A Maimonides statue in Córdoba was defaced. His writings have an answer to hate - opinion

A bronze statue of Maimonides in Córdoba, Spain, was defaced with a swastika between Friday night and Saturday morning, July 31-August 1. The city council condemned it as an attack on heritage, and acting mayor Cintia Bustos ordered cleaning. The opinion piece argues the act was antisemitism and uses Maimonides's writings to address hatred, tracing it to ignorance and asserting that campaigns against Jews have historically failed.

Between Friday night and Saturday morning, July 31 into August 1, 2026, someone sprayed a swastika on the base of the bronze statue of Maimonides in the Plaza de Tiberíades in the old Jewish quarter of Córdoba, Spain. The paint went on the pedestal, not the face, but the target was the man himself and the face of Judaism. Córdoba's city council called it an "attack on heritage" and "a message of hate of extreme gravity." Acting mayor Cintia Bustos ordered the municipal cleaning company Sadeco to send its stone-graffiti specialists first thing Monday morning. The article, an opinion piece by Jeffrey K. Salkin, argues that defacing a statue of Maimonides is antisemitism, plain and clear, and has nothing to do with Israel. It then turns to Maimonides's writings for an answer to hate. Maimonides, born in Córdoba around 1135, traced hatred to ignorance in the Guide for the Perplexed. In Iggeret Teiman (Epistle to Yemen), he argued that campaigns to wipe out the Jews have taken three shapes—the sword, argument, and a rival faith—and all have failed. He grounded his confidence in the claim that Israel's disappearance is as unthinkable as God ceasing to exist. In Iggeret HaShmad, he advised Jews to leave rather than be compelled, but showed mercy to those who converted outwardly and prayed in secret, judging the persecutor, not the persecuted. The article concludes that hate is ignorance, not a verdict, and has failed before and will fail again.