Friday, September 08, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
The New York Times decided to give yet more oxygen to BDSers like Roger Waters.
Waters wrote an op-ed that is so absurd and filled with lies and half-truths that it brings up, yet again, the late Senator Patrick Moynihan's dictum, " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
Waters claims that the Israel Anti-Boycott Act violates free speech:
Members of Congress are currently considering a bill that threatens to silence the growing support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom and human rights, known as B.D.S. This draconian bill, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, threatens individuals and businesses who actively participate in boycott campaigns in support of Palestinian rights conducted by international governmental organizations with up to 20 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.It doesn't. The act is a mere extension of existing US law against adhering to the Arab League call to boycott Israel to include the calls by the UN to boycott a "blacklist" of companies that do business in Israel. The existing law has withstood challenges on free speech grounds.
By endorsing this McCarthyite bill, senators would take away Americans’ First Amendment rights in order to protect Israel from nonviolent pressure to end its 50-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory and other abuses of Palestinian rights.
Waters goes on:
Criminalizing boycotts is un-American and anti-democratic. Boycotts have always been accepted as a legitimate form of nonviolent protest in the United States. In 1955 and 1956, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., incited by the protest of Rosa Parks and others, became one of the foremost civil rights struggles against segregation in the South.Boycotting Israeli products is not similar to the bus boycott. The bus boycott was against the bus companies directly discriminating against blacks.
Boycotting companies that do business in Israel is more similar to KKK members boycotting black-owned businesses. It has nothing to do with the companies' actions; like KKK boycotts, it is motivated by hate, not human rights.
Waters' arguing that this is a free speech issue exactly mirrors the neo-Nazis who have been marching in America under the same guise of "free speech." In both cases, hate is being advocated under the pretense of caring for "free speech." One only has to look at how anti-Israel activists have shut down Israeli speakers on college campuses to see how little they care about free speech.
But Waters' op-ed is more insidious than its mere disregard for facts. Waters continuously pretends that BDSers are motivated by their concern for Palestinian human rights, and that they are civil rights activists.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Over 3,400 Palestinians have been killed during the Syrian civil war. Egypt has enforced a near-total blockade on Gaza for years. Lebanon places thousands of Palestinians in what can only be described as open-air prisons complete with watchtowers where their own police will not enter and where they are denied a slew of rights including what jobs they can hold and bans of building houses. Jordan has a history of taking away citizenship of thousands of Palestinians. The Arab League specifically takes away Palestinian rights to become citizens in their member countries. There are plenty of other examples of Arab discrimination and abuse of Palestinians.
BDSers, including Roger Waters, don't say a word about these.
Because their motivation has nothing at all to do with civil rights. Like the KKK, they are motivated by hate for the world's only Jewish state, not by their love of Palestinians or concern for universal human rights. They don't give a damn about Palestinians - only about punishing Jewish Israelis. (They don't want to boycott Arab Israeli businesses.)
Meaning that their fundamental driving factor really is antisemitism.
And Roger Waters' hate is a perfect topic to be pushed in the New York Times.
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