At the close of the July 15 Mercer Island City Council meeting, Deputy Mayor David Rosenbaum described what was a difficult day for many people at the Summer Celebration parade through Town Center on July 12.

Referring to social media posts, Rosenbaum said that a number of deeply offensive posters targeting the Jewish community were hung on the parade route.

“This is one of these things where this is a community event that’s designed to bring the whole community together. It’s deeply troubling that someone so deliberately would try to do the opposite. Divide people. I want to apologize to people who were hurt by those posters. They were abhorrent. I also want to thank people who took the time out of their day to take them down. I understand it was not easy,” said Rosenbaum, who thanked community members for reaching out and saying they are sorry that this happened.

Mercer Islander Aurora R. Bearse said the Summer Celebration has been a community event for generations and she can’t believe the incident happened in the city.

“Rather than build community, certain individuals instead papered the event’s parade route with virulently antisemitic posters. While everyone has a right to express their opinions on current events, this was clearly designed to target a town with a large Jewish population on an otherwise celebratory day,” she said, in part.

“After our local synagogue was vandalized, our middle school was defaced and our Summer Celebration was targeted, I hope the larger community understands how much MI Jews could use reassurance that they are safe and valued members of our town,” she added.

The Reporter, which received an email from a resident regarding the incident, contacted the Mercer Island Police Department and received two incident reports on July 21.

According to one report dated July 12, the NORCOM 911 dispatching communications center received a call from a parade-goer who “is concerned there are ‘anti Israel’ and ‘anti Jewish’ stickers graffitied all over (light poles) in this area” and requested a follow up from police for assistance in removing the stickers. Public works staff was notified of the stickers and said it would remove them when their resources allowed.

Another incident report dated July 12 noted that a local store staff member said that a resident dropped in “to pick up cleaning supplies for some antisemitic messages she found.”