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JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Vandals left anti-Muslim graffiti on a mosque in northern Israel, police said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of racist and religious attacks against Palestinians.

"Unidentified people drew a Star of David and wrote 'close the mosques and open yeshivas' (Jewish seminaries) on the outer wall" of the mosque in Fureidis, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

"The tires of several cars parked nearby were slashed," he said, adding that "crimes committed for nationalist motives are extremely serious."

On April 18, suspected Jewish extremists set fire to a mosque and sprayed racist graffiti in the town of Umm al-Fahm.

A week earlier, Jewish extremists sprayed anti-Christian graffiti on the walls of a convent west of Jerusalem and damaged vehicles parked nearby.

Slogans including "Mary is a cow," "price tag," and "America (is) Nazi Germany" were sprayed in Hebrew on the walls of the Roman Catholic sanctuary.

In March, vandals slashed the tyres of more than 40 cars in East Jerusalem, spraying a slogan reading: "Gentiles in the land are enemies."

The perpetrators of violence against Palestinian communities are rarely prosecuted. There are hundreds of racist attacks against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied West Bank every year.

Ma'an staff contributed to this report