Friday, July 01, 2022
From Ian:
BDS Puts Jews and Israel Under Attack
BDS Puts Jews and Israel Under Attack
One of the most significant and sinister BDS developments in recent memory occurred in June with the release of the ‘Mapping Project,’ which created a literal diagram of Boston area Jewish institutions and entities purportedly involved in “local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine and harms that we see as linked, such as policing, US imperialism, and displacement/ethnic cleansing.”Out of context: Stripping Jews of their national identity
The map, which was endorsed by the Boston BDS movement and by Jewish Voice for Peace, includes 483 entities such as schools, synagogues, communal groups, NGOs and philanthropists, as well as an immense range of public and private institutions, from major corporations like Apple and General Dynamics to local police departments and firms.
The map goes far beyond the usual BDS emphasis on multinational corporations, universities, and police departments by accusing unexceptional entities of unique evil thanks to connections with Zionism. One example is the Jewish Teen Foundation of Boston that “hosts events for Boston area teenagers which promote and normalize Israel’s ongoing colonial subjugation of Palestinians and theft of Palestinian land and resources.”
Another, the Kleinfelder Northeast construction and design firm, is accused of providing services to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and proposing to construct a prison for the Commonwealth that “attempted to whitewash over the inherently violent and dehumanizing realities of caging human beings in prions (sic).” The Harpoon brewery is accused of “propaganda/normalization” and “Zionism” for partnering with an Israeli firm that specialized in desalinization.
The project’s stated goal, to “reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them,” explicitly targeting Jewish entities and individuals.
Though several Massachusetts politicians support BDS, the map drew widespread condemnation including from Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Representatives Ayanna Pressley, and others. A bipartisan group of 37 House members also called on Federal law enforcement officials to investigate the project and its potential use by extremist groups.
Local and national media and Jewish leaders also denounced the project. Local FBI officials claimed to be aware of the project and were investigating, but stated that no direct threat had been identified.
A new pattern seems to be emerging from the extreme anti-Zionist camp, which appropriates clear-cut cases of murderous hate taking place in American cities today and distorts the context by either localizing or universalizing its message to vilify Israel, Israelis, and Jews.Seven Notorious Fake Quotes and Misquotes About Israel
Responses from many within the anti-Israel movement to the recent mass shooting in Buffalo and the second anniversary of the George Floyd murder over the past months highlight this pattern. In both cases, anti-Zionists proceeded to conflate those atrocities with some aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some examples of this follow.
Not only does this strategy often veer into clear antisemitism, but it also defeats the seeming purpose of such activism. It certainly doesn’t help Palestinian advocacy as it gets mired in accusations of antisemitism and, at the same time, waters down the legitimate campaign to advance core racial justice issues in the United States.
The tragic May 14 Buffalo shooting targeting Black Americans took place a day before Palestinians and Palestinian activists were commemorating the 74th anniversary of Nakba Day, which marks the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem in the period around the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Appropriating the proximity of both events, elements of the anti-Israel movement in the United States merged their commemoration of Nakba Day with attempts to draw parallels between the murderous act in Buffalo and Palestinian rejectionism of the creation of the State of Israel. They cynically universalized their message by alleging that Zionism, or support for the existence of the Jewish and democratic state of Israel, is a form of racism akin to white supremacy; therefore, so the logic goes, the murder of black Americans at the hands of a white supremacist is somehow akin to the Jewish struggle for self-determination.
Examples of this include:
- The US-based anti-Israel group Adalah Justice Project tweeted, “We must work to end all systems of supremacy that spawn hate and violence. End white supremacy. End antisemitism. End Zionism. Strength to Buffalo tonight.”
- The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights tweeted, “Today is #NakbaDay—the 74th anniversary of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people continuing since 1948—and today we also fight for Black liberation & mourn the white supremacist attack in Buffalo. All forms of oppression are interconnected & must be fought together.”
- The Anti-Zionist poet and activist Remi Kanazi tweeted, “Why solidarity matters. It’s Nakba Day. Other communities are in pain and dealing with supremacist forces. If we don’t fight against all systems of domination and build with each other, the oppression we face will never truly end, even if we think it does.”
Through an intentional mischaracterization of Zionism, these groups call for a collective effort to fight what Jews have always considered the core of Zionism, the Jewish right to self-determination.
A famous man once said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
When it comes to discussions about Israel and Zionism, the Jewish people’s liberation movement, this statement could not be more accurate. Many times, both journalists and social media influencers will share famous quotes about Israel that are either outright fabrications or deceptive misquotes. However, by the time the truth about these quotes is revealed, they have already been shared thousands of times and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people.
The following is a list of some of the most popular false quotes or misquotes about Israel that are still shared by both reputed news outlets and online celebrities:
1. “We must expel the Arabs and take their places” — David Ben-Gurion
Cited in such reputable news sources as The Economist, The Independent, and The Baltimore Sun, this quote from a 1937 letter by the future first prime minister of Israel has been the subject of controversy for some time.
According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, who helped popularize this quote by citing it in his 1985 tome “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947 – 1949,” the problem with this quote is that in the original letter, the words written before it are crossed out. If those words are included and the context is taken into account, Ben-Gurion’s words then take on the opposite meaning from that which is commonly quoted.
Morris further claims that, based on the evidence, those words were not crossed out by Ben-Gurion but by someone else at a later time. For these reasons, Morris’ later works either do not reference this quote or he includes the letter’s original words, not the spliced quote that is commonly cited.
