Swastika Scrawled On Ruth Bader Ginsburg Photo In Nassau Station

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN — Officials worked quickly to clear up another incident of anti-Semitic graffiti on Wednesday, this time scrawled on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's face in an ad in the Nassau subway station.

MTA officials said they first were notified of the graffiti, which said "Die Jew B----" with a swastika underneath, on Tuesday. It was scrawled on a photo promoting a book about the Supreme Court justice.

Officials had the photo cleaned up by Wednesday afternoon after police conducted an investigation, they said on Twitter.

"We’re terribly sorry your friend and our other customers at Nassau Av had to see this abhorrent vandalism," MTA officials said in a response to a Tweet about the graffiti. "We have zero tolerance for hateful imagery anywhere in our system."

The anti-Semitic incident comes just a day before the neighborhood's police will host a forum against hate in Williamsburg, along with the mayor's community affairs unit. The forum will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at 179 Wilson Avenue on Thursday.

It is in part a response to an increasing number of hate crimes or hate speech incidents in the area.

Just last month, the windows of a Williamsburg synagogue were smashed in as a rabbi and his family celebrated the Sabbath inside.

Stickers with messages of hate speech were posted around Greenpoint earlier this year and, a few months ago, two members of the Jewish community were attacked on the same block in a week.

Anti-Semitic incidents were a major factor for a rise in hate crimes in the city last year. NYPD recorded 352 hate crimes in 2018, up about 6 percent from those the year before. Of those, 183 were anti-Semitic hate crimes, a 22 percent increase from the year before and a 38.6 percent increase from around the same time in 2016, numbers show.