The London Underground was plastered with anti-Israel ads on Monday, to celebrate the start of “Israel Apartheid Week,” local media reported. According to a Brighton chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) tweet, the messages had been placed on 500 London tube trains. One poster accused the British government of arming Israel; another condemned security company G4S for helping to operate prisons in Israel for money.
Even the BBC, that bastion of fairness in reporting, was accused by the underground posters of reporting with a pro-Israel bias.
Transport for London (TfL), the city transportation authority, said in a statement that the posters were unauthorized and would be removed, even before Israel asked the British government to remove them. “It is fly posting and therefore an act of vandalism which we take extremely seriously,” the agency said, adding, “Our staff and contractors are working to immediately remove any [of them] found on our network.”
According to Ha’aretz, MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) on Monday morning asked London Mayor Boris Johnson personally to do something about those illegal posters, and the mayor confirmed they were being removed. London’s deputy mayor for transport Isabel Dedring and Nick Brown. Managing Director, Rail and Underground .Transport for London, received complaints from Barnet Councilor Dean Cohen, who was passing along complaints from his constituents.
According to the UK Jewish News Online, Labor Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden Andrew Dismore AM complained to TfL “senior management,” as did Conservative London Assembly member and transport spokesman Richard Tracey, who urged Tfl to “do everything within its power” to the remove these “anti-Semitic posters and catch those responsible for distributing them.”
Dismore said, “It appears they are cleverly designed flyposters, to fit TfL advertising frames in substitution for, or over the top of, legitimate commercial adverts. TfL have promised me they are removing them, though they have to find them first, as they are spread about the network.”
Well, some underground cleaning crew earned overtime pay from this adventure, so it didn’t all go to waste.