Anti-Israel activists target London tube

The discovery of hundreds of posters marking Israel Apartheid Week on London Underground trains sparked a commotion in Jerusalem on Monday, with senior administration officials, as well as members of the opposition, contacting their British counterparts demanding answers.

A spokesman for Transport for London, the local transit authority, said later on Monday that the posters were unauthorised “vandalism” and were being removed.

“Over 500 London tube trains plastered with posters for the 4 million passengers to read” as part of a guerrilla advertising campaign, Brighton BDS, a pro-Palestinian group tweeted on Sunday evening.

The signs accused British security company G4S, which works closely with Israeli security services, of assisting with the detention of 500 Palestinian children without trial and asserted that the BBC is “biased in favor of Israel,” valuing the lives of Israelis over those of Palestinians in its reporting.

The campaign also castigated British companies supplying military supplies to Israel, stating they contributed to the “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza and that they “directly profit from Israeli apartheid and contribute to the militarized collective punishment of Palestinians.

The issue quickly became a political one in Israel, with both the prime minister and the opposition taking credit for their removal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold, who was in London on Monday, to demand that the British government have the signs removed.

“Whoever says we don’t act is not telling the truth,” he said at a Likud faction meeting. Netanyahu referred to earlier comments by Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid, who took credit for the signs’ removal, after asking London Mayor Boris Johnson to do so.

Johnson reassured Lapid by phone that the signs were unauthorised and will be taken down, instructing Transport for London to take immediate action.

Speaking at a Yesh Atid faction meeting, Lapid said: “This morning, residents of London entered the Underground and found a series of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel signs calling us an apartheid state, accusing us of torturing children, or murder, of terrible things.

“Since the Israeli government, as usual, did nothing, I talked to Johnson, a great friend of Israel, and explained to him that the State of Israel will not tolerate such things,” Lapid stated.

“It turns out that it is possible to fight for Israel. We can win, we can achieve, we can defend ourselves, but to do that, we have to work at it… We just have to do something.”

A spokesman for the London Jewish Forum on Monday afternoon called the posters “awful smears that do nothing to contribute to peace and dialogue, placing significant strains on inter-community relations across London.

“They are an act of vandalism, seeking to undermine the UK’s relationship with Israel and designed to foster discomfort. We welcome Transport for London’s commitment to quickly remove them.”

The British Zionist Federation likewise posited that the signs’ “grotesque, reductionist and inaccurate portrayals of the issue” could cause subsequent problems for the local Jewish community.

Their assertions, such as that “Israel is not only involved in massacres, but also in effect controls the subsequent media coverage – would undoubtedly have resulted in an increase in community tensions,” asserted Paul Charney, the group’s chairman.

Sam Sokol & Lahav Harkov
The Jerusalem Post