{"id":215862,"date":"2018-03-18T14:08:31","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T11:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/?p=215862\/"},"modified":"2018-03-18T14:08:31","modified_gmt":"2018-03-18T11:08:31","slug":"south-african-bds-activists-deface-anne-frank-image-commit-anti-israel-vandalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/es\/south-african-bds-activists-deface-anne-frank-image-commit-anti-israel-vandalism\/","title":{"rendered":"South African BDS Activists Deface Anne Frank Image, Commit Anti-Israel Vandalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flyers featuring a doctored image of Anne Frank have been used to promote a campaign by anti-Israel students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n

By: The Algemeiner<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

First spotted on campus on Wednesday, the flyers show Frank \u2014 a Jewish victim of the Holocaust whose diary became one of the most widely-read books in the world \u2014 wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.<\/p>\n

The Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), which is currently hosting its annual \u201cIsrael Apartheid Week\u201d (IAW) campaign<\/a> on campus, said the flyers include \u201camazing art work from one of our members,\u201d identified as Nuraan Khan.<\/p>\n

In a statement shared online, Khan claimed the flyers draw \u201cattention to the fact that the same racism, hardship and oppression that was faced by Jews during Nazi times is being repeated in modern times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince Palestine has been under Israeli oppression for about 50 years now, there are only 50 flyers,\u201d she added. \u201cThese will be put up in various public spaces around Wits.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to photos uploaded by Khan, the flyers have been posted in at least 35 different locations.<\/p>\n

The South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS) expressed \u201cdisgust\u201d at the initiative, calling it \u201ca gross form of cultural appropriation towards a figure that is symbolic of the plight of the Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, we saw PSC supporters goose-stepping and performing mock Nazi salutes in front of SAUJS students,\u201d the group\u2019s national and Wits chairpersons wrote. \u201cThis year, the PSC has once again resorted to making spiteful allusions to the Holocaust, knowing full well how insulting it is to Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) considers \u201ccomparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis\u201d to fall under its definition of antisemitism<\/a>, which has been adopted by its 31 member countries.<\/p>\n

These do not include South Africa, whose ruling party \u2014 the African National Congress \u2014 announced on Wednesday that it is \u201cactively participating\u201d in IAW to express solidarity with the \u201cheroic people of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after IAW launched at Wits on Monday, phrases including \u201cf**k Zionism,\u201d \u201cIsrael is anti-black,\u201d and \u201cZionism is racism\u201d were found spray-painted on campus. The graffiti has since been removed, according to SAUJS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s happened every year during Israel Apartheid Week specifically without fail,\u201d Dylan Stein, a first-year student at Wits and SAUJS member, told The Algemeiner<\/em>. He pointed out that one of the anti-Israel slogans was written immediately below a poster promoting IAW.<\/p>\n

In an effort to challenge IAW\u2019s narrative on campus, SAUJS ran a counter-campaign this week called \u201cDialogue, Not Division.\u201d Various speakers were invited to address Wits students, including former Miss Israel Yityish \u201cTiti\u201d Aynaw and Arab-Israeli activist Yahya Mahamid \u2014 the latter of whom appeared at Wits last year, only to have the cord of his microphone cut in the middle of his speech.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel are \u201calways attempting to sow division at Wits,\u201d Stein said. \u201cThey come with this graffiti and vandalism \u2026 they obviously don\u2019t want a dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

During an SAUJS event on Monday, PSC members \u201cattempted to intimidate us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey walked up to our area holding signs and wearing keffiyehs over their faces, and they sort of surrounded students on the side,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhen campus security intervened, they said that they were trying to oppress them and prevent them from having freedom of speech. It was a huge argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stein said that being a Jewish student at Wits is \u201csurprisingly not too bad, because a lot of the time, people don\u2019t know that we\u2019re actually Jewish. We don\u2019t really show we\u2019re Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, \u201cespecially during Israel Apartheid Week, if you walk around with yarmulkes, you can just feel a sense of venom whenever you walk past someone wearing a keffiyeh,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

When it comes to BDS, Stein suggested that the majority of people on campus \u201cmay be ambivalent or perhaps irritated with their tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s actually that widespread, especially after the vandalism incident,\u201d he observed. \u201cYou had people walking around saying, \u2018I don\u2019t really care about either side, but I\u2019m not happy with these people vandalizing my campus.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wits administration, PSC, and Khan did not respond to The Algemeiner’<\/em>s requests for comment by publication time.<\/p>\n

Adam Dison, a Jewish student involved in progressive activism at Wits, wrote last year that \u201cthe level of education about Holocaust history, Zionist history and real thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict is sub-par.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is \u201cno place for Jews who don\u2019t endorse BDS or who call themselves Zionist,\u201d he told The Algemeiner<\/em> at the time. \u201cEvery progressive Jew I know of and who is part of my generation expresses similar sentiments. For most, it keeps them out of student politics all together and a lot of potential allies are lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, graffiti reading \u201ckill a Jew\u201d and \u201cf**k the Jews\u201d was found at Wits, prompting condemnation by the university.<\/p>\n

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Flyers featuring a doctored image of Anne Frank have been used to promote a campaign by anti-Israel students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":215867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25,26351],"tags":[5284,402,5504],"class_list":["post-215862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arab-israeli-conflict","category-source-algemeiner","tag-anne-frank","tag-bds","tag-holocaust-denial"],"better_featured_image":{"id":215867,"alt_text":"Anne Frank image displayed in South Africa. (Dylan Stein\/Algemeiner)","caption":"Anne Frank image displayed in South Africa. (Dylan Stein\/Algemeiner)","description":"Anne Frank image displayed in South Africa. 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