JERUSALEM (JTA) — Yad Vashem criticized a former Israeli Air Force captain caught on camera painting pro-Palestinian graffiti on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Yonatan Shapira, who also advocates for boycotting Israel, sprayed graffiti including "Free Palestine and Gaza" and placed Palestinian flags over the wall last week, Israel’s Channel 10 reported Sunday.
"We see in his actions a provocation that perverts the history both of the Holocaust and of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," the museum said in a statement. "These actions, tainted with anti-Semitism, point to a person who has lost all factual and moral judgment. The use of the Holocaust in the way that Shapira has chosen to do so is a crass manipulation that warps the historical truth."
Shapira was part of a group of Israeli, Palestinian and Polish activists visiting the ghetto site.
He was dismissed from the military in 2003 after initiating and signing a group letter from Air Force pilots refusing to participate in attack missions on Palestinian territories.
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