Caroline Glick: Where BDS and Terrorists Converge
Last October, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs published an in-depth report demonstrating the central role terror Palestinian terror groups play in the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) campaign against Israel and Jews who support Israel.New York Times Birthright Israel Article Echoes ‘Zionism Is Racism’ Myth
The report, titled “Terrorists in Suits: The ties between NGOs promoting BDS and terrorist organizations,” exposed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hamas are both heavily involved — indeed, likely control — several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Western countries that play central roles in BDS campaigns. Hamas and the PFLP are both designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department and the EU.
Samidoun is a major actor in the BDS universe. According to the Israeli government report, Samidoun is a U.S.-registered NGO founded in 2012. It has branches in Lebanon, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Greece, and the Palestinian Authority.
It is also enmeshed in, if not controlled by, the PFLP.
According to the Israeli government report, Samidoun’s international coordinator, Charlotte Kates, is married to Khaled Barakat, a member of the PFLP Central Committee. Kates is a member of several other BDS groups operating in the U.S. and Europe. Many of them are similarly affiliated with the PFLP. Some operate as left-wing BDS groups.
The Israeli report further alleges that Mustafa Awad, Samidoun’s European representative, is a Lebanese national. The report notes that according to the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), Awad was a member of a PFLP terrorist cell operating in Europe, and was in contact with terrorist operatives from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
The New York Times gave a front-page platform this week to a news article about a handful of anti-Israel activist who walked off a Birthright Israel trip about a year ago because it didn’t devote enough attention to the Palestinian Arabs.The Suppressed Plight of Palestinian Christians
There are lots of problems with the article. For example, the Times claims it highlights a new phenomenon: “growing unease among many young American Jews over Israel’s policies… a generational divide… Many older Jewish Americans have long expressed unease about Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, but consider it anathema to openly protest the Jewish state.”
That’s both inaccurate and unclear. It’s not clear whether the Times means openly protest the existence of the Jewish state, or openly protest the policies of the Jewish state. If it means openly protest the policies of the Jewish state, the Times has been hyping that as far back as 1979: “Protests From U.S. Jews Stir Controversy in Israel.” And if means openly protest or oppose the existence of the Jewish state, that’s not a view held by “many” Jews at all, young or old.
To prop up its claim, the Times reports: “Just 6 percent of American Jews over the age of 50 believe that the United States gives Israel too much support, according to research by Dov Waxman, a professor of political science, international affairs and Israel studies at Northeastern University. But that view is held by 25 percent of Jews aged 18 to 29, the cohort that goes on Birthright trips.”
There’s no hyperlink to this “research,” so Times readers are unable to assess for themselves the sample size, the margin of sampling error, who funded the research, how and when the question was asked, whether it has been independently replicated, how the Jews in the survey were defined, and whether it’s a finding that really measures attitudes toward Israel or, rather instead captures more general feelings about foreign aid or a particular US presidential administration’s policies.
The biggest problem with the Times Birthright article, though, at least in my reading of it, is the way it reinforces the pernicious canard that Zionism is racism. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan described that falsehood as the “Big Red Lie,” “the last great horror of the Hitler-Stalin era,” as one can read in the fine book of Moynihan’s letters, a volume edited by Steven R. Weisman. Back in 1991, when the United Nations repealed its Zionism is racism resolution, The New York Times issued an editorial saying: “The United Nations hardly deserves applause for waiting 16 years to rescind a disgraceful declaration that should never have been adopted.”
"Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA's image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule.... That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives." — Dr. Edy Cohen, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Considered another way, the bread and butter of the PA and its supporters, media and others, seems to be to portray the Palestinians as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative could be jeopardized if the international community learned that Palestinians themselves were persecuting fellow Palestinians — solely on account of religion.
"Far more important to the Palestinian Authority than arresting those who assault Christian sites is keeping such incidents out of the mainstream media. And they are very successful in this regard. Indeed, only a handful of smaller local outlets bothered to report on these latest break-ins. The mainstream international media ignored them altogether." — Dr. Edy Cohen, Israel Today.
As Justus Reid Weiner, a lawyer and scholar well-acquainted with the region explains, "The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs... In a society where Arab Christians have no voice and no protection it is no surprise that they are leaving."