Swastikas and Ku Klux Klan Symbols during ‘Apartheid Week’

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A7 News

Apartheid Week at Columbia, UCLA: As Israel Apartheid Week gets into full gear, pro-Israel activists at New York City’s Columbia University confronted anti-Zionists, who built a mock wall to represent the security barrier that Israel built to prevent suicide bombing and other terrorist attacks. Pro-Israel activists displayed signs, one of which included questions asking students how they would react if local areas were blown up by terrorists. On California campuses, anti Zionist student radicals erected mock gravestones of Gazans and Israeli border checkpoints, and several incidents of violent riots were reported.

Hate messages against blacks appear to be a byproduct of the tolerance of hate towards Jews and Israel. San Diego police are investigating the appearance of crudely-designed Ku Klux Klan white hood on a statue outside the main library on the University of California campus. Officials said the incident was intended to offend black students.

Five hate attacks were reported last month, including the spraying of a swastika on the door of a dormitory room where a Jewish student resides. One university official, Sherry Atkinson, said that economic uncertainty might be a source of the hate.

Student government leaders at the university, where a dozen anti-Zionists were arrested by campus police last month for silencing visiting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, called for mandatory campus-wide “diversity training” to stem further hate messages.

Diploma Returned

In Canada, one graduate of the University of Toronto, which is hosting Israel Apartheid Week, returned his degrees, Melanie Philips wrote in the London Spectator. She reported that Howard Rotberg wrote the university, “We have now reached a situation where various student groups, such as the Muslim Students Association, are being funded by radical Islamist groups, and where various University departments across the ‘free world’ are becoming beholden to radical Islam due to financial funding from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates."

“I feel such shame to have been associated with a University that feels that its facilities must be given to those who would destroy our freedoms, and one which fails to understand that tolerance is a two-way concept.”

Swastikas also in California, Florida

Southern California police also are searching for vandals who carved an 8-foot by 8-foot swastika on a country club putting green. Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe told the Los Angeles Times, "The physical damage to the golf course may be repaired already, but the lasting damage that crimes like this leave on a community can be far more devastating. This vandalism is unacceptable hatred."

In Florida, a 21-year-old man and three 17-year-old youths were arrested for more than 100 incidents of spray painting expletives, racial slurs and swastikas on garage doors.