Here's the description of one of the sessions at the "Palestine Writes" conference being held at the University of Pennsylvania this weekend
The Right of Return and How to Achieve it
One of the most important lessons we have learned from 75 years of exile is that the essence of the struggle has not changed: It is the expulsion of the people of Palestine from their homes and the confiscation of their land. The implementation of the Palestinian inalienable rights is the key to a permanent peace. All else, including a Palestinian state, so-called regional cooperation or other contrived devices to obscure this fundamental issue, is peripheral.
This means that "peace," to these bigots, cannot possibly be achieved as long as there is a Jewish state in existence.
Diana Buttu, a Hamas defender and BDS bigot who is part of the session, has long advocated a "one state" Palestine solution.
It is amazing how 22 Arab states and 50 Muslim-majority states aren't enough, but one Jewish state is too many.
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About ten years ago, a group of students at Harvard became incensed that their Jewish campus Hillel canceled an anti-Israel event when it was revealed that a BDS group was sponsoring it, violating Hillel's guidelines.
Of course they could hold their event anywhere, but they decided to start a movement called Open Hillel to get other Hillels to drop their affiliation with Hillel. Like so many "progressive" organizations past and future, they are more interested in creating a split within the Jewish community than in building their own. Open Hillel had a conference at Harvard in 2014 and based on the media attention, it looked like it could rupture Hillel International.
It failed.
In the end, only four campuses nationwide defected to "Open Hillel" - Guilford College, Swarthmore College, Vassar College, and Wesleyan University.
By 2020, none of them were still associated with Open Hillel - and two of them are now affiliated with Hillel International again.
In short, Open Hillel made a lot of noise but in the end could not attract students who are both interested in Judaism and anti-Zionism. There is a strong negative correlation between the two positions, which pretty much dooms any attempt to fuse them, no matter how many anti-Israel Haggadahs are printed.
So Open Hillel is in a deep coma, and has been for a while, just as the American Council for Judaism - a prominent and equally tiny anti-Zionist group in the 1940s-1960s - also sunk into irrelevance. Both organizations have a couple of people still doing paperwork to maintain their tax exempt status but they have faded away after a lot of publicity early on.
But Open Hillel has one last gambit to stay alive: "Judaism On Our Own Terms," or JOOOT.
They wrote an introductory piece in Mondoweiss on Friday: "Judaism On Our Own Terms is creating a space where young Jews do not have to choose between their Judaism and their sense of justice."
JOOOT is an offshoot, and seemingly successor, of Open Hillel. Since 2020, Open Hillel's Form 990 has included a position for Rakhel Silverman as a "Judaism on our own Terms organizer." getting paid $4600 in 2020 and $2492 in 2021. Silverman describes themself as a "a proud fat trans Disabled Jew."
But JOOOT really doesn't know what to do next. On their website they say they are in the midst of a "restructuring process" where they are asking anyone and everyone to please give them some ideas of what they should be doing. To restructure means they had a structure to begin with, which is not at all clear.
This mirrors the self-destruction of IfNotNow, but at least IfNotNow managed to grab some headlines before its inevitable collapse.
In the end, even children know that "Judaism On Our Own Terms" is an oxymoron. People don't look at religion or community to do whatever they want - they want to be part of a whole where everyone shares basic beliefs and standards. If anyone can do whatever they want and call it Judaism, then Judaism has no meaning. The anti-Zionists only have one belief - hating Israel - and that is not enough to keep a core group of enthusiastic members nor is it enough to attract more.
There will still be plenty of anti-Zionist Jews. But their interest in identifying as Jews is ephemeral. Which is why these groups are all doomed, but also why there will always be new ones who think they came up with the idea.
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To most people who define themselves that way, it means to be anti-Israel.
Even though NGOs spend tens of millions of dollars in their anti-Israel efforts, writing yet another report finding yet another way Israel is supposedly the worst abuser in the world doesn't help Palestinians one bit.
Google just announced an initiative that will help more Palestinians improve their lives than anything Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B'Tselem, the UN and the EU does - combined.
Apply to Palestine Launchpad with Google
Future-proof your skills for the digital economy
In our dynamic world, time and technology are vital. The digital and gig economies transcend borders, leveling opportunities for talent and ideas. The Palestine Launchpad with Google equips you with the skills, knowledge, and network to enter the global tech talent pool and become a top earner.
• Fully funded scholarship for a Nanodegree Programme
• Line-by-line code review with personalised project feedback
• Flexible self-paced learning schedule
• Live virtual sessions with top-tier mentors
• Career workshops (resume building, interview preparations, etc.)
• Exposure to freelancing and career growth opportunities
• Networking with local and international employers
💻 Become a Web Developer
🤖 Become an AI Engineer
📊 Become a Data Analyst
You are eligible for this programme if you are
• Currently residing in Palestine
• Looking to be part of tomorrow’s tech-powered economy
• Recently graduated from a computer science related field (or are in your final years of study)
• Want to upskill, reskill, or specialise in the various fields shaping this economy, this programme is your springboard.
They are offering free scholarships for 6,000 Palestinians to learn cutting edge skills where they can make money working for companies worldwide without leaving home.
I have been mystified that the EU and USAID have not prioritized this sort of training - training that would actually help Palestinians more than their other initiatives. The average Palestinian salary is now about $20,000 a year - imagine the impact from thousands making Western high tech salaries quintuple that.
The supreme irony is that while Google is doing more to help Palestinians than any other organization in the world, it is being targeted by BDS because it also does work with Israel.
We've shown that BDS actually opposed Cisco doing a similar program to promote high tech jobs among Palestinians.
Israel doesn't mind Palestinians getting high paid tech jobs. But "pro-Palestinian activists" do!
Which again goes to prove that the anti-Israel crowd really doesn't give a damn about helping Palestinians.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters injured a university employee while demonstrating against a lecture speaker who heads the Brazilian chapter of a pro-Israel advocacy group.
Andre Lajst, the director of StandWithUs Brazil, was speaking about ways that Israeli technologies could help develop the Amazon region at the Federal University of Amazonas in Manaus on Thursday when protesters clashed with security and other university employees outside the lecture auditorium.
According to news reports, the advisor to the university’s rector left the scene with a broken nose after attempting to safeguard her daughter. Several students entering the lecture were also harassed, and police officers escorted Lajst into and out of the venue. One protester was reportedly arrested for pushing a police officer but later released.
Andre Lajst completed his lecture and had to be escorted out by police for his safety from the violent mob.
But BDS-aligned media are bragging (and lying) that they managed to shut down his speech with their thuggish mob!
Pro-Palestine Brazilians demonstrated at a university in the Brazilian city of Manaus against the organization of a pro-Israeli-occupation event on campus.
Despite the high-security measures against them, the protesters managed to stop the meeting in support of the Israeli occupation, which is entitled “Cooperation with Israel”.
André Lajst, director of the Brazilian branch of StandWithUs, a pro-Israeli-occupation group in Brazil, spoke at the event about supporting the occupation and normalization with it.
Video clips showed the large number of anti-Israel-occupation demonstrators, known as BDS Mob, who confronted the Brazilian police and attempted to shut down the event by force, forcing Lajst and his companions to leave the place quickly.
These protests are a part of the international BDS activities against all forms of normalization with the Israeli occupation, especially educational normalization.
Among themselves, BDSers don't even pretend to be "non-violent." They are happy and proud to threaten and attack people.
And then they claim in mainstream media articles that they are doing it in the name of "academic freedom."
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Amnesty is saying that banning a movie is a violation of freedom of expression. Amnesty is against all forms of censorship - the allegation that the movie promotes homosexuality does not seem to be the issue at all, just freedom of expression.
However, when Lebanon bans movies for having Israeli actors or producers, Amnesty has not said a word. Isn't that the exact same violation of freedom of expression?
Perhaps not according to Amnesty. Because they do support some boycotts - boycotts against Israel.
Amnesty says, "Advocating for boycotts, divestment and sanctions is a form of non-violent advocacy and of free expression that must be protected."
BDS advocates boycotting the free speech of Israelis on college campuses, and its boycotters do all they can to get venues outside Israel to cancel any talk by an Israeli. Similarly, they threaten artists not to play in Israel , which is another violation of freedom of expression.
How, exactly, is Algeria and Kuwait's boycotts of a movie for religious reasons (whether or not their objections are accurate) a violation of free speech, while Israel-haters' boycotts of movies with Israelis are an example of free speech?
In both cases, the boycotters are the ones that are trying to shut down free speech. You cannot have it both ways.
The analogy isn't perfect - government censorship is different than people deciding to boycott on their own, which of course is their right. But Amnesty has condemned a number of countries for censoring films with LGBTQ themes, and not one word for censoring films with Israeli links.
They are both equally guilty of violating freedom of expression, but only one upsets Amnesty.
It sure sounds like Amnesty's concern for freedom of expression only extends to expression that they agree with.
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Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi...canceled last Monday’s scheduled performance at Fattoush Bar in Haifa, in wake of a BDS media campaign against her. “We call upon Tunisians and Arabs, and all Palestine supporters around the world, to boycott Emel Mathlouthi, all her music and all her shows,” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists had written.
Last Thursday, Mathlouthi posted on her Facebook page a statement rejecting the claims by BDS alleging that she was “normalizing the occupation by cultural means.” She noted that the Palestinian issue is a top priority for her, as evidenced in her songs, positions and personal statements. Nonetheless, her scheduled performance in Haifa sparked controversy on social media, and the pressure from BDS had its intended effect.
“In wake of the controversy raised by the concert tour in the Palestinian territories, and in order to avoid misunderstandings, we’ve decided not to go ahead with the performance in the occupied city of Haifa, even though the place (Fattoush Bar) is under Palestinian ownership,” she wrote.
The attack on the singer elicited fierce discussion on social media by young Palestinians who objected to BDS’ position. Activist Athir Ismail wrote on Facebook: “I am a Palestinian. And I want to speak about what I want without someone from outside watching me and telling me how to fight and how to live.”
Ismail directed her criticism at BDS activists living abroad whose calls for boycotts end up affecting Palestinians who live in Israel. “What do you know about our life here aside from what you see and hear on the news?” she asked. “You cast doubt on our Palestinian identity and act like a man who thinks he has to explain to a woman what she can and can’t do in her fight against toxic masculinity, what’s permitted and what’s forbidden.”
Artist Haya Zaatry from Nazareth also criticized BDS’ actions: “Preventing or canceling a musical performance by an Arab artist in an independent Palestinian space in Haifa only heightens the cultural embargo in which we (Palestinian citizens of Israel) live, and this is a bad and dangerous thing.”
The BDS movement is dominated by privileged white people who falsely claim to be doing what Palestinians want them to do, and when self-described Palestinians tell them they are wrong, they ignore them.
A Tunisian singer who rose to prominence during the Arab spring uprisings announced Wednesday an upcoming show in Tunisia had been cancelled for supposed “normalisation” with Israel.
Mathlouthi, 41, had been set to perform at the Hammamet International Festival in Tunisia next week.
“I am very sorry to announce our much awaited concert in Hammamet has been cancelled with no official reason,” Mathlouthi said in a statement posted on Instagram.
“We believe that our latest tour in beautiful Palestine has sparked an unjustified controversy accusing me of normalisation.”
The best possible anti-Israel spokesperson - attractive, talented, and immensely popular - is being canceled for being insufficiently anti-Israel.
When a movement is built on hate, it eventually falls apart because the members start hating each other for not hating enough.
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The resolution that they approved is antisemitic. It says that Israel's very existence is "apartheid", not "settlements" or "occupation", saying that "from the onset of the Nakba, the catastrophic events of 1948 that led to the mass expulsion and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, Palestinians—including activists, artists, intellectuals, human rights organizations, and others—have documented and circulated knowledge of the Israeli state’s apartheid system and ethnic cleansing."
The first paragraph of the resolution is all the proof you need that there was no research or academic rigor that went into this decision.
Whereas, in 2005, 175 Palestinian civil society organizations, including the Palestinian Federation of
Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE), issued a call for boycott, divestment,
and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli state, in support of the Palestinian struggle for human and
political rights, including the basic right of freedom;
The very first paragraph invokes the antisemitic BDS movement as justification for the boycott, blindly accepting whatever accusations it makes against Israel. The following paragraphs are all essentially cut and pasted from BDS materials. No one at AAA did any fact checks on the assertions in the rest of the resolution.
But what about the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees? Their support for a boycott is considered the linchpin from which the entire resolution gets is legitimacy. Who are they?
The PFUUPE does not exist in any real sense.
It has no webpage. It has no Facebook account. It has no Twitter account.
He is the president of the PFUUPE according to his CV.
Is it not strange that the president of a federation of unions is also the president of a university that those unions would naturally make demands of for better benefits and working conditions? There appears to be a conflict of interest there.
But not if the PFUUPE is fictional.
There is no evidence that the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees has a single member outside Dr. Barham. It apparently does not have bylaws, or membership fees, or benefits, or recruitment materials, or a board, or committees, or elections, or a vice president.
It is one person named Amjad, a man who lists being able to use a PC and the Internet on his resume, and who issues regular press releases in the name of all Palestinian academics. Nearly all of those are about boycotting Israel. He even managed to parlay his one man organization into a Guardian op-ed - again, advocating boycotting Israel, which appears to be the only purpose of this purported federation.
Many other of the "175 Palestinian civil society organizations" that signed the BDS "call" for boycotts appear to be equally fictional, tiny one-person operations created just for the purpose of appearing to be part of a greater whole. Many of them are not even based in the borders of British Mandate Palestine - these "Palestinian civil society" organizations are in Syria and Lebanon and Canada - but they are presented as "Palestinian" to promote the myth that the BDS movement was initiated by Palestinians.
The American Anthropological Association didn't check out whether the PFUUPE that they refer to in their very first paragraph is a real organization. They have no intellectual honesty at all. And any academic who remains a member of an organization that cannot be trusted to check the facts in its own resolutions is not interested in truth either.
UPDATE: GnasherJew did find a Facebook page for this union.
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In 1889, a notable French artist named Adolphe Willette ran as an explicitly antisemitic candidate in the 9th arrondissement of Paris for legislative elections.
The campaign poster included "The Jews are only powerful because we are on our knees! 30 million French people are their trembling slaves. It is not a question of religion, the Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!"
Notice how these antisemites were careful not to appear to be bigoted - their problem, they claimed, was not with Judaism as a religion, but Jews as a race, dedicated to destroying France.
Of course, the broken "Talmud" tablets on the ground show that they hated Jews as a religion too, but even these avowed antisemites didn't want to appear to be bigoted. They came up with a convoluted distinction between "good Jews" and "bad Jews" and claimed they only hated the Jewish race.
It seems strange today to see a political poster that is so suffused with hate, and a candidate who fully expects that a campaign centered on antisemitism would attract voters. Certainly that belongs to a time long gone, right?
Nope.
Yesterday, a small group of people who are alarmed at the weakening of the Democratic Socialists of America started a new slate of candidates for the DSA National Political Committee - to save the DSA by appealing to antisemitism (which they pretend is anti-Zionism.)
One of the primary issues facing our organization right now is our flagging membership numbers. Our organization's membership numbers have seen a substantial decrease from a high of over 94,000 constitutional members in April 2021 to a little over 78,000 constitutional members today. In reality, the number of members who are currently members in good standing and have paid their dues has decreased to 57,000 members.
This trend is not one to be dismissed or ignored. Rather, it must be accepted as an ongoing problem that needs to be diagnosed and further addressed before DSA finds itself facing a full-blown membership crisis.
So how best to shore up an American socialist group than to appeal to their naked hate of Israel?
Anti-Zionism as an organizing principle
Fighting Alongside Liberation Struggles to Dismantle Zionism & Imperialism: Recognizing that the US is a linchpin of imperialism and racial capitalism globally, we as a slate prioritize solidarity with liberation struggles, including those of indigenous peoples from Turtle Island to Palestine, and strive for an organization that takes material action against imperialism....We must develop relationships of accountability with grassroots formations as the BDS Working Group has done with Palestinian grassroots formations in diaspora and in Palestine. To best do so, we support the proliferation of grassroots BDS campaigns, such as the BDS Working Group’s No Appetite for Apartheid campaign...
The focus on hating Israel as a unifying theme for an American political group reflects the exact same kind of single-minded hate that the antisemitic political parties in Europe tried to take advantage of from the late 1800s through World War II. Just as Jews were regarded as the source of all the people's problems then, the Jewish state is regarded the same way today. They prioritize hating Zionism over workers' rights, or racism, or fighting capitalism - and they are convinced that this is a winning strategy to attract socialists to their platform.
Another DSA group recently released a statement saying that they believe that Israeli Jewish civilians - including children - should be treated as military targets under international law. Essentially they called for an open season on murdering Israeli Jews.
So it appears that there is some support in the DSA for a platform that is based on hating Jews.
Just as with Willette, the "anti-Zionist" candidates would insist that they have no problem with Jews per se. And their justification for their focus on hating Jews living in the Jewish homeland is just as absurd and transparent as Willette's.
History may not always repeat, but it sure plagiarizes a lot.
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The [UK Anti-Boycott] bill gives special status to Israel, making it the only country in the world which cannot be excluded from its provisions, and treats Israel and territories it occupies in the same way, contrary to the UK’s long-established policy and international law.
The bill is intended to stifle principled opposition to Israel’s illegal settlements and the Israeli authorities' racist system of apartheid against Palestinians.
Boycotts, divestment & sanctions are forms of peaceful protest that have been used to press for human rights change.
Think:
✊The Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa
🚌The Montgomery Bus Boycott
🛢️The BP oil spill
In the 1890s, merchants in Butte, Montana boycotted Chinese and other Asian businesses, tried to stop customers from entering them, and threatened anyone who hired Chinese people.
No doubt they felt that they were upholding human rights - of non-Asian people. Even this flyer talks about "morals."
What, exactly, is the difference?
More the to point, Jews have been boycotted many, many times in our history. I once gave a brief list of Arab boycotts:
1891: Arabs request the Ottoman Empire not sell land to Jews.
February 1909: "In Hebron, where out of a total population of 18,000 about 2000 are Jews, the Arabs decide to boycott Jewish merchants."
April 2, 1920, AJC: "Rosh Pinah: Thirty Arabs attack Arab workmen in fields belonging to Jewish inhabitants in endeavor to bring about boycott by Arabs against Jews."
June 4, 1921: "Haifa: Arabs issue proclamation urging the populace to boycott the Jews and drive them out of their villages."
1922: Arab Congress calls on Arabs to boycott Jewish businesses in Palestine.
1924: MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION voted to authorize the Executive Committee to promulgate an economic boycott against the Jews. The economic boycott, however, was later abandoned.
1929: Arab Congress vows to compel Arabs to boycott Jewish merchandise. Syria prohibits import of merchandise produced by Jewish businesses in Palestine.
1931: World Islamic Congress passes resolution requesting Muslim countries to boycott trade with Jewish businesses in Palestine. Arab Labor Federation pickets Jewish businesses in Palestine.
1945: Arab League Council adopts Resolution 70, recommending that all Arab states establish national boycott offices.
There was also a major boycott in Poland of Jewish businesses (accompanied by pogroms) in the 1910s.
And of course the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses (accompanied by pogroms) in the 1930s.
But the boycotts of Jews didn't end there. In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia refused to do business with any company owned by Jews or with Jews in important positions. In 1960, it weas revealed that tourist companies would not allow Jews to visit Gulf countries because they adhered to the Arab boycott, and Aramco refused to hire Jews in its New York office. In 1975, the Arab world still refused to work with Jewish bankers.
This was all at the time of the "Zionism is Racism" UN resolution, proving that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the same thing.
The BDS boycott is a direct continuation of the Arab League boycotts of Jews. Don't take my word for it: this document on the BDS Movement website gives a history of BDS, and it prominently features the Arab boycott of Jews (pretending that they were only boycotting "Zionists:") It praises the explicitly antisemitic Arab League boycott successes and mourns when it weakened in the 1980s and 90s. It even looks at the Arab League boycott of Jewish businesses to learn lessons for BDS today. The document, written in 2007, is saddened that at that point in time, only Syria and Lebanon were still adhering to the Arab League boycott - you know, those two human rights powerhouses.
This antisemitism is what Amnesty-UK is supporting. And it has exactly as much to do with "human rights" as the Arab League boycott - or the Butte boycott of Chinese people - did.
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Remember last September when Israel haters went crazy with the announcement that the upcoming Captain America movie would include an Israeli superhero?
Since then, the Israeli actress Shira Haas who plays the role of Sabra has apparently already done her scenes, so the campaign has now shifted from trying to pressure Marvel not to have the character to saying that the movie will be boycotted.
A bunch of Palestinian cultural and artistic institutions decided to sign a letter calling for the boycott, saying that Marvel was racist for including an Israeli character.
We call for the broadest boycott of the upcoming Marvel movie, “Captain America: New World Order,” which is scheduled to be released in the market during the year 2024, until the company cancels the character “Sabra” or “Ruth” from the movie, as it embodies the Israeli apartheid regime.
The backstory of the aforementioned character includes working for the Israeli government and the Israeli occupation forces. Marvel's revival of this racist character - in any way - means the company's promotion of the brutal Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
We also call for creative and peaceful events and demonstrations to put pressure on Marvel Studios - owned by Disney - to end its complicity in anti-Palestinian racism and Israeli propaganda and the glorification of the settler-colonial regime's violence against the indigenous Palestinian people.
No one knows the character's role, her new backstory, her part of the plot, or really anything. Unlike with Gal Gadot, they aren't calling for a boycott because the actress is Israeli, but because the character is Israeli.
Has there ever in history been such a demand from any studio or other medium that they should be forbidden from even including fictional characters from a specific country?
And the signatories are from Palestinian cultural centers, theater groups, circus groups and others. Normally artists are in the forefront of freedom of expression - but Palestinian artists are the leaders in being against those freedoms.
The crazed reactions, the lies that the character was named after a massacre in Lebanon, the support of censorship and boycotts by groups that would normally oppose such actions - it all adds up, as always, to proving that this opposition isn't political.
It is old fashioned hatred of Jews dressed up to appear more respectable.
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BDS was a major factor behind the 46% drop in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014, according to a UN report.
How have direct investments in Israel done since then?
If BDS is taking credit for the 46% drop in direct investment in 2014 then the 255% increase since then must be viewed as a huge BDS failure.
Also, the UN report did not say what BDS claims. It quoted a Newsweek article which in turn quoted a YNet article where one of the authors of the report said:
"We believe that what led to the drop in investment in Israel are Operation Protective Edge and the boycotts Israel is facing," Dr. Roni Manos of the College of Management and one of the authors of the report's summary told Ynet. According to her, these are only conjectures that can explain the sharp decline, but there is another reason. "In the past there were large transactions such as Waze and ISCAR Metalworking which boosted investment, but over the past year there were not enough such deals.
So BDS is not only trying to hide the statistics since 2014 that disprove its "victory," it even lied about the reason for the 2014 anomalous decline itself.
The BDS Movement FAQ goes on:
A Rand Corporation study predicts BDS could reduce Israel’s GDP “by 1 to 2 percent” annually over the next 10 years.
That Rand study says, "Historical evidence from other countries suggests that financial and trade sanctions associated with boycott, divestment, and sanctions could reduce GDP by 1 to 2 percent. "
In other words, it was a wild guess for the purposes of making economic forecasts based on various scenarios, not a prediction for Israel.
Rand wrote that in 2015. How has Israel's GDP done since then?
Israel's GDP increased from $314 billion in 2014 to $488 billion in 2021, an increase of 55% and an average increase of nearly 8% a year.
It doesn't appear that BDS has hurt the Israeli economy at all. On the contrary, Israel has thrived and BDS has not affected it in the least.
By the Israel-haters' own standards, on their own FAQ today, BDS has failed.
Now, I have said that economic damage is not really BDS' aim - demonization of Israel is. By that criterion, they have been successful. But part of that success is because they have been lying about Israel to the world and too many people are believing them.
Here we see that they lie repeatedly to make themselves look successful, when by any economic criteria they have been an abject failure.
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Let's see how effective these campaigns have been.
In 2008, when these campaigns began, Israel was the fourth-largest exporter of dates in the world, behind Tunisia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It had exports of 19 million kilograms with a value of some $50 million.
While Israel does not export as many dates as some other countries, the dollar value is much higher - because the popular Mejdool dates are more expensive and Israel dominates that market.
Here are some charts of the top date exporters in recent years from another source:
It seems that Israel's date industry - which is now Israel's second biggest export crop after citrus - has thrived under the Muslim boycott of Israeli dates.
This is not just a BDS fail - it is a BDS nakba!
For Israeli date growers, it definitely is a Ramadan Mubarak!
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Last week, a bunch of "anti-Zionists" got together for a webcast that next to nobody watched about the dangers of "normalization" with Israel.
One of the speakers was Omar Barghouti, who claims to be the founder of the BDS movement. He explains here what, exactly, BDS opposes when it says it opposes normalization with Israel, giving two conditions before anyone can meet with the "Israeli side." Paraphrasing, the Israeli side must oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state, and the meeting itself must be an anti-Israel meeting.
Then at the very end of his description, Barghouti says, "Again, 'Israeli side' means Jewish Israelis or Jewish Israeli institutions as the case may be."
Meaning, that it is not "normalization" to meet with Israeli Arabs or Israeli Christians even if they are Zionist. The "crime" of normalization applies only to meeting Jews.
Yes, BDS is antisemitic. But we knew that already.
Here is the video, with as much context as I could put in:
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I originally wrote this for publication in a major media site, but they do not publish from pseudonyms, so here it is.
____________________________________________
On December 4, Time magazine published an article partially entitled "Here’s What You Need to Know About BDS" by Sanya Mansoor.
BDS stands for the demand to Boycott, Divest from and Sanction Israel. The Time piece pretends to be an objective look at the controversial movement to treat Israel as a pariah state, but it is a one-sided and inaccurate, reading more like a press release for the BDS movement than an informative article.
It turns out that "all you need to know" leaves out a lot of important information.
Here is an accurate description of BDS' history, goals and philosophy.
How did BDS start?
BDS advocates claim that it was started in 2005 by a group of Palestinian civil society organizations and that it is a Palestinian-led movement.
In fact, the strategy was created in 2001 during the NGO Forum of the infamous Durban Conference, the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance - an event that was so anti-Israel and antisemitic that even the conference secretary-general, Mary Robinson, said included "horrible anti-Semitism."
The NGO Forum published a lengthy statement, of which paragraphs 424 and 425 are the blueprint for the BDS movement that would be declared four years later:
424. Call for the launch of an international anti Israeli Apartheid movement as implemented against South African Apartheid through a global solidarity campaign network of international civil society, UN bodies and agencies, business communities...
425. Call upon the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.
However, even this was preceded and inspired by the League of Arab States boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in the Middle East that started in 1945 and is actually still in force today in Syria and Lebanon.
What are BDS' goals?
The movement claims not to care as to whether there is one state or two states in the area of what used to be British Mandate Palestine.
However, it demands the so-called "right to return" of the descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war, a right that simply doesn't exist anywhere else - there were between 10 and 20 million people displaced after World War II and no one seriously claims their descendants have the right to return to their ancestors' homes.
The so-called "right to return" has been used to keep Palestinians stateless and without protection for over seven decades. The reason, as Arab leaders have admitted candidly, is to use them as cannon fodder against Israel. It is one unyielding demand by the Palestinians - not to have the Palestinian diaspora come to build a Palestinian state but to have them "return" to Israel by the millions and ensure an Arab majority there.
In short, BDS does not and cannot accept the concept of a Jewish state. It would accept one Arab majority state or two Arab majority states, but it vehemently opposes the existence of any Jewish state - even as there are plenty of states that identify themselves as Arab states (and Muslim states) without anyone accusing them of apartheid or racism.
Is BDS antisemitic?
BDS leaders insist that they are not antisemitic. However, their demand for "return" and their refusal to accept Jewish self-determination while insisting on Palestinian self-determination shows that they are the ones who are discriminating against Jews.
Beyond that, the BDS movement and their allies in the far Left insist that Jews are held to standards that no one else is held to. Jews who wish to become leaders in feminist, LGBTQ or other causes must renounce Zionism - the right of Jews to a homeland of their own. Jews who want to become student leaders are examined to see if they support Israel's existence, and saying they do makes them suspect at best, disqualified at worst. Israeli Jews who want to speak on campus are likewise subjected to litmus tests to have the simple right to speak.
BDS says that they want the world to boycott Israeli businesses, but in fact the entire list of businesses listed by BDS groups are owned by Jews. Even though there are Arab owned businesses in Israel and in the disputed territories, only Jewish businesses are targeted.
For all practical purposes, BDS is an ant-Jewish movement. Even the German parliament recognizes this fact, and they know a thing or two about what boycotting Jewish businesses looks like.
Is BDS pro-Palestinian?
The BDS Movement claims that it follows the will of the Palestinian people, listing some 170 "civil society" organizations - many of which had only one or two people - that signed on.
Ilan Pappe, a prominent BDS supporter and critic of Israel, has suggested that the international anti-Israel NGOs created BDS and part of the fiction was to pretend that it was a Palestinian-led movement - and it is important to maintain that fiction.
The BDS movement and its leaders have very little to say about improving Palestinian lives, whether in the territories or in places like Lebanon and Syria.
It goes without saying that most Palestinians do not boycott Israeli goods themselves, including luxuries like chocolates and ice cream.
The highest-paying Palestinians work for Israelis, with an average income of double what they can make domestically according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. A significant part of the Palestinian economy is dependent on workers in Israel. BDS wants all of these people to lose their jobs with no plan on how new jobs could replace them.
In fact, when BDS pressure succeeded in getting Sodastream to move its factory from the West Bank to the Negev, hundreds of Palestinians lost their well-paying jobs. BDS leaders were happy at this "victory."
Given the assumption that Israel is not going to be destroyed in the foreseeable future, BDS advocates have a choice: work towards helping Palestinians within this reality, or working towards the destruction of Israel anyway, to the detriment of the people they claim to represent.
Invariably, BDS chooses the latter.
The BDS apathy towards actual Palestinian lives goes well beyond Israel and the territories. Palestinians in Lebanon who have lived there since the 1950s are banned, by law, from many jobs. They cannot buy land. They cannot build new housing even in overcrowded camps. Yet you would be hard pressed to find a BDS advocate that demands that Lebanon offer basic human rights protections to their Palestinian residents. On the contrary, Lebanese bigotry against Palestinians is ignored and silenced, since the BDS narrative is that Israel is the only evil that may be discussed.
Even more horribly, during the first months of the Syria civil war, Israel offered to allow Syrians of Palestinian heritage to move to the West Bank to save their lives, if only they would sign a paper saying that they forego the "right to return" to Israel proper. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas angrily rejected the offer, saying that it was better for the Syrian Palestinians to die in Syria. He didn't offer the Palestinians of Syria a choice of their own, but made their choice for them. No BDS group objected to this decision that may have contributed to the deaths of thousands.
Does BDS support peace?
BDS advocates are emphatically against any peace initiatives that treat Israeli Jews as human beings. They denounce anyone who participates in peace initiatives, whether it is bereaved Israeli and Palestinian mothers speaking to each other or sports programs for Palestinian and Israeli youth.
The Muslim Leadership Initiative, which allows Muslims to learn Israel's point of view, had its participants boycotted by the BDS leaders.
Their intransigence extends even beyond that. When popular artists decide to perform in Israel, while the official BDS movement doesn't support threats, the effect is the same - some artists are bullied into canceling their shows, and the BDS movement celebrates these as victories.
Do American Jews support BDS?
BDS advocates claim that they have dozens of Jewish progressive organizations on their side, and use them as proof that they are not antisemitic. Yet every poll shows that the number of anti-Zionist Jews is minuscule in the US.
A 2018 Mellman poll of Jewish voters found that while plenty of Jewish Americans had plenty of criticisms of Israel, only 3% of them self-identified as "generally not pro-Israel." Although the question wasn't asked of that minority, but many or most of that 3% would not identify as an actively anti-Zionist subset. It can be assumed that only those very few who self-identify as anti-Zionist would wholeheartedly support BDS.
So while anti-Zionist Jewish groups like "Jewish Voice for Peace" and "IfNotNow" manage to get a large amount of press relative to their actual numbers, they are on the fringes of US Jewish life today, and their influence among Jews is similar to the all-but-forgotten anti-Zionist "American Council for Judaism," an anti-Zionist group that likewise gained publicity but very few adherents in the 1950s.
Is BDS successful?
By the standards of actually harming Israel economically or diplomatically, the answer it clearly no. Israel's economic growth is the envy of the world and it has relations with more nations than ever before. Only in the UN is Israel still somewhat of a pariah.
Yet using the yardstick of whether BDS has managed to demonize Israel in the eyes of the world since 2001, the answer is certainly yes. After all, this very Time magazine article quoted BDS leaders, without comment, saying flatly that Israel is a racist and apartheid state - an absurd statement given that some 20% of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, mostly Arabs, and they have equal rights under the law and enjoy more freedom than anyone living under Arab rule. When major media parrots false or contested BDS claims as facts not worth checking, it shows huge inroads in BDS attempts to brainwash the world to hate Israel, especially youth.
Ironically, it is the same Arab world which started the idea of boycotting Jews in Israel to begin with that is the biggest threat to BDS today. Israel's treaties with the UAE and Bahrain, along with unofficial ties with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, has hurt BDS and its claims of being the only solution. Emiratis walking around Tel Aviv and enjoying the company of Zionist Jews - while still working to help Palestinians - reveal a model of peace and prosperity that is transforming the Middle East, a model where BDS is not only irrelevant but positively backwards.
BDS is not progressive, it does not support peace, and it is increasingly aligned only with Iran and its allies. This is the truth about BDS that its adherents don't want the world to know.
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