“We don’t feel that this is a sign that someone is out to get us,” Adelman said, “but it just emphasizes that throughout this pro- and anti-Israel conflict, the one thing that is lacking is respect.”

“Bigotry is so ignorant,” he added, “and in some ways, destroying people’s property takes things to a whole new level.”

Although HSI members said this is the first act of vandalism they had faced, the president of the Harvard Law School’s Justice for Palestine said his group regularly experiences similar attacks.

“It happens so often that we’ve come to expect it, but I don’t think that we would ever register a formal complaint,” said Sam F. Halabi, who said he often finds phrases like “Jew haters,” “Anti-Semites” and “Self-Hating Pigs” on his group’s posters.

But Erol N. Gulay ’05, co-founder of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, said he was surprised by the vandalism.

He said the groups successfully address their differences through discussion.

“If anything, there is a lot of dialogue between the groups,” he said. “HSI members often come to our meetings and we haven’t experienced any ill-will against our group.”

Gulay said he often sees a greater degree of animosity from those outside of Harvard, speculating that the vandals were not students.

“When people from both sides of the conflict gather for speeches and panels, it is always the non-Harvard people who are yelling and shouting,” he said.