UK – Anti-Israel graffiti found defacing UK campus after ambassador’s visit

JERUSALEM POST – Anti-Israel graffiti defacing the campus of a British university with vulgar slogans was being removed after the Jewish state’s new ambassador to the United Kingdom paid a visit to the London campus earlier this week, The Jewish Chronicle reported Thursday.

Ambassador Mark Regev on Wednesday toured England’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) having been invited by the university’s director, Baroness Valarie Amos.

Shortly after his departure, however, anti-Israel graffiti was discovered scattered about the school’s campus including “F**k Regev, Amos and Israel. BDS or else.”

A day after Regev visited the SOAS campus, protests erupted by anti-Israel activists demanding an apology from the university director.

In response to the graffiti’s discovery, Amos’ office released a statement: “With regards to the graffiti, we have started the removal process and some of the graffiti is no longer legible.” The statement continued by noting, “the removal process must be carried out carefully.”

The Union of Jewish Students on campus said in the wake of the Regev visit that the actions of the protesters were “extremely disturbing” but not at all surprising.

Earlier this year, 1,283 SOAS students voted in favor of cutting off ties with Jerusalem’s Hebrew University through a Boycott, Sanction and Divestment campaign.

In February, SOAS was the epicenter of “Israel Apartheid week” events that featured numerous speakers including Sahar Francis of the prisoner rights group Addameer, who alleged that Israel harvests organs from Palestinians.

According to the Telegraph, another speaker at the event, Malia Bouattia of the UK’s National Union of Students said that the British government’s campaign against Islamist extremism was being advanced by “all manner of Zionist and neo-con lobbies.”

In addition, the Facebook invite for the event referenced the current spate of Palestinian terrorism, saying that that Israeli Apartheid Week 2016 was “Inspired by the ongoing popular resistance across historic Palestine” and comes as “Palestinian youth and students across historic Palestine are intensifying their struggle against a decades-long brutal Israeli settler-colonial regime.”