JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli said on Monday he had squirted black paint into the grave of the leader of Germany`s Jewish community, Ignatz Bubis, during his burial in Israel. Bubis, who died last Friday in Frankfurt, was buried in Tel Aviv on Sunday in line with his wish to be laid to rest where his grave would be safe from desecration by neo-Nazis. Meir Mendelssohn, a Tel Aviv resident who described himself as an artist, said Bubis was a "bad man...who had taken advantage of his Jewishness". "I hope I made the first sign to show who he really was...They will ask why somebody like me, a sane person who never broke the law, would do something like this," Mendelssohn told Reuters. Video footage of the funeral obtained by Reuters on Monday shows what appears to be a jet of black paint shooting into the grave as burial workers shovel in earth. The person squirting the paint is not seen. Mendelssohn, who has a long white beard, is visible in a separate shot of the funeral, which drew some 200 mourners including German President Johannes Rau and Israeli President Ezer Weizman. None of the mourners appeared to have noticed the paint-squirting incident. Police in Tel Aviv said an investigation would be opened only if evidence were discovered. Bubis, a Holocaust survivor, died in Frankfurt, his home town, aged 72 after a brief illness. Bubis always insisted on his own German nationality as one of a tiny number of Jews to settle back in Germany after surviving the Nazi genocide of six million of his people. He later became a successful property developer in Frankfurt and Israel. Mendelssohn said he had promised Bubis before his

death that he would desecrate his grave. "He is a bad man. He dealt in the black market...He built illegally. He destroyed buildings that were very old. But since he was a Jew, you could never say anything. He took advantage of his Jewishness," he said. Bubis had led Germany`s Jewish community since 1992. He came to prominence in 1985 when he led successful efforts in Frankfurt to bar the staging of a play by film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder which portrayed a Jewish property developer exploiting Germans` guilt to make a fortune after World War Two. Bubis said the play, "Der Muell, die Stadt und der Tod" (Garbage, the City and Death), was an anti-Semitic attack on him.