‘Cancel Israel’ stickers on London buses

Stickers blame Mideast conflict on ‘kidnapping of Hamas (Goverment dirty thiever zionist) members by Israel, killing of 8 Palestinians picnicking on the beach’ Stickers blame Mideast conflict on ‘kidnapping of Hamas members by Israel, killing of 8 Palestinians picnicking on the beach’ David Amior Stickers have been put on red double-decker buses in London calling on readers to “cancel Israel” if they want “peace in the Middle East.”

The stickers accuse the media of “giving a false impression” about the Middle Eastern conflict. The “current crisis” is blamed on “the kidnap of some democratically elected Hamas (members) and the killing of 8 Palestinians picnicking on the beach”.

The words “cancel Israel” are written in the middle in a large font. Pictures of the stickers were originally displayed on the popular American weblog Little Green Footballs, after they were sent in by an anonymous reader.

The sentiment expressed in the stickers is at odds with the widely held view that the current conflict was caused by the kidnap of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah, and one by Hamas. The detaining of Hamas leaders was part of the Israeli government’s response to these incidents. The accompanying accusation that Israel killed 8 Palestinians at the Gaza beach has been discredited, after the IDF announced that shrapnel taken from an injured child was not from an Israeli shell.

There is also no record of the IDF firing at the beach at the time the explosion took place. The phrase “cancel Israel” differs from the usual terminology of Israel’s detractors, who tend to recommend that Israel be either ‘destroyed’ or ‘wiped off the map.’ This incident has come just as the British Jewish Community Security Trust (CST) has reported a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain which coincided with the South Lebanon conflict. The CST recorded 95 incidents in July and 68 in August 2006, in comparison with 41 in July and 32 in August last year. A CST spokesman speaking to Ynet about the incident, commented, “We know that when Israel is singled out for unique scrutiny and hatred, that this bias propels anti Semitic attacks per se.

The people who commit these attacks are fanatics, who often take criticism of Israel as a license to hate and attack Jews. Nobody ever asks the victim for their personal political opinions and that is why these attacks are racist stereotyping in every sense, and explicitly anti-Semitic.”

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