More proof BDS is antisemitic (and Ilhan Omar is a liar)

There was a Twitter spat between BDS supporters and Democratic Majority for Israel:

Many people responded to Hill and Omar pointing out quotes from BDS leaders that showed that they oppose the existence of the Jewish state altogether, and the claim that BDS has no position on the ultimate solution is specious since one basic tenet is to support "return" which would flood Israel with Arabs specifically to end it as a Jewish state.

I've also argued that BDS is antisemitic because the BDS movement targets only Jewish owned businesses in Israel and the territories, and ignores those owned by Israeli Arabs.

There is however one other fundamental reason BDS is antisemitic.

The BDSers love to pretend that the movement started in 2005 with a "call from Palestinian civil society."  Pro-Israel groups point out that BDS was a direct result of the antisemitic 2001 UN Conference against Racism, held in Durban.

But BDS comes directly from Arab boycotts of Jews that have been declared for over a hundred years.

The earliest I could find was from 1909 in Hebron, when Arabs there decided to boycott Jewish merchants, followed by another in 1914. The Hebron Jewish community had lived there continuously since Biblical times, so they could hardly be described as Zionist invaders. 

These anti-Jewish boycotts continued through the decades:

Boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses in Mandatory Palestine were organised by Arab leaders starting in 1922 in an attempt to damage the Jewish population of Palestine economically, especially during periods of communal strife between Jews and Arabs.[5] The original boycott forswore with any Jewish-owned business operating in Mandatory Palestine. Palestinian Arabs "who were found to have broken the boycott ... were physically attacked by their brethren and their merchandise damaged" when Palestinian Arabs rioted in Jerusalem in 1929.[6] Another, stricter boycott was imposed on Jewish businesses in following the riots that called on all of the Arabs in the region to abide by its terms. The Arab Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress called for a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 and in 1934, the Arab Labor Federation conducted a boycott as well as an organized picketing of Jewish businesses. In 1936, the Palestinian Arab leadership called on another boycott and threatened those who did not respect the boycott with violence

The 1945 Arab League boycott wasn't shy about saying that its targets were Jews. Its declaration stated, "Products of Palestinian Jews are to be considered undesirable in Arab countries."

Even after Israel was reborn, the Arab boycott was explicitly antisemitic. The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs, with their new oil wealth, were eager to use their economic power to boycott not only Israel but even US businesses owned by Jews. (Bnai Brith Messenger, 1956)

This explicitly antisemitic boycott continued through the 1970s (NYT, February 8, 1975)

Arab states were so eager to extend their boycott that they even started threatening any Arabs would would shop at high-end London stores owned by Jews:

Marks and Spencer department stores and Selfridges department store are undeterred by the news that they are to be picketed by patrols trying to enforce a boycott by Arabs because of their Jewish ownership and connections with Israel.

The Arab boycott conference meeting at Aleih, near Beirut, yesterday decided to keep a close watch on Arab visitors abroad. Observers of different Arab nationalities “who can discreetly spot their countrymen” will be posted in front of or inside “blacklisted” stores in Britain and other parts of Europe.

By the turn of the century, the idea of the boycott had already morphed into what looks like BDS nowadays. This 2002 Muslim News article (UK) bridges the antisemitic Arab boycott with the liberal language of BDS - three years before BDS was supposedly "launched." 

Even BDS adherents acknowledge that the movement is related to the previous Arab boycotts. This 169-page white paper hosted on the BDSMovement site goes through the history of Arab boycotts, carefully excising any mention of "Jews" as the target and pretending that the boycott began only after Israel's establishment.  

BDS did not sprout from out of nowhere. It came directly from this explicitly and proudly antisemitic background. Erasing the word "Jewish" from their literature doesn't make it any less antisemitic than it was in the 1920s, 1940s and 1970s. 

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Coronavirus: Who But Israel Understands Isolation? (Judean Rose)

Life under coronavirus is like life under fire. That means that Israelis are one up on everyone else in coping with this global pandemic. Life under fire is, after all, our normal state of being.

That made it almost anticlimactic when on Friday night, there was a missile attack on Southern Israel. Living through a global pandemic AND a terror attack? It’s like one big Jewish joke.

Now throw in ISOLATION when the entire purpose of the BDS Movement is to isolate Israel. Which means we have actual experience at this thing: in being isolated from the rest of the world. We’ve been isolated by everyone everywhere. At the UN, by politicians like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, by the BBC, in social media, on college campuses and in the ivory towers of academia. 

Director of Human Rights Watch Middle East and North African Division and Quincy Institute scholar Sarah Leah Whitson, responds to Jew-hating Jewish Israeli journalist and BDS supporter Mairav Zonszein.

If anyone knows isolation, by God, it’s ISRAEL. You might even say we’re the champs of isolation. Quarantine? Pshaw. Quarantine in a bomb shelter? We’re cool. (Not really. But little tip: that’s the front we put up, and the front actually helps us deal, you know?)

Whelp. What can I say? From my Israeli and (possibly nauseating) perspective, the one thing this global pandemic has going for it is that we are all in this together (cue the orchestra). This is a good feeling because, for a change, we are not the ones! I say this with joy as both a Jew and an Israeli.

But the reverie is broken when we read of the evil ones who blame corona on the Jews, though Jewish communities have taken a huge hit, with many Yidden dying. The feeling of community evaporates when we hear of evangelicals targeting Israeli children with Christian television programming at a time when kids are under lockdown with unlimited screen time. 

Israel has only two anti-missionary laws. 1. It is illegal to offer compensation in the form of money or goods in exchange for conversion. 2. It is illegal to convert a minor without the presence or consent of their parent. Missionaries have targeted Israeli children with Shabbat programming for years. With the coronavirus, Israeli children are a captive audience under lockdown 24/7, with unlimited screen time.

And we are forced to observe and acknowledge that some politicians, terrorists, and even plain old garden-variety Jew-haters will always exploit a tragedy to smear Israel and to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories.

I stumbled on this antisemitic, anti-Israel meme while looking for funny memes to cheer up my friends. I reported the post to Facebook, but they say it doesn't violate their Community Standards.

With the immoral things they say and do, these liars and evildoers take themselves out of normal human society. They too, are in isolation, but it is a kind of self-isolation: a choice born of hate to separate themselves from all that is good. The message these people give brings ugliness to our world. This, at a time when it seems like that world might be ending, like we might soon be judged for how we behaved on God’s earth.

I am glad I am not one of them, the people who choose to be bad. If there is happiness to be found in this calamity of epic proportions, it lies in the possibility to ally myself with the others—the good people, Jewish and otherwise—who shop for an elderly neighbor, or reach out with a phone call to those who are alone.

Right now, the good ones are the only ones I care about.

And I’m hoping they're most of the humans in world.

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To counter Bahrain economic conference, J-Street chooses a BDS supporter

Next week, J-Street will hold an online event to counter the Bahrain economic conference for helping Palestinians, featuring Palestinian/American businessman Sam Bahour to describe why Kushner's vision for economic prosperity for Palestinians is wrong and his is correct:

This Tuesday, as the Kushner workshop gets underway in Bahrain, Palestinian-American businessman and economic advocate Sam Bahour will join J Street members for an online briefing, directly from the West Bank. He’ll speak about his analysis of the Bahrain workshop and Trump administration policy, the barriers to business thrown up by the occupation and how the US can more constructively engage with the Palestinian economy to help lay the groundwork for peace.

J-Street claims that it is "pro-Israel, pro-peace." It claims that it is against BDS.

But when it wants to create counterprogramming to an American initiative to discuss helping Palestinians economically, it turns to a BDS supporter.

Meaning that Bahour is not going to present any ideas where Israel and Palestinians cooperate on peace or economic prosperity. He can't - he wants Palestinians to boycott Israel. And like all BDS leaders, whether he says it out loud or not, his endgame is to destroy Israel. 

This is who J-Street wants to cozy up to.

In any conceivable peace plan or two state plan, Palestinians will have to cooperate with Israel economically. J-Street is against that.

Clearly, J-Street is not as against BDS as they claim to be.

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Kneeing Prager in the Nuts (Judean Rose)

Ari Y. Kelman, associate professor and Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies at the University of California-Davis, has been in the news of late. That's because Kelman authored a study which suggests that campus antisemitism isn't a thing (for background see: New campus study claiming little antisemitism on campus severely flawed  by Daled Amos). Kelman came to this conclusion by handpicking just 66 subjects from five separate campuses who have no interest in Israel or things Jewish, thus insuring the very non-randomized study would generate the results he sought. Which led to some cognitive dissonance when a reader drew my attention to a June 14 Times of Israel profile of Dennis Prager in which author Lisa Klug cited Kelman as an expert.

Dennis Prager
Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Prager is known for stating clear simple truths in language that anyone can understand. In the Times of Israel interview he says, “Non-Jews who think anti-Semitism is only the Jews’ problem need to read about miners’ canaries — about miners who think that when canaries die of noxious fumes those fumes won’t kill them,” he says, and “Nothing better identifies incipient evil than anti-Semitism.”

Ari Y. Kelman

This is a true statement, crafted for actual people. Instead of acknowledging the point, Klug suggests that Prager's careful wording might be seen by some as "oversimplification." The use of the word "oversimplification" might, on the other hand, be seen by others as "bias by description." In bias by description, authors use adjectives and characterization to paint a favorable or negative picture of a person, political view, or story. When a reader suspects an article contains bias by description, that reader should look for balance within the piece or in the wider news outlet as a whole.

In terms of this particular piece, Klug brings us the opinions of two academics, both of whom use several negative descriptors in their characterizations of Prager with "balance" provided by the CEO of Prager University, Marissa Streit. The academics are (SURPRISE!) Prof. Ari Kelman of the bogus study, and Daniel Schwartz, an associate professor of history and the director of the Program in Judaic Studies at The George Washington University. Kelman is meant to be the progressive voice:

“Prager’s comments are spurious, overly broad, and, basically inaccurate,” writes Ari Y. Kelman, Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University. “They do not represent the general conditions of Jewish student life on college campuses, and they do not represent the experiences or intentions of many of the faculty associated with Jewish Studies with whom I have spoken."

All 66 of them!

"And I am fairly certain that I have more interaction with both students and faculty than Prager does, which leads me to wonder where he gets his information from."

Perhaps the other tens of thousands of Jewish students Kelman didn't interview?

Klug offers context for citing Kelman as an expert on campus antisemitism.

"Kelman, who also serves as associate director of Stanford’s Berman Jewish Policy Archive of some 40,000 journal articles and research reports is in the midst of a student-focused research project. He and his own students have interviewed about 80 enrollees on five California campuses, Kelman says."

Uh, no. Not "about 80 enrollees." Just 66. And even if it were 80, that would not be an impressive number. (Can you spell "miniscule.")

“I can speak with some authority about the lives of college students because my students and I are in the middle of a research project on how Jewish students are making sense of politics around Israel, being Jewish, Palestine, and other issues on campus,” says Kelman.

Authority. Uh huh. We know how that turned out. Sixty-six handpicked uninvolved Jewish college kids making sense of something they could care less about, including the nonexistent aforementioned state.

But let's move on to Daniel Schwartz, the other academic cited by Klug. His CV's seem to promise Schwartz will generate the balance in this piece. Schwartz, we're told, is an active member of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) which is against BDS and supports academic freedom, for instance. So far, so good. A glance at the organization's mission statement, unfortunately, suggests the AEN may be crippled by political correctness. Note the phrasing of this sentence: "The Academic Engagement Network aims to promote more productive ways of addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Daniel Schwartz

Compare this phrasing to say, the unabashed forthrightness of Professor Ruth Wisse of Harvard, who speaks of the Arab war against the Jews. A partial transcript:

Ruth Wisse

People talk about the 'Arab Israel conflict' I think the term itself is a lie, and if at all possible, the term should be avoided. What you have is the Arab war against Israel and I would put it even more strongly; what you have is the Arab war against the Jewish people. 

The Arab league was created in 1945. It was created the same year as the United Nations and I think one of the main reasons that the Arab League was created, it was not that these Arab countries were so much in love with one another—as we can see the conflicts in the Arab world among the countries themselves are almost as great as their conflict with the Jewish State—but the Arab League came together around one thing more than anything else and that was the prevention of the creation of the State of Israel, and then what has remained the glue of the Arab: of pan-Arabism, of the Arab League formerly, and of what the Arab League represents: the common enmity to a Jewish state, so that the role of opposition to Israel is at the very foundation of Arab politics.

It's frightening in the sense of how important it is to Arab countries because sometimes when one sees it from their point of view, you sort of wonder: What would draw them together if it is not common enmity to the State of Israel? No wonder they have to keep this war going for so long.

It is so essential to their political life and to their internal political life, not only vis-à-vis one another but really in terms of scapegoating, in terms of explaining what's going wrong, in terms of blaming and creating a grievance against another country. So I think it makes no sense to talk about an Arab Israel conflict, because when you use these terms, it almost seems as if you're talking about two entities which are at war with one another. It's almost as if you're thinking of the Franco-Prussian War, where you would have France and Germany in conflict over some territory, or even the Polish Russian War where it was a conflict over whether this country would have the land, or that country would have the land.

Well, what we're talking about is not that kind of conflict. It is the conflict of countries, over 20 countries, with an enormity of land, with more land than they know what to do with, that refuse to allow one people its land. It is a very essential refusal to accept the principle of pluralism, to accept the principle of the possibility of the existence of another people with its own legitimacy. And until that realization begins to be spoken of more openly, and until that realization is really forced back into the Arab world, we don't have a chance of ever solving what that conflict is.

And it's not enough for people outside of the conflict to begin to recognize this truth, the most important thing is for people within the Arab world to begin to acknowledge what they have denied the Jewish people for over 60 years.

Ruth Wisse isn't the only academic who might have provided balance for Klug's hit piece on Prager. At least 8 of them come to mind. But Klug culled Schwartz from an organization hampered by a need to find balance where there is none—in the Arab war against the Jews. Klug writes:

Daniel Schwartz, an associate professor of history and the director of the Program in Judaic Studies at The George Washington University, says he is “all too familiar with Prager’s right-wing extremism.” 

But Schwartz needs to be the balance to Kelman, so he offers his creds through an assertion of his opposition to BDS:

Schwartz, an active member of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), says he would not have joined if “I weren’t concerned about the rash of BDS initiatives on college campuses in the US in the past few years.”

Of course, he doesn't believe that BDS has made it at all difficult for Jewish college kids, contrary to consistent reports of harassment and even violence against them by pro-BDS, anti-Israel, and antisemitic students and groups.

“I am generally skeptical of the notion that boycott and divestment campaigns have created an atmosphere on college campuses that is ‘hostile’ to robust forms of Jewish self-identification and expression, just as I tend to be skeptical of the way the current generation of college students speaks obsessively about a need to feel ‘safe’ on campus, in a way that tends to favor the suppression of certain kinds of speech,” Schwartz says.

This is balance? It's just more psychobabble leftist-speak for "We hate Prager." We KNOW that Jewish students not only do not "feel" safe on campus, but that they actually feel scared and endangered (and with good reason). We also know that BDS is part and parcel of the ethos of the people who threaten those Jewish students and have left them feeling so frightened and alone and so afraid to speak up for Israel. We don't need fake academics to tell us this, because we read about campus incidents nearly every day in the Algemeiner and Israel National News.

The Times of Israel article ends with a brief interview of Streit, but not before Klug makes a snide

Marissa Streit

comment about Streit's office being littered with "made in China" PragerU swag, with Streit, seemingly apologetic, explaining that the water bottles and totes are sent to donors. Streit describes how PragerU works:

A group of about 500 students comprise PragerForce, in which they make a commitment to share content, Streit says. In addition to aggressive online marketing, Streit says the “secret sauce” of PragerU is that the organization has “clear, factual and easy to understand content combined with a very robust marketing platform.”

What I said: clear, simple, easy to understand, factual. What Klug characterizes as "oversimplification." Also, 500 students, versus Kelman's 66. Natch?

Klug asks Streit one final question:

Will the organization’s methods produce a lasting impact? 

To which Streit responds:

“If people could hear Dennis and see a video again and again, that could help people to articulate with intellectual ammunition,” Streit says. “If you are pro-American, you are pro-Israel. The more people you bring to American values, the more people you bring to Israel.”

That would have been a great place to end the piece. It's always nice to end on a positive note, with a quote. But no. Klug must sow doubt in the reader's mind over the viral effect of PragerU videos, because this is the anti-Conservative Times of Israel. She must deliver the coup de grâce, kneeing Prager and his followers in the testicles one final time:

Like the future of on-campus debate itself, the legitimacy of this argument remains to be seen.

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Roger Waters isn't like Rosa Parks. He's like the KKK.

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.

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.

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.

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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Dumb story of the day: BDS claims victory because stars didn't take free swag trips to Israel

From Haaretz:

A Tourism Ministry public relations gimmick to bring Hollywood stars to Israel has bombed, with not a single one of the 26 Oscar nominees awarded free trips to Israel last year actually making the trip. Now, the BDS movement is taking credit for the failure.

The tour packages, worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece, were given to 26 nominees in the highest-profile Oscar categories, including actors Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Sylvester Stallone and Kate Winslet.

Last February, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement put out an official statement urging recipients not to use the tour packages, charging that by coming to Israel, they would be helping the Israeli government whitewash what BDS terms the crimes of the occupation.

On Wednesday, Yousef Munayyer, an activist with the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights who promotes the cultural boycott of Israel, said his movement’s efforts had proved effective.

“This is a success,” Munayyer told AFP. “I am very glad there’s no evidence that people went. I think it is clear the objective of using the actors to whitewash Israel has failed.”

Let's think about this for a second. If you won a free trip worth over $50,000 to, say, Japan, you would probably either take time off of work to go there or maybe give the gift to someone else.

If you were super-rich, however, such a gift would mean nothing. You wouldn't rearrange your schedule to go to Japan unless perhaps you were planning to do it anyway. The hassle of taking advantage of the gift is almost more than telling your people where you want to go on vacation. The gift would go unused, and the advertisers who offered the gift would reap the free publicity from all the news stories about extravagant swag bags without having to pay a dime.

Last year's bag included personalized M&Ms, a breast lift procedure, skincare products made from tea that are supposedly worth $31,000, the trip to Israel - and a walking tour trip to Japan worth worth over $50,000.

Did any Hollywood star who received the bag take advantage of the Japan trip? Did any of them use the "vampire breast lift"? I bet none of them did.

And I bet none of them took advantage of the:

3-day stay at the Golden Door Resort & Spa in San Marcos, CA ($4,800)
3-night stay at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento, Italy ($5,000)
3-night stay at the Grand Hotel Tremezzo in Lake Como, Italy ($5,000)

Does this mean that those gifts were a bust? Certainly not for the breast lift people, and not for the Japanese either or the hotels. It was free publicity.

And so was the trip to Israel.

Tourism went up over the past year, and it is possible that the many stories about the free Israel trip contributed to the perception of Israel as a wonderful place to travel that is associated with the Oscars. Which is the entire intention!

The BDSers, as usual, as spinning this as a "victory," but if the unused Japan trips aren't causing the Japanese tourism minister to perform harakiri, the unused Israel trips given to mega-rich stars are not shameful for Israel either.

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BDS leader succinctly describes what they consider "success"

Haaretz has a piece about how a large number of artists are coming to perform in Israel this year despite the BDS movement:

It’s been years since music lovers in Israel have had the opportunity to enjoy so many performers from overseas. A partial list of artists scheduled to perform here this summer includes Radiohead, the Pixies, Justin Bieber, Aerosmith, Guns and Roses, Rod Stewart, Nick Cave, Tears for Fears, Grandaddy, Jose Gonzalez, Fatboy Slim, Jean-Michel Jarre, Paul Young, Vanessa Mae, Emir Kusturica and Ace of Base. The list could include other top performers who have had good runs in Israel in recent years, including the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Alice Cooper, Rihanna, Sia and Elton John.

Most Israeli producers say that the boycotters like Roger Waters have failed:

 Guy Besser, one of the owners of Blue Stone Productions, the company bringing over Guns and Roses and Aerosmith, says, “The boycott has only marginal influence on artists, and the ones who do come here leave as goodwill ambassadors. After their performance they realize that there is a huge gap between what they were told as part of the pressure they were subjected to and the local reality. We notice the weakening of the boycott from year to year, with Israel becoming a legitimate venue for performances. Ultimately, music vanquishes politics.”

But Haaretz also had to interview BDSers as well. Like Ronnie Barkan:

Ronnie Barkan, one of the prominent BDS activists in Israel, is certain that the boycott movement has great impact on Israel’s cultural agenda. “The success of the BDS campaign – a Palestinian campaign that became a guideline for activity promoting justice, liberty and equality across the world – far exceeds what we envisaged at the outset."

What noble goals! How is he measuring success?

“One can note a significant change in the way the world perceives Israel. It’s now seen as a leper state maintaining a cruel occupation, apartheid and a colonial enterprise. This is what is believed on all campuses in the United States and even in some Jewish communities there. Communities are becoming increasingly critical of Israel’s crimes, with the fastest-growing organization being the Jewish Voice for Peace...

Here he admits the entire point of BDS is to portray Israel as a "leper state maintaining a cruel occupation, apartheid and a colonial enterprise."

That, in the sick mind of the haters of BDS, is "success."

Unlike most boycotts, the boycott isn't the point. They aren't trying to hurt Israel economically. The demonization of Israel as a whole is the point.

They don't care about helping Palestinians. They only want the world to associate Israel reflexively with unrelenting evil.

This is why they hate news stories that show Israeli Jews as anything other than greedy, land-grabbing, cruel warmongers. Anything that makes Israeli Jews seem human must be countered with their hate.

It is very simple. BDS is about crazed, irrational hate, that has far more in common with antisemitism than with human rights. And Ronnie Barkan shows this perfectly.

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UK officially says BDS movement "fuels anti-Semitism"

Here is the press release by the UK government saying that boycotting Israel by public institutions is illegal. They are simply highlighting existing laws and agreements that make all boycotts of countries under the WTO illegal.

Notably, the press release explicitly says that the boycotts pushed by the BDS movement are "fuelling anti-Semitism."

Note also that the same press release also reiterates support for labeling all goods from the territories:

Guidance published today makes clear that procurement boycotts by public authorities are inappropriate, outside where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the government.

Town hall boycotts undermine good community relations, poisoning and polarising debate, weakening integration and fuelling anti-Semitism.

Locally imposed boycotts can roll back integration as well as hinder Britain’s export trade and harm international relationship.

All contracting authorities will be impacted by this new guidance including central government, executive agencies, non-departmental public bodies, the wider public sector, local authorities and NHS bodies. Any public body found to be in breach of the regulations could be subject to severe penalties.

The World Trade Organisation Government Procurement Agreement – an international market access agreement – requires all those countries that have signed up to the Agreement to treat suppliers equally. This includes the EU and Israel. Any discrimination against Israeli suppliers involving procurements would therefore be in breach of the Agreement.

The guidance published today complements existing government guidance about trading or investing overseas (including with Israel), where we advise UK businesses to consider any potential legal and economic risks of doing so. It is also in line with the government’s existing policy of support for clear and transparent labelling of settlement products to ensure that individual consumers are able to make informed choices before they buy.

Cabinet Office Minister, Matthew Hancock said:

We need to challenge and prevent these divisive town hall boycotts. The new guidance on procurement combined with changes we are making to how pension pots can be invested will help prevent damaging and counter-productive local foreign policies undermining our national security.

We support UK local authorities, businesses and individual consumers alike in making informed choices about how they procure services and products from overseas.

Here are the actual guidelines that were issued, which do not mention Israel at all:

Procurement Policy Note: Ensuring compliance with wider international obligations when letting public contracts
Information Note 01/16 17th February 2016

Issue

1. This PPN sets out contracting authorities’ international obligations when letting public contracts. It makes clear that boycotts in public procurement are inappropriate, outside where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the UK Government.

Dissemination and Scope

2. This PPN is directly applicable to all contracting authorities, including Central Government, Executive Agencies, Non Departmental Public Bodies, wider public sector, local authorities and NHS bodies. Please circulate this document (for information) within your organisation, including where relevant to Executive Agencies and Non Departmental Public Bodies and other contracting authorities for which you are responsible, drawing it to the attention of those with a purchasing role.

Advice

3. The UK has a longstanding and widely accepted policy that applies to all public contracts, of ensuring value for money in public procurement, as set out in HMT's Managing Public Money. Value for money is defined as securing the best mix of quality and effectiveness for the least outlay over the period of use of the goods or services bought. That definition has recently been updated to make clearer that the key factor is whole life cost, not necessarily the lowest purchase price.

4. Further, wider policy objectives (such as economic or employment-related considerations) can be pursued through the procurement process where they are linked to the subject-matter of the contract. The new Public Contract Regulations (PCR) 2015 also provide flexibility for authorities to take account of wider matters in the procurement process, such as social and environmental factors. Contracting authorities may apply these flexibilities where relevant, ensuring always that all suppliers are treated equally and without discrimination.

5. The UK's regime of procurement rules (the PCR 2015), derives largely from the EU procurement directives and the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) - an international market access agreement. These rules impose a legal obligation on public authorities when awarding contracts above certain thresholds to treat EU and GPA 2 suppliers equally, and not discriminate by, amongst other things, favouring national suppliers. There are remedies available through the courts for breaches of these rules, such as damages, fines and ineffectiveness (contract cancellation). The European Commission can also bring legal proceedings against the UK Government for alleged breaches of EU law by a UK contracting authority. This can lead to formal action being required to rectify the breach, and substantial fines against the Government. The Government will always involve the relevant contracting authority in these proceedings.

6. Suppliers from "third countries" (which are neither part of the EU, nor the GPA or other international free-trade agreements with the EU) do not enjoy access to our remedies system if they are discriminated against. However, third country suppliers could, potentially, offer the best value for money outcome, so the UK Government expects that its authorities will deal with bids from such third countries in the same way as EU or GPA countries.

7. Public procurement should never be used as a tool to boycott tenders from suppliers based in other countries, except where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the UK Government. There are wider national and international consequences from imposing such local level boycotts. They can damage integration and community cohesion within the United Kingdom, hinder Britain’s export trade, and harm foreign relations to the detriment of Britain’s economic and international security. As highlighted earlier, it can also be unlawful and lead to severe penalties against the contracting authority and the Government.

Contact
8. Enquiries about this PPN should be directed to the Crown Commercial Service Helpdesk (telephone 0345 410 2222, email info@crowncommercial.gov.uk)

The PLO is furious, and is using the "peace process" that they oppose as a reason to boycott Israel:

“This policy puts the UK in the position of defending Israel’s occupation, expansion, racism and colonialism,” said Husam Zomlot, ambassador-at-large for the Palestinian leadership.

"It is a bullet at the heart of peacemaking because peace will only come when Israel is under pressure and feels consequences for its illegal actions."

That is the entire PLO foreign policy message in a single sentence. They have no responsibilities, only rights, including many that no one else has.

Peace-seeker Zomlot likes analogies to bullets, because he also told Financial Times "This is a bullet at the very heart of a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East and the very heart of democracy in Britain."

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BDSers: "Do as I say..." (poster)

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Massachusetts Jewish newspaper uses EoZ posters to make fun of BDS

With permission, of course:

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BDS trying mightily to spin Scarlett into some sort of victory

By any objective yardstick, the SodaStream/Scarlett Johansson episode was an unmitigated disaster for BDS. But Max Blumenthal, whose rabid anti-Zionism and series of provable and verified lies have ensured that he can no longer be published except in Mondoweiss and Arab news outlets, writes a fantasy about Scarlett Johansson to try to fit the facts of the past couple of weeks into his very limited worldview - and try to spin a major BDS loss.

Writing in the UAE's "The National," Blumenthal talks about how Hollywood celebrities used to publicly embrace Israel, but are less  likely to do so today.

The reason?

These days, celebrities who shill for Israel can expect to be relentlessly harried and forced to declare where they stand on Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.

For those who have attached themselves to humanitarian do-gooder causes, the potential for PR damage is considerable — certainly enough to give them second thoughts. As the price tag on pro-Israel activity rises, some performers are quietly opting out of attractive deals before the controversy shatters their image.

But others like Scarlett Johansson, the comely blonde starlet described by Woody Allen as “sexually overwhelming” were not willing to let apartheid get in the way of a sizeable profit.

In January, the Israeli company Sodastream signed Johansson to promote its home soda-making machines in a $16 million (Dh58.8m) Super Bowl ad that featured her sucking suggestively on a straw off-and-on for two minutes.

Johansson, a standard-fare Hollywood liberal who proclaimed in 2008 that her “heart belongs to Barack”, cast her deal with Sodastream as a shining example of “conscious consumerism and transparency”.

She seemed oblivious to the fact that Sodastream operates out of Maale Adumim, an illegal Israeli mega-settlement built on privately owned Palestinian land whose master plan would eventually bisect the West Bank.

Blumenthal exposes his usual disregard for journalistic ethics and basic facts, of course - one minute of Super Bowl advertising cost about $8 million, not $16 million; the ad was only one minute long, Maale Adumim was not built on privately owned Arab land (except for 0.5% of it,) none of Mishor Adumim where SodaStream's factory is located was built on Arab land, even Israel's far left accepts that Maale Adumim would be part of Israel in any peace agreement, and in no way does it "bisect the West Bank."

He even says that Oxfam forced Johansson out, when the truth is the exact opposite.

Proving that Blumenthal is a liar is too easy.

The funny part is how desperately Blumenthal is trying to spin an episode that was a huge disaster for BDS into a victory.

His thesis that no major Hollywood figure today would support Israel as they did in the past is quite demolished by what Scarlett Johansson actually did do - although he blames her love of money, and doesn't mention that she isn't exactly hurting for cash.

True, there are some B-listers - washed-up rock stars and second-rate acts - that have bowed to pressure and joined the boycott of Israel. Why did they do that? Well, according to Blumenthal, it has nothing to do with what they really believe in.

It is because the Israel haters who push the boycott are bullies! And they are proud of it!

Blumenthal says it explicitly: "celebrities who shill for Israel can expect to be relentlessly harried." The haters expect that thin-skinned celebrities, who are allergic to controversy, will scamper away from any hint of trouble. Sometimes, they are right. It has absolutely nothing to do with the righteousness of their cause - it has to do with the fact that the haters can instantly raise an army of brainless Facebook drones to threaten people who are often not very self-confident to begin with.

Johansson not only pushed back against the BDSers  she pushed back on humanitarian grounds! She explained why the BDS goals actually would hurt the people they pretend to care about. She exposed their hypocrisy in a very public way. (This is another point that Blumenthal studiously avoids mentioning.)

This episode did not damage Johansson's star power one bit.

The biggest losers were Oxfam and the BDS movement itself.

Oxfam is now sputtering and making itself look idiotic as it tries to justify its desire to throw hundreds of Arabs out into the street without salaries or healthcare. The halo effect of Oxfam being a humanitarian organization has been considerably dimmed.

But Oxfam, in trying to defend itself, has in turn thrown the BDS movement under the bus! It has been publicly forced to say that it does not support boycotting Israel and it is distancing itself from haters like Max Blumenthal.

Whether that is true or not is besides the point - Oxfam does give plenty of money to organizations that do support BDS - but nevertheless a major humanitarian NGO is publicly saying that boycotting Israel  is immoral and beyond the pale, and it is jumping through hoops to make fine distinctions so that it cannot be accused of supporting BDS explicitly.

How on Earth can anyone think that BDS won?

The only people who can believe that are those who spend so much time lying that they can no longer distinguish truth from fantasy.

Like Max Blumenthal.

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Cornell BDS group justifies hypocritically using Israeli web technology

Last week, the ZF and I discovered that a number of groups that push boycotts for Israel are using WiX, an Israeli web technology, on their websites.

One of those was Cornell University's "Students for Justice in Palestine." People on Twitter made fun of them for their obvious hypocrisy.

Finally, Cornell SJP came out with a long, nonsensical, convoluted justification for their BDS inconsistency; 1500 words of hilarious attempts to make themselves look a little less idiotic:

BDS is a tactic, not a principle, let alone a call for abstention. The charge that any contact with Israeli products negates the logic of BDS can only be made by people who do not understand what BDS actually is, how it’s worked in the past, or why Palestinian civil society is calling for it now.

The idea that supporters of BDS must avoid contact with anything Israeli not only misconstrues the nature of BDS, but also contorts the idea of politics in general. Politics is about making change in the world, not shying from contamination to keep oneself pure. GWF Hegel explored—and put to rest—the idea of the political subject whose only options were abstention and total withdrawal from action. He called it the “beautiful soul” syndrome. We do not strive to be beautiful souls, and we resist a view of politics that demands total abstention. In the words of Built to Spill, “I don’t like this air / But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop breathing it.”

Those who call us hypocritical for not adhering to a rigid logic of separation simplistically insinuate that if one believes in boycotting Israel one must do it absolutely and deprive oneself of all the innovative benefits of the “Start-up Nation”; since one is opposed to Israel, one must not be in contact with anything Israeli. This separation in turn supports the misguided idea of two clear “sides” to the conflict. It is a troubling binary: on the one side, Israel, a plucky, can-do Zionist spirit, innovation, technology, modernity; on the other, Palestine, poverty, backwardness, violence.

The entire piece is filled with similar straw men.

So, who's right? Is BDS a call to boycott all Israeli products or not?

Well, let's look at the original 2005 source of the BDS call, from BDSMovement.net:

Boycotts target products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights, as well as Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions. Anyone can boycott Israeli goods, simply by making sure that they don’t buy produce made in Israel or by Israeli companies. Campaigners and groups call on consumers not to buy Israeli goods and on businesses not to buy or sell them.

Pretty explicit, isn't it? No nuance, no exceptions for nice web technologies. Nope - a blanket call to boycott Israeli produce and goods and businesses. It is the BDS movement that advocates the "beautiful soul" syndrome, in Hegelian terms (!!!)

Cornell  SJP doesn't support BDS as it is officially defined, because - well, because it would be an inconvenience. They like WiX. They want to boycott Israel, but they only want to ban products that they would never use anyway! They are so moral!

Actually, they admit:

Let us be clear: BDS is not abstention, nor an absolute moral principle.

There's an understatement for you!

Sorry, Cornell SJP. All that hand waving and attempts to change the subject in your very funny screed didn't prove that you aren't hypocrites.

Quite the opposite.

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Israel haters try to ram a BDS resolution through American Studies Association

From Inside Higher Ed:

The National Council of the American Studies Association is deliberating a proposed resolution to endorse a boycott of Israeli universities, and a decision is expected before Thanksgiving, according to the executive director of the association, John F. Stephens. The council had a long meeting on Sunday morning, at which many thought there would be a decision, but the meeting is still technically considered to be in session.

The resolution, which was proposed by the ASA’s Academic and Community Activism Caucus, has been endorsed by the current president and president-elect of the association, and attracted strong support from members during an open forum at the association’s annual conference on Saturday. A letter opposing the resolution on academic freedom grounds was signed by more than 50 members, including seven past presidents. Comments on the resolution continue to pour in.

The National Council, which is a body of about 20 elected representatives within the ASA, may choose to endorse or reject the resolution as is, to rewrite or revise it, or to refer it to the general membership for a vote, among other options.

...[S]entiment at Saturday's open forum for ASA members skewed pro-boycott by a huge margin.

Isn't it interesting that so many of these anti-Israel initiatives are scheduled on Saturdays?

Both pro- and anti-boycott scholars claim the mantle of academic freedom. Opponents of the boycott cite the AAUP's stance that boycotts cut off free exchange between scholars, while those in favor describe a desire to increase academic freedom for Palestinian students and scholars specifically. The resolution presented to the National Council outlines concerns about the closure or destruction of schools as a result of Israeli military strikes and restrictions on the ability of Palestinian students and scholars to travel.

“It’s very important that when we think about this issue, if we’re going to think about it, as well we should, in the context and framework of academic freedom, that we keep primarily in mind the freedom and ability for Palestinians to study free of a military occupation,” said Steven Salaita, an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech.

So let's punish Israeli schools because, allegedly, Palestinian Arabs can't easily get to school!

Proof that this was a well-organized anti-Israel initiative meant to overwhelm the ASA council comes from this telling detail:

Speakers on Saturday overwhelmingly urged the council to immediately act and approve the resolution -- any delay, they argued, was a tactic for defeat.

Like a car salesman telling you that if you don't buy it today, the opportunity will be lost forever. Don't think! Don't deliberate! Just do as I say! Now! or else there will be terrible consequences! The last thing these haters want is a sober discussion of the facts, because the facts are not on their side. These pseudo-academics are using emotion to subvert the very standards of objectivity and evidence that they pretend to uphold.

Can you imagine the outcry if people said to boycott Palestinian Arab schools because of the pro-terror atmosphere they encourage? Even though some Palestinian Arab universities are directly complicit in terrorism?

Yet boycotting Israeli universities - whose connection to the crimes alleged by the haters is extraordinarily tenuous - gets respectful hearings from academics???

It is obvious that the motivation here isn't academic freedom for Palestinian Arabs. If it was, then they would mention the restrictions that Palestinian students face in Lebanese public universities, including a quota system  limiting "foreign students" (aimed specifically at Palestinians) and some courses and majors that are simply off limits if you are Palestinian.

Yet no one is bringing that up. No one is criticizing Lebanon for its institutionalized bias against Palestinians, including specifically against Palestinian students.

This isn't about education. This isn't about helping Palestinian Arab students. This is a thinly veiled attack on Israel, period. It uses "academic freedom" as an excuse to betray academic freedom.

Some see this clearly:

Simon J. Bronner, a distinguished professor of American studies and folklore and chair of the American Studies Program at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, criticized what he described as “the curtailing of academic freedom in the name of somehow guaranteeing academic freedom.” The letter opposing the boycott, which Bronner signed, states that the adoption of a boycott resolution would “do violence to this bedrock principle of academic freedom."

“Scholars would be punished not because of what they believe – which would be bad enough – but simply because of who they are based on their nationality. In no other context does the ASA discriminate on the basis of national origin – and for good reason. This is discrimination, pure and simple."

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East wrote a lengthy and devastating fisking of the anti-Israel resolution, pointing out its lies and errors.

Simon Bronner set up a petition to counter the anti-Israel resolution. If you are an academic you may want to sign and give your reasons. (Although it appears that the anti-Israel petition is being signed by non-academics as well.)

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BDS leader explains how the movement is meant to manipulate Western liberals

The Badil Center, a Palestinian Arab organization that is a major force behind the BDS movement, has published an extensive analysis in Jadaliyya magazine of their perspective on its progress and shortcomings over the past eight years.

The magazine reprints what appears to be a seminal 2011 piece by Nimer Sultany of SOAS in London, one of the theoreticians behind today's BDS movement.

A careful reading of his article reveals the pure hypocrisy that underpins the entire anti-Israel movement.

Sultany brings up three points and potential pitfalls about BDS.

His first point is about the role of pacifism and violence in Palestinian Arab discourse:

Palestinian history oscillates between two dogmas: the new dogma of nonviolence and the old dogma of violence and armed struggle. ...Given its apparent failure to achieve its declared objective, armed struggle has given way to nonviolence, which has become more fashionable today since it resonates with Western perspectives. Given that stereotypes cast Palestinians as violent, aggressive, and irrational Arabs or Muslims, Palestinians are forced to declare their pacifism before being admitted to the world of legitimate discourse or given a hearing of their views.

...But nonviolence should not now become the new dogma. Westerners ask, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” They ignore the fact that Western practice and discourse have always vindicated violent resistance to unjust foreign occupiers. Thus, it is hypocritical for Westerners to dismiss violent means altogether in the Palestinian case.

...The legitimacy of the struggle and the justness of the demands need not necessarily correlate with the character of the means. The fact is that violent and nonviolent tactics have always co-existed as forms of resistance and they are likely to do so in the future. Therefore, in order to choose nonviolent means, one need not necessarily be a pacifist. The choice of the means depends on historical and political circumstances; they need not become the end. The means should not be deployed for their own sake but for the purpose of achieving noble political goals. The ability of violent or non-violent means to achieve them in a concrete, prudential form should be constantly critiqued and re-examined.

So while BDSers swear up and down that they are against violence, we see that the truth is quite the opposite. The movement is meant to sway Westerners, but it is not meant to mirror how Palestinian Arabs think. Amongst themselves, violence is considered quite acceptable - but not prudent at this time. Next year, it is possible that violence might come back into vogue. He even refers to the current Palestinian Arab pretense of nonviolence as "fashionable."

There is no morality here except the "noble" goal of destroying the Jewish state, and for that, all means are on the table. Pretending that they embrace non-violence for moral reasons is simply a scam to fool clueless Western liberals.

Sultany's second point is about international law:

The boycott movement speaks the language of human rights and international law. It is intended to pressure Israel to abide by international law. By doing so, it risks falling into the trap identified by critical legal scholars. The risk has two aspects. First, there is a danger in conflating law with justice; there is no intrinsic connection between law and justice. The gap between them may not be apparent to those who equate the attainment of justice with the application of law. Second is the belief that applying international law can produce self-evident, concrete consequences; this belief presupposes that applying law is a mechanical operation. But law-application involves inevitably normative interpretations that are not independent of power relations and hegemonic understandings. In addition, law (whether local or international) is not a monolithic entity nor a gapless system. Rather, it contains gaps, ambiguities, and contradictions...

This is not to say that the language of universal human rights and international law should be rejected or that it lacks a positive value. I only wish to caution that this rather limited discourse could produce unintended consequences. One should be cognizant of the detrimental ramifications of this discourse.

Sultany understands that while the anti-Israel movement uses the language of international law and human rights, they don't really mean it - if they can be interpreted in ways that is detrimental to the cause.

If, for example, the definition of "refugee" is standardized so that Palestinian Arabs have the same definition as the rest of the world, that would be quite supportable under international law - but it would be catastrophic for a movement whose intent for decades has been to use millions of people as pawns to help destroy Israel. The same can be said for the definition of "occupation" - if Gaza or Areas A is not occupied, the Israel-haters lose a great deal of their rhetorical power. Ditto for the mythical "right of return," one of BDS' cornerstones, which has no basis in international law in these circumstances.

Beyond that, Sultany makes it clear that human rights and international law have no value to Palestinian Arab nationalist thought. They are only concerned with what they call "justice." And who decides whether justice is served? Why, they are! And there can be no justice, in their minds, while Israel exists.

This is not compatible with international law, and Sultany knows it. But he figures that using the fig leaf of international law, with luck, can weaken Israel enough that the "justice" part of the equation can then have a chance of succeeding.

Sultany is saying, in effect, that while they use the language of international law and human rights, it is just a scam to fool clueless Western liberals. To be sure, they work tirelessly to ensure that NGOs adhere to their definitions of terms like  "occupation", but in the back of their minds they know that international and humanitarian law is not nearly as supportive of their movement as they pretend it is. Sultany is warning the BDSers that they just might end up on the wrong end of the law before they finish their goal of making Jews as weak and marginalized as Christians are in the Middle East.

His third warning is about being too serious about boycotting everything that is "Zionist:"

Transforming every aspect of the political struggle to a boycott-orientation reduces the range of political means and vocabulary. Not every adverse discourse or initiative should be addressed through the boycott prism. Surely, these initiatives, to the extent that they warrant criticism, can and should be critiqued. However, the discourse of boycott is inapplicable when the object of the critique is not a state-sponsored activity, nor an Israeli or foreign institution involved in sustaining the occupation militarily or economically. The boycott campaign should be based on credible evidence of targeted institutions’ role in sustaining the apartheid regime’s practices.

Additionally, boycott should not be seen as merely the manifestation of an unguided, blind moral outrage. Its primary purpose should neither be moral preaching nor vengeance and punishment. Rather, it should be applied as a political tool for achieving political ends through political mobilization of activists, constituencies, and consumers. Therefore, there should be some considerations of efficacy. For boycott to be effective it should not be reduced to trigger-happy tactics. If one cries wolf all the time, one risks losing credibility and political currency.

Overplaying the boycott card can discredit it, even when directed against worthy targets. ...Consider the example of the New York Times which is blatantly pro-Israel; it does not follow that it should be boycotted by a writer commissioned to represent a pro-Palestinian position.

The argument can be extended to make sure that Apple or Google or Microsoft aren't boycotted, since that would be counterproductive. As he says explicitly, boycotting Zionist products  is not a moral position but a political tool. That's why Sodastream and Max Brenner are perfect targets but Intel isn't.

Yet BDS positions itself to the West as if it were a moral movement, using moral arguments!

For the third time, Sultany is saying that BDS is a scam to fool clueless Western liberals by using language they can identify with, while the movement itself is actually anti-liberalism. It has no ethical problem with murdering Jews, it is willing to discard international law if that contradicts its idea of "justice," and it couches its goal in terms of a morality that it explicitly discards.

This is not an essay that BDSers want thoughtful Western liberals to read.

(h/t Spotlighting)

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