Pro-Palestinian protesters call for UW president to retract statement following misattributed photos of antisemitic graffiti

Pro-Palestinian protesters at UW called for UW President Ana Mari Cauce to retract her May 15 statement that called the Quad encampment “vile and antisemitic” this morning after photos of antisemitic graffiti were identified as being unrelated to UW.  The statement, released just after 9 a.m., stated that “UW and the President are acting either with malicious intent or are fully incompetent.” It further alleged that the misattributed images were intentionally used to portray the encampment as antisemitic.  In a May 23 meeting, Juliette Majid, a graduate student at UW and pro-Palestinian community member, requested that Cauce provide specific examples of the antisemitic graffiti referenced in her May 15 statement.  Five photos were included in Cauce’s initial response May 29. The Daily was able to independently verify that two of the photos included were not taken on campus, and were from unrelated out-of-state incidents in 2019 and 2021, respectively. The fifth photo was unidentifiable.  A photo of graffiti reading “Kill Jews” on a sidewalk was from Mid-Wilshire, California, in 2019. The photo was attached to a now-deleted tweet made by a Los Angeles chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.  Another photograph of black spray paint on a wall with a swastika...