Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Yad Vashem has criticized a former Israeli air force captain caught on camera painting pro-Palestinian graffiti on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Yonatan Shapira, who 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 July 4.

 “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.

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. — jta