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Next weekend, the University of Pennsylvania will host the second national BDS conference, an event that will advocate for the “growing global campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) the State of Israel.” Last April, Omar Barghouti, a leader and spokesperson of this campaign, spoke at Harvard. He insisted that anyone wanting to learn more about the fundamental tenets of BDS should read his recently released book, aptly titled “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.”
So I followed his advice—I bought a copy of Barghouti’s book and read it from cover to cover. He writes some things in this work about the aims of BDS that lead me to believe that the movement is being far from forthright about its ultimate goals.
Understanding the BDS Movement | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
Seeded on Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:44 AM EST
Article Source: the Harvard Crimson
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If the BDS movement were more open about its aims to purge the Jewish state from the Middle East—rather than just end some of its policies—I could have written an op-ed decrying the movement for its distortion of international law rather than its duplicity. I could have asked, for example, how the movement could possibly believe that a liberal democracy cannot have an ethnic identity when democracies across Eastern Europe—including members of the European Union like Finland, Slovenia and Germany—explicitly privilege one ethnicity over others in areas like immigration and culture. I could have also noted how odd it is that the movement vocally opposes the ethnic nature of the Jewish state, yet says nothing about the myriad Arab states that surround it.
But the BDS movement hides its ultimate goal of dismantling the Jewish state behind its public rhetoric. As a result, it has co-opted numerous individuals—and quite possibly donors—who desire to see both a Jewish and Palestinian state flourish into supporting its campaign. Although some members of the movement might actually support the Jewish state’s continued existence, as Barghouti makes abundantly clear, the Palestinian BDS National Committee—the “reference and guiding force for the global BDS movement”—cannot do so under any circumstances.
So because this movement will not broadcast its ultimate aims loud enough, I will do it for them. If you support the BDS movement, you are supporting an organization that is actively working to undermine the Jewish state. Utilizing the vocabulary of international norms, the movement actually systematically attempts to undermine the international consensus that recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. And if you support this right—regardless of your politics, regardless of your stance on the occupation, and regardless of your feelings towards the current Israeli right-wing government—then there is only one moral option. Boycott the BDS movement.
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#1 - Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:48 AM ESTA few things to ponder for my liberal leftist friends on the vine.
Palestinian Muslim totalitarians are fighting Jewish/secular democrats. The former jail and torture gays. The latter have gay pride marches.
The former beat women for immodest dress. The latter have topless beaches.
The former get new rulers when the old ones are shot and thrown off rooftops. The latter have decades of peaceful elections.
The former have sharia law. The latter are more secular than Ireland.
If you support the Palestinians, you have no moral compass.
There are a range of trendy reasons why westerners refuse to support a liberal western country under siege from people who do not subscribe to western values. Self-hatred may be the single most dominant reason. Hating Israel is a safe way of hating the west, for a certain left-wing mindset. Whatever the reasons, the left disgraces itself by its support for the Palestinians.
Put it this way. If you're a westerner, and Israel is one of the main countries you criticise, then you're an anti-semite. As a westerner, your main targets should be places like Sudan and North Korea.
If Israel is just one of at least 60 states that you criticise, and your worstcriticism is of non-democracies, then you may not be an anti-semite, and your criticisms may even make some sense.
The Left's Anti-Semitic Chic by George F. Will, Feb 25, 2004. "The appallingly brief eclipse of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz demonstrates how beguiling is the simplicity of pure stupidity."
The new anti-Semitism by Melanie Phillips, 22 Mar 2003
- "hostility to Jews is strongest among those on the Left who claim to be fighting racism"
- She notes the deep need Europe has to get over its guilt about the Holocaust: "Europe has waited for more than half a century for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction.So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, Europeans have eagerly embraced the Nazification of the Jews"
"Hallucinatory" anti-semitism
- Daniel Jonah Goldhagen expresses well the point that anti-semitism has always been "hallucinatory". It is not about what the Jews do. It is about imaginary things. Hitler's fantastical complaints about the Jews were no more based on reality than the medieval complaints about the Jews "causing" the Black Death.
- Almost all complaints about Israel today are of the same hallucinatory quality. What Israel does and does not do is simply irrelevantto the lives of almost everyone in the Arab world. And yet it consumes so much of their attention, as if Israel and the Jews are to blame for the fact that they are poor, unfree and backward. The entire Arab world is in the grip of a hallucinatory anti-semitism that achieves nothing. The best thing Arabs can do is simply forget about Israel.
- The Editor-in-Chief of the enemy TV station Al-Jazeera illustrates this hallucinatory hatred of Israel. He claims that the Jews are the cause of all of the Arab world's problems (even in countries with no Jews):
- Q. "Do you mean to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?"
- A. "I think so."
- He's not joking. He really believes this.
- The Globalization of Antisemitismby Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (see also Hate turns from Shylock to Rambo)
- And in Europe, Israel, rather than money-lending or Christ-killing, is now the main "reason" given for European anti-semitism, and the left is now the centre of Jew-hating, rather than the right.
- The Paradox of Cruelty: The greater the hatred, the less the reason
- Anti-semitism's equally hallucinatory sister hatred, anti-Americanism.
- 2 votes
Although some members of the movement might actually support the Jewish state’s continued existence, as Barghouti makes abundantly clear, the Palestinian BDS National Committee—the “reference and guiding force for the global BDS movement”—cannot do so under any circumstances
Anti-Semites abound under all kinda guises. Gotta hand to to this author Don, great article!
- 1 vote
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