Yad Vashem on Monday responded to reports that former Israeli Air Force captain and Israel boycott activist Yonatan Shapira spray-painted pro-Palestinian graffiti on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto last week, saying the museum was "repulsed" by Shapira's actions and statements.
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Channel 10 reported Sunday that Shapira had been caught on camera one week previously spraying the slogans "Free all ghettos" and "Free Palestine and Gaza" on the walls of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw - famed site of Jewish resistance to the Nazis - and then hoisting upon the wall a Palestinian flag on a rope with a bottle attached at the end that he threw over the other side.
Speaking for himself and a friend who assisted him in the endeavor, Shapira expressed pride in his work and the political statement it sought to convey. "Gaza is the ghetto," he said.
Yad Vashem reacted to the incident with revulsion and strong disapproval, calling Shapira's actions "a provocation that perverts the history both of the Holocaust and of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
The museum stated the graffiti was "tainted with anti-Semitism," stressing that it pointed "to a person who has lost all factual and moral judgment." The use of the Holocaust in such a way, it said, was "a crass manipulation that warps the historical truth."