Tuesday, October 08, 2019
From Ian:
MEMRI: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups – Part II
Anti-BDS group backed by Adelson heads to 6 countries outside US
MEMRI: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups – Part II
The Facebook groups examined in this report are focused on promoting the Palestinian cause and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In this report we present posts that appeared in eight BDS groups between January 2016 and July 2019, with explicit and blatant antisemitic incitement against Jews and Judaism without any context linking them to Israel or its policies.Stand With Us: UCLA Student & StandWithUs Submit Title VI Complaint Against UCLA Alleging Inaction on Antisemitism
For the first part of this series, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1455, Incitement Against Jews By U.S.-Based Neo-Nazi And White Supremacist Members Of Pro-Palestinian And BDS Facebook Groups, May 16, 2019.
Groups Examined (see Appendix for details):
- Boycott Israel[1]: Public group with 10,000 members.
- BDS FIRST[2]: Public group with about 2,000 members.
- Stand with Palestine[3]: Public group with 60,000 members.
- ANTI ZIONIST – BOYCOTT ISRAEL[4]: Closed Facebook group with 4,000 members.
- A group for Palestine and its friends[5]: Closed group with 24,000 members.
- Boycott Israel.... Support the BDS[6]: Closed group with more than 35,000 members.
- Boycott Israel️. Free Palestine ANSWER ALL 3 QUESTIONS PLZ!![7]: Closed group with more than 11,000 members.
- BOYCOTT ISRAEL NEWS AND MEDIA.[8]: Closed group with 800 members.
This report focuses solely on posts[9] published in these groups (most of which are very active) that express explicit hatred and vilification of Jews and incite against them. Members of these groups represent a wide range of geographic locations, religious beliefs, and political ideologies.[10] Incitement against Jews is rampant in all these groups, demonstrating that antisemitism transcends geographic, political and religious divides. As of this writing, none of the posts mentioned in this report were deleted or criticized by group administrators or moderators. In fact, many of the posts were created by them. This report includes only a small sample of the anti-Jewish incitement spread in these groups. It nevertheless is an accurate reflection of attitudes towards Jews that are rampant in BDS groups.
An analysis of the personal Facebook pages of users quoted in this work shows that they are based in Western countries such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia, in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan, as well as in South Africa and India. They express diverse positions towards politically charged issues in the U.S., including abortion, immigration, and gun control. The religious identity of members is diverse as well, with many members indicating that they are practicing Muslims and Christians, while others are ardent atheists.
Conspiracy Theories, Jewish Warmongering, And Holocaust Denial
Members of BDS groups and pro-Palestinian Facebook groups often claim that Jews are nefariously behind various major global catastrophes throughout history. They claim that Jews regularly carry out "false-flag" attacks in order to implicate other groups (most recently Muslims) and to bring war and strife worldwide. They also claim that Jews falsify or stage attacks and persecution of their own people in order to gain sympathy and to further their plans for world domination. This can include accusing Jews of orchestrating their own persecution during World War II, and denying the veracity and/or extent of the Holocaust as well as of other modern antisemitic events.
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) student Shayna Lavi and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department have submitted a complaint against UCLA to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”). The complaint alleges that the university is in violation of its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to the administration's inaction in response to antisemitism experienced by UCLA Jewish students.Israel Advocacy Movement: SQUAD FAILS
Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance. According to OCR, Jewish students enjoy the protections of Title VI, including protection from antisemitic harassment that creates a hostile environment. Ms. Lavi’s experiences, as detailed in the complaint, fall squarely within OCR’s definition of antisemitism.
Ms. Lavi was subjected to ongoing antisemitic discrimination and harassment during the spring 2019 quarter. This began with a diatribe by a guest lecturer in one of her classes, "Anthropology M144P: Constructing Race." The lecturer, San Francisco State University Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, singled out Ms. Lavi and attacked a core component of her Jewish identity, such as by calling Zionists "white supremacists." After Ms. Lavi objected to this attack, Ms. Lavi’s professor, who had invited this guest lecturer, proceeded to target her with additional harassment in subsequent classes. When informed of this, UCLA failed to respond adequately or effectively.
In addition to Ms. Lavi’s experiences, the complaint describes a pattern of antisemitic incidents at UCLA dating to 2012, and the administration’s failure to address this hostile climate.
“StandWithUs is proud to support Ms. Lavi and commends her courageous willingness to confront antisemitism at UCLA. UCLA's Jewish community remains vibrant and resilient, with strong support from Hillel and other Jewish institutions on campus. At the same time, there is no excuse for the UCLA administration's disturbing indifference to years of well-documented abuse and harassment of Jewish students. It is time for OCR to hold UCLA's administration accountable and demand that it comply with its legal requirements under Title VI,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs.
The 'Squad' are complete hypocrites who:
🔸 Want to ban fossil fuels… take hundreds of flights
🔸 Claim the rich avoid taxes… don't pay their tax
🔸 Protest the 1%… are stinking rich
Share if you’re tired of AOC, Ilhan and Rashida's hypocrisy!
Anti-BDS group backed by Adelson heads to 6 countries outside US
A Jewish group founded and funded by the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on American campuses will be expanding its efforts to six countries outside the US in the next academic year.
From the start of the new academic year, the Maccabee Task Force will grow its presence to countries “in Europe and beyond,” where it plans to fund and assist pro-Israel campus groups facing boycott Israel campaigns, the organization’s executive director, David Brog, told The Times of Israel.
He would not reveal which countries the task force was heading to.
Established in 2015, the task force works with pro-Israel students on programs countering efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, sending representatives to campuses to solicit ideas from students and groups on campus, and then fund those it deems viable.
The idea, Brog said in an interview, was to be “a clearinghouse for good strategies that we could fund and then offer to our other campuses, and then we could enable the strategies by bringing the funding and the ideas.”
He explained the model of MTF as providing the financial resources to allow campus pro-Israel groups to counter BDS in whatever ways they deem most effective for their particular campus.
