Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israeli Flag Defaced at California College

An Israeli flag belonging to a Jewish student group was defaced with the word “terrorists” at the University of California, Riverside.

The word was scrawled in pencil near the center of the flag, which was displayed on a hallway bulletin board outside the campus Hillel office, the Los Angeles Times reported. Campus police are investigating the vandalism, which was discovered Tuesday.

“The defacement of any nation’s flag with pejorative characterizations of its people is an insult to every nation and its people,” the university’s chancellor, Timothy White, said in a statement. “Such behavior diminishes us all, and we have zero tolerance for it.”

The vandalism follows a campus appearance on March 1 by two Israeli soldiers that drew pro-Palestinian protesters. According to Riverside’s Press-Enterprise, protesters walked out of the event and interrupted the question-and-answer session. The soldiers had come to discuss their army experience.

The campus Hillel director, Adina Hemley, told The Press-Enterprise that it was “a bit of a strange coincidence” that the defacement was discovered days after the event.

Hadil Bashir, the president of the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, condemned the vandalism.

“I think the first thing that came to people’s minds was it’s SJP, due to the friction between Hillel,” she told The Press-Enterprise. “I just want to make it clear, we condemn the act, and we hope the perpetrators are found and are given their deserved punishment.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.