Sunday, September 11, 2022
From Ian:
Anti-Israel boycotts masquerade as social justice - opinion
Anti-Israel boycotts masquerade as social justice - opinion
Nineteen US states sent Morningstar, the financial services giant, a clear message last month: its attempts to sweep its anti-Israel bias under the rug are not fooling anyone.The Use of False NGO Apartheid Claims to Support BDS Resolutions
On August 17, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced that 18 states had joined Missouri in investigating the Chicago-based corporation’s apparent support for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Schmitt promised to investigate whether Morningstar’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) tools amounted to “consumer fraud or unfair trade practices.”
ESG investment is a huge industry, accounting for $17 trillion in assets in the US alone. While ESG is designed to incorporate ethical considerations into investment, the industry’s subjective standards have allowed anti-Israel activists to impose their agenda on unwitting investors. Former US State Department special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism Elan Carr has called it “BDS dressed up as social-justice investing.”
Matters only got worse on August 25, when top financial authorities from 17 states called on Morningstar to reverse course on Israel. This followed Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee’s warning to Morningstar’s CEO that he had 30 days to prove his company was not violating Arizona’s anti-BDS law. Otherwise, Arizona would add the company to the state’s prohibited investments list. Morningstar uses “anti-Israel and antisemitic sources to negatively impact companies doing business in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories,” Yee wrote.
Arizona’s threat may only be the tip of the iceberg: ESG firms must contend with anti-BDS statutes on the books in more than 30 states. These laws have created real consequences, including prohibitions on investing state funds, for companies engaging in discriminatory boycotts of Israel.
Over the past few years, a network of anti-Israel, pro-BDS non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been promoting artificial definitions of apartheid in their ongoing efforts to delegitimize and demonize Israel. By deploying emotionally-charged rhetoric related to one of the worst manifestations of racism in modern history, NGOs seek to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish State, and advance BDS and lawfare against Israel.Jewish Agency chairman Doron Almog returns to Ethiopia
In order to gauge the salience of the NGO apartheid campaign, NGO Monitor examined 28 divestment resolutions by student groups, trade unions, churches, and other institutions since September 2020 (see table below). We found that, in order to support their demands for BDS, 25 of the 28 resolutions mention apartheid. Eighteen explicitly quote or cite politicized NGOs and their manufactured claims of apartheid.
The “apartheid” rhetoric was accompanied by accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as fundamental opposition to Zionism. Some call for the end of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. A number also referenced the UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, another initiative resulting from NGO lobbying.
Apartheid Rhetoric
As noted, the vast majority of the examined BDS resolutions invoked a variety of terms and phrases associated with the NGO network’s apartheid campaign. Many resolutions made direct reference to NGO apartheid reports, including those by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and Israeli NGO B’Tselem.
During the visit, Almog will visit the historic sites where Ethiopian Jews walked in the 1980s on their pilgrimage to Israel. He will also review the preparation activities for the aliyah process carried out by representatives of the Jewish Agency in community centers in Gondar and Addis Ababa and will meet with the immigrants before they immigrate to Israel.
Almog will arrive in Ethiopia together with a senior delegation of leaders of the Jewish communities in North America, on behalf of the Jewish Federations of North America.
“The true heroes of the Ethiopian aliyah are the olim themselves who have waited so long for this moment, yet never lost ‘hatikvah’ – the hope – that they would one day reach the Land of Israel,” The organization’s president and CEO Eric Fingerhut said.
“It is a tremendous privilege to know that for decades, our federation system has played an instrumental role in the aliyah journey of these men, women and children, as well as in supporting their first steps in Israel.”
Operation “Tzur Israel” operates by virtue of a government decision led by Aliyah and Integration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata.
In the first phase of the operation, which began in December 2020 and ended in March 2021, about 2,000 olim arrived in Israel. The second phase was launched in June 2021, when the government decided to bring an additional 3,000 more immigrants.
So far, about 1,250 immigrants from Ethiopia have immigrated to Israel during the second phase of the operation. Of the 200 immigrants on the upcoming flight this week, 40 are children and toddlers who will be integrated into the Israeli education system upon arrival.
Most of the olim aren’t considered to be entitled to aliyah according to Israel’s Right of Return law, but are instead offered citizenship as first degree relatives of Israeli citizens. Many will begin a process of conversion to Judaism after arriving in the Jewish state.
