A couple of weeks ago posters started appearing for a community fundraising event to support children and families in Gaza. My first impression was that it was being organised by local schoolkids based on the artwork and made a mental note to go along. It turns out that the day of tea, cakes, Palestinian recipes and Sunday lunch was arranged by a Buddhist café which I tend to avoid because it doesn’t sell bacon sandwiches. It is part of a group of Buddhist run businesses in the area.

Someone else saw the same posters. They got so indignant at the very notion that children in Gaza should receive food and medical treatment and that a local business was selling Palestinian food for a day that they put a fair bit of legwork into defacing several of the posters.

Bethnal Green isn’t fertile ground for supporters of Israel and its campaign of genocide. The only ones I have encountered were in the Labour Party and I have no idea who defaced the posters. What is obvious however is that it was, even from the point of view of hate filled Zionist racists, a counter-productive thing to do. Wanting to keep children alive, despite what the Israeli state and its defenders might argue, does not make people supporters of Hamas. On the other hand, trying to sabotage an event aiming to do nothing more than provide food and medical supplies does make the individuals doing it look like they actively support mass starvation of civilian populations.

When I called into the event not too long before it ended on Sunday it was apparent that it had been very busy all day and I assume it raised a decent amount of money. The thing I found interesting was the way the organisers responded to the Zionist vandalism. You can see in the photo that they stuck a bit of paper with the slogan in watercolours “a great success”. It was a nice way to draw the poison out of the act of defacing the originals and undoubtedly would have annoyed the vandals hugely.

So, an excellent community initiative and an angry vandal. A good result for the Buddhists and those of us who oppose genocide.