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Wednesday, February 03, 2016

"Moderate" Arab MK Ayman Odeh supports BDS

Member of Knesset Ayman Odeh, who was described as a "rock star" when he spoke at the HaaretzQ conference in New York last December, has officially come out as supporting BDS.

When asked a question about that at a seminar, Odeh responded, "First, I would like to salute the people who are working on BDS, I think this really puts Israel on the spot in world public opinion."

He then made an intentionally vague statement that could be interpreted as possibly "only" supporting the boycott of Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria, saying, "So long as it is focused on the occupation it is going in the right direction. For instance, the boycott of settlement products is extremely important. " But he didn't limit his comments to only a boycott of settlement products.

He then went on to say that it is important not to boycott Jews, but the Jewish state, saying, "If we can mobilize as many Jews as we could that would be a win for us."

Of course, the people who claim to "only" boycott settlements are really only boycotting Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria, not those of Israeli Arabs in various industrial zones, as we have discussed previously. Even the BDSers who want to boycott Israel altogether never say to boycott Arab owned businesses in Israel.

Odeh has been hailed as a "moderate" and even compared to a "saint" in the fawning leftist media. The media often compares him to his supposed hero Martin Luther King.

The bar for Arabs to be considered moderate or saintly by the mainstream media is quite low. Any Israeli politician who would call for a boycott of Arab or Palestinian products would be considered an extremist and criticized as a bigot, but an Arab who calls to boycott Jewish businesses in Israel - which is what he is doing, and everyone knows it - is considered tantamount to a saint. I guess the fact that he is not calling to stab every Jew in Israel is what passes for "moderate" nowadays.

Watch the video here:



(h/t Yoel)

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