Monday, March 06, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
Have your Kleenex ready for I bring oh-so-sad tidings:
ardent anti-Israel
activist Rania Khalek has become a victim of economic terrorism. Anyone who
has a heart must feel it ache now – after all, Khalek has always done her part
to promote BDS campaigns against Israel, fervently hoping that this economic
terrorism would lead to the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. What
cruel fate that she’s now finding
herself boycotted, divested and sanctioned by many of her erstwhile fans who
loved her lies about Israel, but loathe her lies about Syria.
But given the current popularity of fake news, Khalek still
has some ardent fans – they either write blog
posts railing against her detractors, or, more usefully, donate to her new
GoFundMe campaign “Help
out Rania”. In just four days, 320 hardcore Rania fans have coughed up more
than $10 000 to prevent her detractors from “successfully weaponiz[ing] poverty
to silence an independent journalist.” Add to this the almost $7500 she raised last October
and the money she likely earns from publishing on various “alternative” sites –
including
the “Grayzone” run by her very dear friend Max Blumenthal – and it would seem
that poor Rania is not so terribly poor.
However, now that Khalek is finding herself at the receiving
end of the tactics she and her fans have always promoted against Israel, we can
learn a whole lot about the real nature of BDS from the very people who love to
see it used against the Jewish state and its citizens.
So forget about claims that BDS is non-violent: threatening
someone’s employment is “violence,” or, as Khalek herself put it,
“economic terrorism.”
And while BDS supporters are always proud when they manage
to shout down – or even shut down – pro-Israel speakers, it now turns out that
silencing someone’s free speech “is fascistic.”
Furthermore, we learn from Glenn Greenwald that even if one
doesn’t agree with someone’s views, a campaign to prevent a person from
speaking is “toxic.”
So to sum up: BDS is “economic terrorism,” it is “fascistic”
and “toxic.”
Thanks Rania for clearing that up!
I have no doubt that even Khalek and her supporters would
agree that something that is terrorist as well as “fascistic” and “toxic”
should have no place in universities or anywhere else where human rights are
taken seriously. That is of course the reason why Khalek and her ilk spend so
much energy on demonizing Israel. But the fact that they obsess about the
world’s only Jewish state while ignoring or even whitewashing the atrocities
committed by Assad and his allies illustrates all too well how truly toxic BDS
is.
