After vandalizing a Pittsburgh synagogue and a Jewish community site, a Pennsylvania woman was sentenced to five years’ probation on Wednesday, according to the Western District of Pennsylvania’s US Attorney’s Office.
Talya Lubit was fined restitution fees of $10,534 following her conviction of conspiracy to commit an offense and for defacing a religious building.
The 29-year-old and co-defendant Mohamad Hamad vandalized the Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s entrance signs on the same morning in July 2024. The duo spray-painted the words “Jews 4 Palestine” on the Chabad house, with an inverted red triangle, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda to denote the target of an attack.
Acting US attorney Troy Rivetti said in a statement that spray painting the mark of a foreign terrorist organization on a Jewish community building instilled fear.
“Protected speech obviously does not include damaging or defacing religious property, and our office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to protect the civil rights of all members of our community to practice their faiths and to live without fear,” said Rivetti.
The Jewish Federation praised law enforcement and welcomed the sentencing for the act that it argued was not just vandalism, but an action targeting the community.
“This crime was not simply graffiti on a building,” the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh COO, Jessica Brown Smith, said in her victim impact statement.
“It was a deliberate act of antisemitism intended to intimidate and retraumatize an entire community. Because of the federation’s central role in Pittsburgh’s Jewish communal life, the attack was not only against a building but against the heart of a community,” Smith said.
Other co-conspirators awaiting trial
The federation noted that the sentencing was only the first step, as there were other co-conspirators awaiting trial in the case. Charges against Hamad, which included making false statements and possession of destructive devices, remained pending.
“The act of vandalism was born from Hamad’s and Lubit’s shared growing animosity toward Israel since the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and the war that ensued between Israel and Hamas,” said the US Attorney’s Office.
Squirrel Hill is also the home of the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation, which suffered a 2018 white nationalist terrorist attack in which eleven worshipers were murdered and six more were wounded.