im-jewish-and-i-want-people-to-boycott-israel

[salarsikander]

The country must be held accountable for its human rights abuses.

In 2009, I was living in Tel Aviv during Operation Cast Lead. During that offensive, Israel killed about 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza. When small numbers of us went out into the streets to protest the war, we were often pelted with eggs or attacked by passersby. When I dropped my children off at their preschool, parents chatted as if nothing unusual was going on. When they asked me what was wrong, I would tell them I was deeply upset about what was happening just 40 miles away. Their response: awkward silence, or an angry defense of Israel’s actions.

I wanted to take concrete action to bring about freedom and full rights for Palestinians. So I embraced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. The non-violent effort, started in 2005 by a broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations, is a call for solidarity from the international community until Israel complies with international law and ends its violations of Palestinian rights. It’s hard going though — the governor of my own state, New York, recently condemned BDS in a unilateral executive order.

Seven years later, there have been two more horrific assaults on Gaza. About 500 Palestinian children were killed in 2014. Even when there are no intensive bombing campaigns, Palestinians in Gaza live under siege. West Bank residents are severely curtailed by Israel’s matrix of control in the area, including checkpoints, administrative detention and home demolitions. Inside Israel, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship live in a system of unequal laws and rights. Outside of Israel, refugees cannot return home.

Of course, during this time there have been attacks on Israeli civilians too. These are a horrifying symptom of ongoing occupation and repression, as Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai pointed out after a recent attack in Tel Aviv killed four Jewish Israelis.

I believe that Israel won’t change its policies until outside pressure becomes impossible to ignore. BDS is a powerful way to encourage the state to act. And during my time with the movement, we’ve had growing success. Mainstream churches have divested from companies profiting from the occupation. Dozens of American campuses have passed divestment resolutions. More than 100 artists refuse to perform in Israel, and multinational corporations like G4S and Veolia have withdrawn from the Israeli market.


During this time, there’s also been a shift in public opinion. A 2015 Brookings Institute poll found that 49 percent of Democrats support imposing economic sanctions against Israel over settlement construction. A Pew poll released last month found that for the first time, liberal Democrats were more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. In May, the research firm Ipsos found that one-third of Americans support the boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel until it respects Palestinian rights.

But our efforts have been threatened here in the United States by a nationally coordinated, well-funded strategy financed by the Israeli government and advocacy organizations. Over the last year, 22 states have introduced or passed anti-BDS legislation. Many of these measures make it illegal for states to do business with companies that support BDS. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has escalated that strategy with adraconian executive order that would create a blacklist of companies and organizations that choose not to invest in Israel or that advocate for BDS. Cuomo’s executive order circumvented the state legislature, where opposition from supporters of Palestinian rights and free speech, including many members of Jewish Voice for Peace, had successfully stalled the anti-BDS legislation in committee.

This is wrong. It’s not discrimination to hold a state accountable for its violations of international law and human rights abuses. The state of Israel is not the same as the Jewish people.

My daughters who I dropped off at preschool in Tel Aviv in 2009 are now middle-schoolers in Brooklyn. If as Israeli citizens they choose someday to live in Israel/Palestine, I hope it will be a place where all people, Jewish and Palestinian, can live in equality and freedom. I believe that BDS is the best tool that we have to make that vision a reality. We will look back on the attempts to legislate against BDS as the last desperate attempts to shield Israel from much-needed pressure to change its policies. Cuomo is standing on the wrong side of history.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...m-jewish-and-i-want-people-to-boycott-israel/

 

[salarsikander]

@Solomon2

@Solomon2 Why would a jewish want to boycott Isreal ? As a fellow member of the same community your thoughts on this subject will enlighten us. Please go ahead and share you esteemed thoughts

Embracing Israel Boycott, Jewish Voice For Peace Insists on Its Jewish Identity

Read more: http://forward.com/news/israel/2175...cott-jewish-voice-for-peace-in/#ixzz4CXDa9zxz



At the opening plenary of Jewish Voice for Peace’s recent national conference, Rabbi Alissa Wise, JVP’s co-director of organizing, asked the crowd of some 600 how many were attending their first such gathering; about three-quarters of the room shot up their hands.

For the group whose advocacy of boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel makes it a pariah in most of the rest of the Jewish community, these have been boom times. And for many of its members, the reason appears to be a continuing desire to assert their opposition to Israel’s fundamental policies in a Jewish context rather than abandon their Jewish identity altogether.

One of those raising his hand was Noah Knowlton-Latkin of California’s Claremont Colleges. Like many of those in attendance, Knowlton-Latkin, a sophomore, was involved earlier in Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus group devoted to organizing students to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza. The group also pushes college administrations to cut their economic and academic ties to Israel.

But last summer, Knowlton-Latkin reached out to JVP to express his concerns in a Jewish context. “It was great to find out that this existed,” said Knowlton-Latkin, who came to the conference with two other Jewish Claremont students, both members of SJP.

JVP’s recent conference, which took place in Baltimore from March 13 to 15, was notable for several new developments. Two weeks earlier, after a lengthy process that included study committees and membership surveys, JVP’s board of directors voted to fully support the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, or BDS, as it is popularly known. JVP’s call for a full economic boycott of Israel comes after years of supporting a more limited boycott of only companies that operated in the occupied territories.

JVP’s full embrace of BDS includes endorsing a right of return for Arabs and for descendants of Arabs who fled or who were expelled by Israel’s army in the 1948 war that established the state. That population, most of whom remain stateless refugees, now numbers more than 5.2 million. Israel and its supporters, including even dovish Zionist parties such as Meretz, argue that full implementation of the United Nations resolution calling for their return would render Jews a minority in their own state. It would mean, they say, the end of Zionism.

But JVP’s president, Rebecca Vilkomerson, told the Forward: “For there to be a sustainable and just peace, that is one of the issues that we have to grapple with. We believe that there can be a homeland for Jewish people that is not based on the systematic denial of rights of Palestinians.”

JVP does not offer details on how that could be if such a return indeed took place.

Most striking at this conference was the way Israel’s hard-right turns, and particularly last year’s war in Gaza, have fueled JVP’s growth among a cohort of mostly young people who find the response of other Jewish groups, including the dovish group J Street, simply inadequate. JVP’s leaders anticipate that this trend will only quicken following the recent election victory of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They point to his election eve disavowal of a two-state solution and his election day warning about Arabs voting, plus the prospect that he will soon lead an even more right-wing government.

There are now 65 JVP chapters, up from 40 a year ago. Vilkomerson says JVP now has 9,000 dues-paying members, compared with 600 when the Forward last profiled the group in 2011. In the tax year that ended in June 2013, JVP had $1.1 million in donations. Vilkomerson said she expects this year’s total to top $2 million, almost all of it from individuals. The group has more than 204,000 Facebook followers, more than twice as many as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and about eight times as many as J Street.

For all their alienation from the mainstream community, JVP members seem to share an urgent need to voice their angst in a Jewish context, and to project it outward to the world, also citing their status as Jews. Critics condemn this as mere exploitation of their Jewishness in order to gain a hearing the group would otherwise be denied.

But many JVP members do come from backgrounds of serious Jewish engagement. The conference itself opened on a Friday night, with the group celebrating Kabbalat Shabbat, and included a memorial service for those killed in the war in Gaza, during which members chanted the Mourner’s Kaddish and the prayer for the dead, El Maleh Rachamim. JVP says the group offers the members a place to be their “whole selves.”

“21yrs in many jewish spaces & I’ve never felt so at home,” one participant, Talia Bauer, wrote on the group’s Facebook page after the conference.

Another participant wrote, “For three days, I was immersed in a Jewish community unlike I have ever been a part of, one rooted in justice that welcomed all of me.” She wrote anonymously, she said, to avoid her family learning of her involvement with JVP.

In Vilkomerson’s view, “the mainstream Jewish community should be thanking us. We are bringing many people back into a Jewish community. There’s so much angst in the Jewish community about the loss of community, and losing the young people, and what is going to happen, and the apathy. Nobody here is apathetic; nobody here is unconnected. To the contrary.”

Some in the mainstream grant them this point. “Any sort of Jewish engagement by young people is a positive thing,” said Steven M. Cohen, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion who studies the American Jewish community. He said that JVP, along with anti-democratic far-right groups and “any group that represents lots of Jews,” should be invited to be members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and similar mainstream organizations. “JVP doesn’t show concern for the security of the State of Israel and doesn’t care if there is a Jewish State of Israel or not,” he added. Nevertheless, he said, “We should not exclude JVP from conversations — we should engage them.”

That view is unthinkable to many Jewish community standard-bearers.

“The positions and actions taken by Jewish Voice for Peace are anathema to mainstream Jewish organizations,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement to the Forward. “The group’s activities, which include partnerships with anti-Israel organizations that deny Israel’s fundamental right to exist, put them at the farthest fringe of the Jewish community and would certainly preclude their participation among mainstream organizations.”

JVP, he said, “uses its Jewish identity to provide the anti-Israel movement with a veneer of legitimacy and to shield the movement’s most demagogic supporters from allegations of anti-Semitism.”

For many, the decision to join JVP was a painful, personal one, reflecting a lost faith in the State of Israel. Rabbi Brant Rosen , a co-chair of JVP’s rabbinical council, who served as a congregational rabbi in suburban Chicago for 17 years , joined in 2009, after Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, its military campaign into Gaza, with numerous reports — contested by Israel — of high civilian deaths rates.

Michael Davis, a congregational cantor in the Reform movement and a member of JVP’s rabbinical council, grew up Orthodox in Israel. He said that his own worldview changed after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin at a fateful Tel Aviv peace rally in November 1995. “That was the end of the dream for me,” he told the Forward.

For Vilkomerson, it was the second intifada, starting in 2000. “There are these moments of cracking open, where people sort of make the leap,” she said.

Rosen added, “Historically, that’s how JVP has grown, unfortunately, tragically.”

Speaking after the Israeli election, Vilkomerson says she now expects another wave of people to come into the JVP fold. “Given that the American Jewish community is generally interested in peace and democratic values, we expect a lot of self-reflection about how to support a true peace in the days to come,” she said.



Read more: http://forward.com/news/israel/2175...cott-jewish-voice-for-peace-in/#ixzz4CXE6tiDK




Read more: http://forward.com/news/israel/2175...cott-jewish-voice-for-peace-in/#ixzz4CXDjB7YB

 

[Solomon2]

Jews embrace diversity. It doesn't mean she's right. This writer is executive director for JVP, which has a budget of over a million dollars: link.

You simply have to escape from this "authorities" hole you're mired in.

 

[.]

Sir why are you laughing?

Jews embrace diversity. It doesn't mean she's right. This writer is executive director for JVP, which has a budget of over a million dollars: link.

You simply have to escape from this "authorities" hole you're mired in.

Shes Right
Can you explain what did you mean from your Second Line "authorities"?

 

[salarsikander]

Jews embrace diversity. It doesn't mean she's right. This writer is executive director for JVP, which has a budget of over a million dollars: link.

You simply have to escape from this "authorities" hole you're mired in.

But the question why do we have so many of such societies led by Jews themselves against the State?
@Khafee @war&peace @DESERT FIGHTER

 

[war&peace]

But the question why do we have so many of such societies led by Jews themselves against the State?
@Khafee @war&peace @DESERT FIGHTER

There are two types of Jews in the world

1. Zionist Jews
2. non-Zionist Jews

Zionist Jews are the ones who lend their unconditional support to the fascist and illegal state of Israel and they can lie, deceive as part of their duty and they have perfected these ugly traits...for example they will claim that holocaust happened and bla bla bla ...
But they will support Israel in all its perpetrations against inncocent people of Palestine. The core of zionism is the Ashkenazi Jews while the Arab jews are relegated to lower status in the bigoted state.

Non-Zionist Jews claim that according the Torah they have been forbidden by their God to create a state so Israel is against the teaching of their books and they consider it anti-semitic and naturally they are against the genocide of Palestinian Muslims by the terrorist and illegal state. They are good people.

 

[Khafee]

But the question why do we have so many of such societies led by Jews themselves against the State?
@Khafee @war&peace @DESERT FIGHTER

Some of them actually have a conscience, unlike the resident Zion Brigade on PDF.

 

[Signalian]

I will blame the Palestinians and the Muslim countries around jerusalem as well as Muslim countries of the world.
Its been almost half a decade, why havent palestinians learnt how to go on about this issue?

I see so many posts/pics showing kids infront of tanks as brave souls. I disagree. This is not 10th centrury.
Pelting stones at tanks will get Palestine freedom? NO

Yasser Arafat has won a nobel prize but has he liberated Palestine? NO.

I feel proud that Jinnah was very very strong in this Area. Jinnah didnt wage a war but he knew his opponents very well and won freedom from a dwindling super power of that time (UK). Jinnah was so confident about his work and struggle that he called for support from people for Pakistan, not an armed struggle. He knew the strength of tongue and pen. If it wasnt for Jinnah, pakistanis/muslims of subcontinent would be calling India as Israel too.

What are muslim countries doing about this issue? the gulf states are arming themselves against Iran. and in reality Iran is only country strong enough (atleast iran thinks so) to threaten Israel although I dont agree with Iran threatening israel like it does. Pakistan is already engaged with India upon Kashmir apart from its cleaning its western borders yet it sent its armed personnel to fight against Israel more than once. I think Pakistan has damaged Israel more than Israel damaging Pakistan. Egypt had its piece of share of war and joined a pact, without caring for Palestinians. Syria is mired with own issues and Syrian leader wants personal glory. Ofcourse its not Russia's job to Liberate Palestine. Russians just helped Assad and went away. Its not Europe's Job to Liberate Palestine. Europe didnt get us Pakistan, Jinnah did. China,USA,NATO etc are not bothered about palestine to get it freedom.

what are KSA, UAE, Turkey, Libya, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq doing?
why dont they send their forces to liberate Palestine instead of crying crocodile tears over "jewish opression " in Jerusalem?

Israel has fought 3+ wars with its neighbours and Palestine, nothing happened except more expansion for it. Jews/Zionists/Israelis will do what they think is right if for them and their freedom. Stop blaming Jews/Israelis. Jinnah didnt play a blame game, he played a win-win game.

 

[.]

I will blame the Palestinians and the Muslim countries around jerusalem as well as Muslim countries of the world.
Its been almost half a decade, why havent palestinians learnt how to go on about this issue?

I see so many posts/pics showing kids infront of tanks as brave souls. I disagree. This is not 10th centrury.
Pelting stones at tanks will get Palestine freedom? NO

Yasser Arafat has won a nobel prize but has he liberated Palestine? NO.

I feel proud that Jinnah was very very strong in this Area. Jinnah didnt wage a war but he knew his opponents very well and won freedom from a dwindling super power of that time (UK). Jinnah was so confident about his work and struggle that he called for support from people for Pakistan, not an armed struggle. He knew the strength of tongue and pen. If it wasnt for Jinnah, pakistanis/muslims of subcontinent would be calling India as Israel too.

What are muslim countries doing about this issue? the gulf states are arming themselves against Iran. and in reality Iran is only country strong enough (atleast iran thinks so) to threaten Israel although I dont agree with Iran threatening israel like it does. Pakistan is already engaged with India upon Kashmir apart from its cleaning its western borders yet it sent its armed personnel to fight against Israel more than once. I think Pakistan has damaged Israel more than Israel damaging Pakistan. Egypt had its piece of share of war and joined a pact, without caring for Palestinians. Syria is mired with own issues and Syrian leader wants personal glory. Ofcourse its not Russia's job to Liberate Palestine. Russians just helped Assad and went away. Its not Europe's Job to Liberate Palestine. Europe didnt get us Pakistan, Jinnah did. China,USA,NATO etc are not bothered about palestine to get it freedom.

what are KSA, UAE, Turkey, Libya, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq doing?
why dont they send their forces to liberate Palestine instead of crying crocodile tears over "jewish opression " in Jerusalem?

Israel has fought 3+ wars with its neighbours and Palestine, nothing happened except more expansion for it. Jews/Zionists/Israelis will do what they think is right if for them and their freedom. Stop blaming Jews/Israelis. Jinnah didnt play a blame game, he played a win-win game.

Religion of Islam in Pakistan and around the world has become like a frail wooden stick people bend on secularism for the sake of Being different tend to break all morals the reason for down-fall of arabs and all issues related to Muslims are because
1.True Religious Understanding has become a rarity,we do not I say again we do not Understand Islam.So I reject that as you say Muslims haven't done enough I don't expect them to.
2.Muslims Internal divide (Shia,Sunni) We can see that in Iraq,But I blame fully what happened in Iraq to America and the failure of rehabilitation of Iraq and death of Saddam Hussein (why on God's green earth was he sentenced to death) I reject all true and untrue claims of his Rule.
3.Terrorism is the biggest enemy of all Muslims and even Palestinian people,when a kid pelts stone are called terrorists,How much blood has been spelt in Pakistan our Governments and Generals since Musharraf's era failed to launch offensives against terrorism,all that time Our army generals and governments took aid from America in full swing and delayed real action against terrorism which we are seeing today.
4.I hope you conclude from this that Muslim's are confused we have become sheeps and we will continue to be killed unless we stand together that is it ,Its as simple as that stand together fight as one,Ask americans to evacuate Iraq and afghanistan ,Get money from Rich Arabian states Plus a Joint Fighting force like the NATO to fight and also to work as the United nations but a more Effective force based on principles of Islam.

Issue of Palestine is that Israel does whatever it wants,it shots dead any children women and men,Why?At this point I reject each and every other argument.
National socialist Germany the real satans of today waged wars not because they were crazy as we are taught today but because their German Minorities were suffering in surrounding states.They didn't shot dead any Jew based on nothing
What right is there for a country made on the basis of lies to stand against its own religion to exist?
What right is there if Afghanis 3 million living in Pakistan today start to pour in to Pakistan like cockroaches from Afghanistan and start taking Pakistan from us by force?
So you can see you went too far,I'm against what exactly happened at the start

 

[Signalian]

Religion of Islam in Pakistan and around the world has become like a frail wooden stick people bend on secularism for the sake of Being different tend to break all morals the reason for down-fall of arabs and all issues related to Muslims are because
1.True Religious Understanding has become a rarity,we do not I say again we do not Understand Islam.So I reject that as you say Muslims haven't done enough I don't expect them to.

I will not go in debate of "true religion understanding" instead i will take Jinnah and Iqbal as examples.

Some say Jinnah was shia, some say he was ismaili, some say he was a sunni, some say he wasnt even a muslim !
Does it matter ? He got us Pakistan in name of Islam as muslim majority piece of land. he was the first and is still the most beloved leader of Pakistan, a muslim nation.

There was khilafat faction in india, which joined with Gandhi and many muslim Khilafat devotees joined that khilafat faction, it failed miserably.
Legal system, pen and speech was how Jinnah got a Muslim country.

Iqbal was very close to Ahmedi/Qadianis for many decades, He wrote alot of poetry during that period. That poetry is taught in Pakistan to us today. He is national poet of Pakistan.
Jinnah, Iqbal and other members of independence struggle got us Pakistan.

2.Muslims Internal divide (Shia,Sunni) We can see that in Iraq,But I blame fully what happened in Iraq to America and the failure of rehabilitation of Iraq and death of Saddam Hussein (why on God's green earth was he sentenced to death) I reject all true and untrue claims of his Rule.

Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Moammar Gaddafi etc were military leaders. Read their biographies, they supported armed struggles. They knew Jinnah but they didnt follow Jinnah's path and paid the price.

Jinnah wasnt a military leader, he was a master of table talk. He was a superb negotiator. He put his skills in legal system to get the job done. He turned the tables on British and Congress through their own legal system.

So you can blame USA or xyz, doesnt matter, saddam reaped what he sowed.

3.Terrorism is the biggest enemy of all Muslims and even Palestinian people,when a kid pelts stone are called terrorists,How much blood has been spelt in Pakistan our Governments and Generals since Musharraf's era failed to launch offensives against terrorism,all that time Our army generals and governments took aid from America in full swing and delayed real action against terrorism which we are seeing today.

First about terrorism, did Jinnah support any militancy? NO.
Did Jinnah ask muslims to take up arms and asked muslim boys to pelt stones at British? NO

Jinnah knew that militancy, armed struggle, pelting stones and other stuff will only give a bad name to muslims and label them as miscreants.
Jinnah was a one man army and his soldiers were his pen, tongue and mind and he put them to effective use. He didnt wage Jihad to create Pakistan.

4.I hope you conclude from this that Muslim's are confused we have become sheeps and we will continue to be killed unless we stand together that is it ,Its as simple as that stand together fight as one,Ask americans to evacuate Iraq and afghanistan ,Get money from Rich Arabian states Plus a Joint Fighting force like the NATO to fight and also to work as the United nations but a more Effective force based on principles of Islam.

I conclude that Palestinians need a leader like Jinnah, a master of legal system who can win back Palestinian land for Palestinians.
Every country has/had a leader. Assad, Arafat, Sadat, Gaddafi etc, but Jinnah did the most.

There was a joint muslim force proclaimed by KSA a few months back and you saw what happened during houthi yemen war.

Issue of Palestine is that Israel does whatever it wants,it shots dead any children women and men,Why?At this point I reject each and every other argument.
National socialist Germany the real satans of today waged wars not because they were crazy as we are taught today but because their German Minorities were suffering in surrounding states.They didn't shot dead any Jew based on nothing
What right is there for a country made on the basis of lies to stand against its own religion to exist?
What right is there if Afghanis 3 million living in Pakistan today start to pour in to Pakistan like cockroaches from Afghanistan and start taking Pakistan from us by force?
So you can see you went too far,I'm against what exactly happened at the start

British also did whatever they wanted to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
This is just one example.

Did Jinnah wage war because muslim minority was suffering ? NO. he waged a struggle (not armed) and won Pakistan.

 

[Solomon2]

Shes Right

Is she? You have to look at not the person but her arguments and evidence in context.

Can you explain what did you mean from your Second Line "authorities"?

I just answered your question, didn't I? Just because someone criticizes Israel "as a Jew" doesn't give their words authority.

 

[somebozo]

Israel contributes more to the world than the Pallys would ever..and that means Israel also carries more weight geopolitical than Pallys..and that means it can get away with a lot..nobody want to take side with unproductive hoards!

 

[Solomon2]

‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ Could Rival Hamas and the KKK
JUNE 29, 2016 5:53 AM 15 COMMENTS
Author:

Abraham H. Miller


A demonstration in Seattle by the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace. Photo: Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons.

“I’m Jewish, and I want people to boycott Israel,” pens Rebecca Vilkomerson, in the Washington “Post Everything” column of the WaPo on June 24. Vilkomerson is the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that is neither a voice for peace nor Jewish, except when Jewish traditions can be manipulated to support the Palestinian cause.

JVP refers to itself as the “Jewish arm” of the Palestinian solidarity movement. If you want to know how Jewish and how much of a voice for peace Vilkomerson is, ask her what boundaries she would accept for a Jewish state in a diplomatic settlement resulting in two states, one Arab, one Jewish, living side by side in peace and neighborly tranquility. If she is honest, she will answer none.

For JVP does not accept the idea of a two-state solution, but seeks a unitary state overrun with four generations of Palestinian “refugees” that will obliterate the Jewish character of Israel and fulfill the Palestinians’ professed goal of pushing the Jews into the sea.

How is it possible for someone who is nominally Jewish to pursue such a goal? The same way it was possible for a young George Soros to find absolute elation in helping the Nazis hunt down his fellow Jews for extermination. The same way it was possible for Vidkun Quisling to sell out his country to the Nazis. History is littered with the self-haters whose personal quest for destruction is projected onto their own kind.

Like most proponents of the anti-Israel and antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, Vilkomerson invokes the common false history of its origins that the “non-violent effort began in 2005” by a broad coalition of Palestinian organizations.

The reality is that BDS began in 2001 at an NGO forum held in parallel with the UN’s Durban, South Africa Conference Against Racism.

Why hide the origins of BDS? Because the NGO activists in their denigration of Israel expressed vitriolic and naked antisemitism! The irony of a UN conference attacking racism, while producing a mendacious hatred of its own, was lost on no one, least of all the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, who roundly condemned the NGO activists.

The NGO’s final document vilified Israel as a “racist, apartheid state,” resurrecting the old Soviet libel of Zionism as racism.

BDS is a program of demonization, vilification and delegitimization of Israel, characterizing it as an apartheid state – an accusation belied by a trip to the beach in Tel Aviv, riding an Egged Bus, or walking through the Hadassah Medical Center where Arab and Jewish doctors routinely treat both Arab and Jewish patients.

The purpose of BDS is to deny Israel’s right to exist, to legitimize terror, and to cheer-on the coming of a second Holocaust.

Sound extreme? JVP co-sponsors and participates in symposia and rallies where there is vocal support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose unequivocal intentions to destroy Israel are shamelessly part of their reasons for existence. On campus, JVP partners with Students for Justice in Palestine, a group known for its antisemitism. It routinely deprives pro-Israel and sometimes simply Jewish speakers of their right to speak on campus. It has attempted to prevent Jewish students from running for student senate because they are Jewish. SJP’s anti-Zionist and antisemitic programs have spurred outbreaks of antisemitic incidents that have raised concerns for the safety of Jewish students.

The rank antisemitism of Rebecca Vilkomerson oozes from her essay. Israel’s incursion in Gaza is depicted as part of a continual, nefarious siege, without a simple mention of the more than ten thousand rockets and missiles launched from Gaza that have rained death, trauma, and destruction on Israel’s southern cities. Palestinian terror and illegal arms shipments necessitated the blockade of Gaza and the security barrier on the West Bank, but this is unworthy of her concern.

The random murder of Israeli civilians is justified as a “horrifying symptom of occupation and repression.” In her mind, the Palestinians have a just cause. A just cause legitimizes the murder of civilians. Protecting your children from random death is not legitimate, not if you are a Jew.

Vilkomerson gave several mutual-admiration interviews to American Free Press, a conspiracy-oriented, antisemitic newspaper that traffics in Holocaust denial and publishes in its book selections conspiracy theories ranging from 9/11 Truthers to “Man did not go to the Moon…Paul McCartney was replaced after his death in 1966, and that the official narrative of the Holocaust cannot be sustained.”

In her 2012 AFP interview, Vilkomerson repeated another JVP fiction that MSCI had dropped Caterpillar from its social choice portfolio because of JVP. But the reality is that MSCI dropped Caterpillar because of a lockout during a London, Ontario labor dispute. Here is MSCI’s statement on the issue: “In February 2012, Caterpillar’s ESG rating was downgraded by MSCI ESG Research due to declining ESG performance associated with the management of its Employees & Supply Chain challenges.”

Vilkomerson and the AFP deserve each other. Whether the readers of the WaPo should be exposed to her hatred is another question entirely.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center @salomoncenter. This article was originally published by The Daily Caller.

 

[Archdemon]

So boring...

 

[Signalian]

Israel contributes more to the world than the Pallys would ever..and that means Israel also carries more weight geopolitical than Pallys..and that means it can get away with a lot..nobody want to take side with unproductive hoards!

Israel has been instrumental in many innovations. I was surprised to read that the whole concept behind Predator drone had come from Israel. The creator of Predator was an israeli and jew.

This guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Karem