Ewa Jasiewicz, who vandalised the Warsaw Ghetto, now campaigns for Labour

A woman who was roundly condemned for vandalising the Warsaw Ghetto to advance her political opinions about Israel is now campaigning for the Labour Party.

Activist Ewa Jasiewicz sprayed political “Free Gaza and Palestine” on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto in 2010, the largest and most well-known of the ghettos designated by the Nazis in German-controlled territory, from which hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent to death camps or killed by shooting and another hundred thousand died of starvation and courageous revolt. Essentially a mass grave, the Warsaw Ghetto serves as a salient symbol of the Holocaust for all and evokes sensitivity and strong emotion on the part of Jews in particular.

The vandalism of the Warsaw Ghetto was condemned across the Jewish community. That the political messaging of the graffiti was directed toward Israel meant it also clearly breached the International Definition of Antisemitism, adopted by the British Government, which illustrates manifestations of antisemitism, inter alia, as

• drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis – which the political messaging did by using the setting of the Warsaw Ghetto, which was established, operated and liquidated by the Nazis, to criticise Israeli policy and imply that it replicates that of the Nazis; and
• holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel – which Ms Jasiewicz did by deliberately targeting a site of Jewish suffering to draw the attention of Jews to the policies of Israel and to associate Jewish suffering with those policies in the minds of the rest of the world.

Ms Jasiewicz is also a union organiser with Unite and has spoken at an event with the pro-Corbyn pressure group, Momentum.

It is unlikely to come as a surprise to many observers that the Labour Party under its antisemitic leader, Jeremy Corbyn, attracts support from individuals such as Ms Jasiewicz.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right, and that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is the party leader of choice for those who hold multiple antisemitic views.

On 8th December, regardless of religion, race or politics, Jews and non-Jews alike will gather in Parliament Square to declare that they stand together against antisemitism in the face of Jew-hatred in politics and mounting anti-Jewish hate crime.

On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.

Over 58,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”