‘It’s about humanity’: Pro-Palestinian campaigners defend graffiti on Hackney border following complaint
The graffiti on Hackney’s side of the station. Photograph: Noora Mykkanen
Campaigners have defended pro-Palestinian graffiti found on the border of Hackney and Tower Hamlets after a complaint was made demanding its removal.
Messages of support for Palestine and Gaza appeared recently around Hackney Wick Overground station, including colourful ‘Free Palestine’ slogans and ‘From the river to the sea’ – a phrase that some people consider to be antisemitic.
Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign said some of the slogans were painted by a young woman who has lost more than 100 members of her family in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
The group defended the graffiti, with secretary Sussan Rassoulie saying it had no “political axe to grind” and that the messages are “about humanity”.
Martin Sugarman, chair of the Hackney Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women (AJEX) and Hackney Haifa Twinning, complained to Hackney Council and urged it to remove the graffiti.
He told the Citizen he would be “appalled” if the “hateful” messages are not quickly painted over.
“I’ve been in touch with Jewish and non-Jewish people and they are sickened by it,” he said.
He views the phrase ‘From the river to the sea’ as a call to “get rid of Israel”, and said that the hoardings outside the station are full of “pro-Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and anti-Israel” slogans – something Rassoulie denies.
She said it is “unbelievable that we could even be talking about hate crime”.
“There is no PLO graffiti and nobody is for the PLO. All we and the people who painted them want is equal treatment of Palestinians. They are treated worse than third-class citizens.
“There is an apartheid in Israel and we need equal treatment of Palestinians. How can a regime like Israel get away with murder?”
Sugarman claims the graffiti creates an environment in which “young, thuggish elements will attack you, verbal attacks”.
“When it just says ‘Gaza’, we can live with it. But we know why it’s been put there – it’s meant to cause division within the Palestinian cause.”
Sugarman emailed Hackney Council about the graffiti on 3 February.
Hackney Wick ward councillor Chris Kennedy, also a cabinet member, said on 9 February that teams in Hackney had the “northern side of the station in their sights”, and that he had copied in the Tower Hamlets councillor responsible for south of the station.
The graffiti was still present on both sides of the station when the Citizen visited again today.
The messages on the Hackney side of the tracks are believed to be on private property, and the council has been in contact with the landowner.
Rassoulie said removing the graffiti would be “outrageous”, while Sugarman said he would feel “awful” if it remains, and that he would consider taking direct action.
A Hackney Council spokesperson said it “recognises the deep distress, fear and anger in our communities here in the borough about the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza”.
They added: “Hackney is home to tens of thousands of residents from the Jewish and Muslim faiths, and we know they have been particularly affected by the conflict.
“They have also been impacted directly or indirectly by the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia in the borough and more widely across London.
“Our first and foremost concern is their safety and wellbeing. Safety includes living free from fear or intimidation – or the perception of it.
“Hackney Council removes tens of thousands of instances of graffiti or fly-posts every single year.
“Our actions are informed by the considerations set out in the council’s graffiti policy.
“Some of our staff have been verbally abused while carrying out this work. This is unacceptable. Our staff must be allowed to undertake the work they are employed to do without fear or harassment.
“Graffiti should be reported at hackney.gov.uk/report-a-problem or on the Fix My Street app.”
A row erupted last year when Hackney Council removed graffiti with the words ‘Free Palestine’.
Tower Hamlets Council did not respond to a request for comment.
1. Hackney PSC are liars; there is no Apartheid in Israel as many Black South African visitors have testified many times on visiting and any visitor can see if they go. The PLO flag and colours are everywhere in that area of the station and Hamas and the PLO are affiliated, though they hate each others guts
2. All minorities in Israel are equal in law and many Arabs sit in the Knesset and hold high offices in the country; the Bahai, for example, have their HQ in Israel as they were forced to flee Islamic countries and their beautiful Temple sits in its gardens and alongside its library in our Twin Town of Haifa. Many Bahai are Arabs; some Apartheid! Israel is the only Middle East nation where Christians flourish
3. ‘Free Palestine’ means destroy Israel; the Palestinians have NEVER accepted the fact that their ancestors stole the land from the Jews in the 6th century and have Occupied, Settled and Colonialised and Ethnically cleansed Jews since then, until 1948 when Israel was re-born by the will of the Free World at the UN. That is why every partition plan to SHARE has been rejected by the Arabs but accepted by the Jews, because if the Palestinians accept 2 states they will never be able to claim the whole country again. So much blood has been shed by Arab terror, that the Jews are giving up the idea of 2 states; but we will see.
4. ‘From the River to the Sea’ is anti-Semitic as it calls for the death of Israel. If you do not get that you need your head examining
5. Some of the graffiti is innocuous but the encouraging of children to chant slogans – go and read it – is outrageous anti-Semitism and politicising school kids who know nothing of the history ,and making PLO support ‘cool’
6. Where was all the grafitti and mass marches about the REAL genocides going on in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, not to mention massive deaths in Ukraine, Congo, etc ? Nowhere to be seen is the answer – because the move is to attack only Israel on unfounded allegations. When Moslems kill Moslems there is no protest – only when Jews defend themselves against Islamist terrorists.
7. The Jews have lived in Israel for 4,500 years and 3,000 years before the Arab invasion stole it and Occupied it – as a nation state of Tribes, Kingdoms and Prophets and Judges. Israel is the cradle of our Faith and Culture, as well as that of Christianity, once a Jewish sect. We are going nowhere – but ask the PLO what they think – from the River……………
Nothing wrong with ‘Free Palestine’ per se but maybe the people who painted this would also like to do some graffiti condemning Hamas for terrorising its own people and calling for the release of hostages?
1.To determine if Israel is an apartheid state one needs to look at its laws and the application of them, it’s not about opinions. Just one example is how Israeli settlers in West Bank are murdering Palestinians and clearing villages under the close watch of the IDF.
The flag being flown is that of Palestine, not the PLO I think.
2. Israel declared itself to be a Jewish State for Jews. This in itself means non-jews are marginalised. Israel’s management of the Occupied Territories has been contrary to International Law and many UN decisions.
3. I don’t believe many Palestinians care a damn about who lived where in the 6th century. The point is who lives where now and who is stealing land, property and possessions now. If an Italian comes to your home now and says you have to giv e it to them because they can show an ancestor of theirs lived there in the 2nd century, will you give it up?
I have a % of Neaderthal DNA. Neaderthals migrated from Africa, maybe 200,000 years ago, maybe earlier. Their routes seem to have included the Levant/Palestine. Does this mean I trump your “jewish” claim on the land?
Your logic about prior ownership is dangerous as it supports views that jews should not have been able to own property in Europe (not their home land), that expulsions from (so called) Christian countries was OK. It also, perversly ties in with anti-jew views in many countries during the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. How do you make sense of that?
4. From the river to the sea is about freedom for all people living there, not just jews, not just muslims, christians and secular types. All people living in the Levant are Palestinians. Israel is in Palestine!
5. A Semite refers to the many tribes, jews were but one. Other Semites are what you call Arabs from the Levant.
6.But, leaving that aside the graffitti is anti-Israel, not anti-jew. Israel has murdered over 28,000 people, wounding over 66,000 with nearly 8000 missing, most likey dead under rubble. How ever you like to see this it is appalling. It is not “self defense”, it is collective punishment, mass murder, robbery with violence, ethnic cleansing and, it seems the UN agree, it is genocide – real genocide!
7. Israel is a State in Palestine. It is also a religious concept, a state of being when the messiah comes. This is why many jews see the State calling itself “Israel” is a blasphemy. Archeological evidence does show that jews have lived in the Levant for thousands of years. The goepolitics mean that many empires trod through the Middle East to conquer lands and peoples. Many different peoples have lived in this part of the world for thousands of years.
The Torah tells stories about jews living in the Levant and what God asked of them and instructed them to do. But that doesn’t mean non-jews need to accept this. Indeed it doesn’t mean even jews need to accept it! Judaism was a verbal religion, only written (to some dispute) when jews were expelled from Palestine. Are we jews to beleive what was written? Because jews and their teachers have been arguing about how to interpret the Torah at its first draft!
1.The usual ill-informed response from Gary Saunders representing the Israel demonisers lobby. The Law in Israel has to be obeyed by all; are you talking about the Jews on the West Bank/Judea and Samaria? If so they do not touch land that is owned by Arabs, but only land that Arabs squat on and have no right to; the Jews build and farm on only land that is state owned and they have a right to live on. If you go back further than yesterday you will find that Arabs were murdering Jews from 1917 and so Jews have a right to self defence if the Arab settlers get violent
In addition military law is applied on West Bank as the PLO wi ll not accept civil rule – offered but refused – as this they say means they are citizens of Israel , and do not want to be ; they are the PNA and autonomous.
The PLO and Palestine flags are the same. thing.
2. Israel is the Jewish State of the Jewish people since 4,500 years ago BUT in modern Israel all minorities are respected and equal before the law – in the same way that Kenya is now an African ruled nation but Whites and Asians have equal rights. What is your problem with that? What about the Islamic republics ? They openly declare as Moslem nations and symbols on their flags? Where is your anger about THEM??
3. UN resolutions on Israel are prejudiced Jew hate and the vote is dominated by Moslem nations and Russian dominated states and thus have NO meaning – wake up mate!
4. An Italian claiming my home in London would not work mate – they were invaders and stole the land from the Brits; Jews are the only first known, recognised inhabitants in history , of Israel and their land was stolen by the Arabs – end of story – neither you nor the Arabs have an answer to that
As the rest of your drivel is totally incomprehensible, I cannot reply – such rubbish indeed
The sheer ignorance and intellectual antisemitism from Gary Saunders is an absolute disgrace. He should be banned from this site and brought up on charges for inciting racial hatred.
If he is not in breach then he is close to breaching the IHRA definition of antisemitism. https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism
Most racism is purely based on ignorance but antisemitism is notably different in its attracting of intellectuals and their twisted arguments. His attempt to subvert the term anti-semitism (with hyphen) alone is evidence of this. This disgusting attempt to rob Jews even of the term to describe their historical persecution fails at the first hurdle because the term was coined by an anti-semite to describe his hatred of Jews, and no other semitic group. see https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/wilhelm-marr
However, co-opting of terms is par for the course for the modern antisemite. They have successfully co-opted the term Palestinian and Palestine when there has never been a state of Palestine, merely a region of the Roman and subsequent empires (of varying boundaries) which have nothing to do with the Arabs we currently and erroneously refer to as Palestinian.
The modern antisemite and their complicit supporters and sympathisers have co-opted the term Apartheid when the facts show that as the only functioning democracy in the middle-east all it’s citizens enjoy equal standing under the law. Gary’s says it is not about opinion and then spews opinion and rubbish about specific incidents – I have an incident for you, 2 Israelis murdered and multiple wounded YESTERDAY in a terrorist attack.
Like Goebbels before them, modern antisemites are taking parts of Jewish law/Torah and history and twisting them to reflect what supports their arguments. Jews were never expelled from Palestine because it was called Judea then, and not all of them left in any event. Israel IS a state in what was an imperial province/region called Palestine, the Arab part was established in 1923 in Jordan and no Jews have ever been allowed to live there, by law!!!! That is Apartheid!! Samaria/West bank was ethnically cleansed of Jews by the British backed Jordanian forces (Arab Legion) in 1948. “Many Jews see… Israel…as blasphemous” – you are talking about a tiny minority (Neturei Karta) of Jewish religious fanatics when what you should be talking about is the large majority of virulently antisemitic Arabs in various Islamist and other hate groups that time and again have been attempting to exterminate Jews in their ancient and modern homeland.
Anti-zionism (anti-Israelism) is just antisemitism rebranded for the modern age. A stalinist idea at its source it is an attempt to cleanse itself of the stigma of past genocidal anti-Jewish persecutions while being, at root, the same.
The graffiti of “Free Palestine” originates as the cat call of left wing and muslim antisemites but is happily picked up by all and sundry due to its apparent innocuousness. Look a little deeper and you find a quagmire of hate. Free what from what? Gaza is under HAMAS/Palestinian control; Samaria/West bank is administratively controlled by the Palestinian authority, who are the PLO/Fatah rebranded! Arabs of all denominations and none, christians, muslims, Druze, Samaritans, Bahai, Straight, Gay, Trans already live as equal Israeli citizens in the pluralistic democracy we call Israel.
“Free Gaza from HAMAS”
“Free Israel from Terrorism”
“Free Israel from vilification”
“Free Israel from international double standards”
“Free Palestine” is a euphemism that encompasses whatever the caller wants but it is ultimately a call to destroy the only predominantly Jewish state on the planet without consideration for its Jewish inhabitants. We know what it means even if the ignorant do not!
At a time following the attack by Gazan Eisatzgruppen in southern Israel, the worse single mass murder of Jews since the holocaust; at a time when British Jews are being subjected to the worst recorded levels of antisemitism on record, to physical mob attacks in Central London, to attacks on Jewish houses on university campuses, to random individual knife attacks in North London; at a time when antisemitic conspiracy theories are being supported, spread and promoted by MPs (Ali amongst others) while other MPs who support the Jews and their democratic, pluralistic homeland are being murdered (Ames) or threatened with murder to the point of needing to resign (Freer); what we NEED to be talking about is the endemic levels of antisemitism in the labour party, generally on the left and amongst the muslim community.
Gary may not consider himself to be an antisemite but frankly i don’t care what he thinks. I KNOW he is, at best, a complicit facilitator for the most dangerous form of modern antisemitism on the planet. I KNOW that he and his bed fellows are excusing, sympathising with, supporting and encouraging the re-emergence of that most ancient of hatreds. I KNOW that him and his ilk are causing fear in the Jewish community in this country. I KNOW that they are helping spread an infection of hate that will, left unchecked, impact everyone.
“We will only have peace with [them] when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister,