will endure for generations.”
— ITV News, with aerial footage of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/nzHDVG2LxK
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 4, 2025
Despite himself highlighting that the attacker wrote “Death to the IDF” and accused the victim of being a murderer, the DOJ’s Terrell raced to describe the incident as “a horrific antisemitic attack” that “has no place in America.” Separately, he told JNS, “What I saw in the graphic videos [of burned cars], I saw hate. I saw hate because of one’s religion.” The Fox News‘ headline likewise called it an “antisemitic attack,” and the Jewish Federation of St. Louis broadly interpreted the arson and anti-IDF vandalism as an “attack on members of our community.” On the other hand, Assistant US Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon judiciously chose to refer to the villain’s messaging as only “alleged antisemitic vandalism.”
The Anti-Defamation League‘s Jordan Kadosh linked the attack to a controversial slogan used by some pro-Palestine activists:
“When you hear somebody say ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ this is what it looks like. It looks like burned out cars on suburban streets on America. This is not confined. When somebody says they want to take this fight to Jews around the world they mean everywhere.”
Though the victim hasn’t been identified yet, police say the crime occurred in the 7500 block of Westmoreland Avenue in Clayton. Various property-search sites show that one of the homes on this block is owned by the parents of Myles Rosenblum, who moved to Israel immediately after graduating from Tulane University in 2023. He returned to St. Louis earlier this year after serving two years with the IDF, most recently in the Paratroopers Unit 101. He hasn’t shied away from publicity, granting multiple interviews to the STL Jewish Light and performing a public speaking engagement on his experience in IDF invasions of both Gaza and Lebanon. “There is nothing I’d rather be doing with my life right now, more than serving the country of Israel,” he said in October 2023, days after the Oct 7 Hamas invasion.
Police are already calling the incident a hate crime, referring to a class of crimes where wrongdoing is motivated by bias against the victim’s membership in some class defined by characteristics such as race, color, religion or sexual orientation. Critics of the hate-crime concept question why motive should be a crime unto itself, particularly when it’s an inherently murky legal question — as would be the case with this St. Louis incident.
Other critics point to the arbitrary designations of protected classes. As Michael Conklin wrote at the George Mason Law Review, “The Atlanta spa shootings further illustrate this principle. Since the evidence indicates [Robert] Long targeted his victims based on their working profession at a spa, it is not a hate crime. But if he had targeted these same people because they were Asian, it would have been a hate crime. It is unclear why the former deserves a less harsh punishment than the latter.”
While the alleged hate-crime element in St Louis may eventually have to be proven in court, it’s safe to assume the ADL has already added the attack to its controversial database of antisemitic incidents. The ADL been criticized for using an expansive definition of antisemitism that results in the mere use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — or mere opposition to the political ideology of Zionism — as antisemitic incidents.
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