Three billboards saying “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” in Berkeley and Oakland were defaced by people claiming to be anti-Zionist Jewish activists on February 3.
The Jewish News of Northern California (The J) reported that the billboards, which were put up by the group JewBelong, stated: “You don’t need to go to law school to know anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” referencing the several student groups at Berkeley Law who passed bylaws barring Zionist speakers from campus in 2022. The defaced billboards were changed to say “anti-Zionism is anti-racism” and “Jews4FreePalestine” over the JewBelong logo.
The anonymous Jewish activists said in a statement: “We are Jews who vehemently oppose the notion that anti-Zionism is anything but anti-racism. We oppose the perverse use of the historical genocide and displacement perpetrated against the Jewish people to justify the current and ongoing genocide and displacement of the Palestinian people.” They added that the defacement was a response to JewBelong Founder Archie Gottesman saying that the recent vandalism of other JewBelong billboards with “Free Palestine” was a hate crime. “Opposing Israeli apartheid and occupation, which the majority of the world has for decades recognized are illegal, is not a hate crime,” the anti-Zionist activists said. “And rejecting Zionism anywhere in the world, whether in the streets of Palestine or on Billboards in the Bay Area, is not a hate crime.”
Screenshots from the press release follow: pic.twitter.com/jnFBuaFLQo
— Nora Barrows-Friedman (@norabf) February 1, 2023
— Nora Barrows-Friedman (@norabf) February 1, 2023
JewBelong Founder Archie Gottesman told The J that the people who defaced the billboards are “fringe” and are attempting to stoke “a Jew vs Jew fight at a time when we should all be united against the larger issue, which is growing antisemitism in the US.”
Brooke Goldstein, Co-Founder of End Jew Hatred, tweeted, “There is nothing progressive, anti-racist, or ‘pro-Palestinian’ about vandalism defacing and demonizing the civil rights movement of the Jewish people: Zionism.”
There is nothing progressive, anti-racist, or “pro-Palestinian” about vandalism defacing and demonizing the civil rights movement of the Jewish people: Zionism. pic.twitter.com/L4e86PCGGn
— Brooke Goldstein (@GoldsteinBrooke) February 5, 2023
