The success story of US state legislatures steadily hammering away at BDS
However, Clemmons recalls that a real breakthrough came “later on that trip when we had the opportunity to meet Prof. [Eugene] Kontorovich during a dinner at a winery.
“Here was one of the bright minds in the world... on addressing BDS under the US Constitution,” he explained.
By June 2015, South Carolina was leading the way with legislation targeting BDS, along with Illinois. Following South Carolina’s lead, Alabama, Arizona and other states discussed the same or similar proposals.
In total, as of now, 12 laws or executive orders (New York’s governor issued an order instead of passing a state law) have gone into effect. Though they deal with BDS along similar lines, there are some differences.
Describing the South Carolina version, Clemmons stated that “the law is broader.
It does not mention Israel. It prohibits those who engage against trade based on national origin, against our allies and against the state of South Carolina.” Those who interfere with trade in such ways are barred from getting government contracts.
Clemmons, who himself was already chairman of the South Carolina House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, returned home with 13 supportive legislators.
This was a strong group of allies, but he said that the rest of the legislature did not need to be lobbied as most of them “see Israel as South Carolina’s best friend.”
Divest This: Like Romans – BDS and War
As promised, I’ve pulled together the material written for Algemeiner over the last few months into an essay on how the language of war can help us to best understand and defeat the BDS “movement.” Consider comprehension of the chosen title (“Like Romans”) as an prize/Easter Egg for those who make it through the whole thing.The Soviet-Palestinian Lie
You can download a PDF version of the work here, or visit the Divest This publications page for links to all the longer works that have been published on this site. I’ve also uploaded the book to Scribd which allows you to more easily share it with your friends and allies.
I’ve also put together a Kindle version of the book that is currently going through testing. If any adventurous Kindle users want to try it on their device and give me feedback, you can request a copy via the Contact Page.
While this work is targeted towards fellow hard core activists trying to think through the best options for winning the BDS propaganda wars, I’m hoping anyone confused about or interested in contributing to the struggle will learn something from it.
Now back to the front!
"The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for 'liberation' organizations." — Ion Mihai Pacepa, former chief of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Romania.Morocco tipped off Israeli intelligence, ‘helped Israel win Six Day War’
"First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, and replaced them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth." — Ion Mihai Pacepa.
"[T]he Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep... We had only to keep repeating our themes -- that the United States and Israel were 'fascist, imperial-Zionist countries' bankrolled by rich Jews." — Yuri Andropov, former KGB chairman.
As early as 1965, the USSR had formally proposed in the UN a resolution that would condemn Zionism as colonialism and racism. Although the Soviets did not succeed in their first attempt, the UN turned out to be an overwhelmingly grateful recipient of Soviet bigotry and propaganda; in November 1975, Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination" was finally passed.
Israel largely has Morocco to thank for its victory over its Arab enemies in the 1967 Six Day War, according to revelations by a former Israeli military intelligence chief.
In 1965, King Hassan ll passed recordings to Israel of a key meeting between Arab leaders held to discuss whether they were prepared for war against Israel.
That meeting not only revealed that Arab ranks were split — heated arguments broke out, for example, between Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Jordan’s king Hussein — but that the Arab nations were ill prepared for war, Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper over the weekend.
On the basis of these recordings, as well as other intelligence information gathered in the years leading up to the war, Israel launched a preemptive strike on the morning of June 5, 1967, bombing Egyptian airfields and destroying nearly every Egyptian fighter plane.
During the war, which ended on June 10, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.