Belfast hospital reportedly fails to remove antisemitic genocidal graffiti after six months
A hospital in Belfast has reportedly failed to remove antisemitic genocidal graffiti from the exterior of its building for an estimated six months.
According to Gavin Robinson, Leader of the Democratic Union Party (DUP), the graffiti remained on the Royal Victoria Hospital in West Belfast five months after an official complaint was made to the Belfast Health Trust.
The graffiti consisted of the phrase: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The genocidal chant ‘From the River to the Sea’ refers to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and, whether intended or not, is widely understood to represent a call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state — and its replacement with a Palestinian state. It is reasonably interpreted to be a call for the annihilation of half the world’s Jews, who live in Israel.
Mr Robinson said that the vandalism would deter Jewish patients from coming to the hospital, emphasising that the phrase is “viewed by many people as a violent call to erase Israel and its population from existence”.
It is understood that the complaint has since been raised with the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman.
When asked by Diane Dodds, a DUP Member of the Legislative Assembly, during a Stormont Health Committee meeting this week why the graffiti had not yet been removed, the interim Head of the Trust, Maureen Edwards, said: “As one of the first trusts of the sanctuary, we take it very seriously. We had extreme difficulty getting anyone to take the graffiti down. We had gone out to lots of contractors who would not do it. It is being dealt with now. We’d gone to local community groups, who had supported us, but we had real difficulty in getting anyone to do it.”
