Independent journalism about VU Amsterdam | Since 1953
7 November 2024

Campus
& Culture

Ad Valvas defaced with anti-Semitic texts

Numerous copies of the latest issue of Ad Valvas have been defaced with texts such as ‘Fuck Israel’, ‘Fuck Zionism’ and ‘Stop supporting genocide’. The defacers have consistently targeted the interview with three Jewish students in that issue, in some cases crossing out the word ‘Jewish’ and replacing it with ‘Zionist’. Texts against Israel are not per se anti-Semitic, holding people responsible for what Israel does because they are Jewish is.

The anti-Semitic action was first discovered last Thursday by professor of Jewish studies Jessica Roitman, who noticed that copies in the bins, in which the Ad Valvas magazine is offered, had been defaced on several floors in the main building. The Executive Board condemned the action in the VU-zine, the weekly newsletter sent out by VU Amsterdam every Monday.

A spot check by Ad Valvas editors on campus last Tuesday did not yield any new defaced copies, but by Thursday all the Ad Valvas copies in the bins in the central hall and in front of the student desk in the Main Building had been defaced. One or more persons are putting a lot of time and effort into it.

Not part of protest

“This is not part of our protest against the Israeli war on Gaza”, a spokesperson for the Gaza activists replied when asked. On Thursday afternoon, they organised another sit-in to demand that VU Amsterdam cut all ties with Israeli institutions. The spokesperson shook his head at the sight of the texts. ‘We have nothing to do with this,’ he said. Someone from student union SRVU, also involved in the Gaza actions, explicitly distanced himself from the graffiti. ‘We would never do such a thing,’ he said.

The interview with the Jewish students is about the formation of a new Jewish student union. The students also talk about the anti-Semitism they experience, the sense of insecurity they get from the protests on campus, and some of the statements they encounter there.

“There are students who may not have time to study, but do have time to put effort into defacing the campus magazine”, Roitman writes in an email to Ad Valvas. She wrote a post about the defacement on LinkedIn.

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