TfL has instructed staff to remove posters calling for a boycott of Israel from its network, calling them an ‘act of vandalism’

Posters parodying a Sally Rooney book cover were spotted across London over the weekend with many people on social media calling on TfL to remove them.

The posters, which parodied the cover of Ms. Rooney’s best-seller Normal People read: “Normal People Boycott Israel.” Last week, Sally Rooney blocked an Israeli publisher from releasing her latest novel in Hebrew to protest “Israel’s system of racial domination and segregation against Palestinians”.

Several sightings of the artwork were reported across London with one prominent display at Vauxhall station.

The group Protest Stencil, who have a history of anti-Israel public artwork are believed to be behind the posters, posting a picture on Twitter with the caption:”You can tell a lot about a person from whether their solidarity is with the coloniser or the colonised. Respect to Sally Rooney for her principled stand in support of Palestinians.

“Those with a colonial mindset…dismiss Palestinians and other racialised people as lesser, uncultured, incapable of rational political thought. They argue against BDS on that shaky basis, ‘We know better than you how you should challenge your oppression’.”

Advertising company JC Decaux, who own the advertising locations, originally said on social media that they believed the images to be photoshopped. In a reply, they said: “Re the images circulating on social media today. Assuming these were flyposting, our team visited the first site and there was no poster. We have not found any sign of these posters on our ad sites and continue to check. So far, it appears that these are photoshopped images.”

After more tweets from concerned members of the community, they later added: “We remain ready to remove any flyposted posters and our teams will check any sites posted on social as having these posters. “

A TfL spokesperson said: "These adverts are not authorised by TfL or our advertising partner JCDecaux. It is fly posting and therefore an act of vandalism which we take extremely seriously. We have instructed our contractors to remove any of these posters found on our network immediately.

Protest Stencil have been approached for comment.