"The Core Agenda of the BDS Movement is anti-Semitic": Aussie Jewish Leftist Philip Mendes nails it

Australian academic Philip Mendes, an associate professor at Monash University in Melbourne,  is decidedly not a man of the Right.  But he does not share the often treacherous attitude of some Jewish Leftists towards Israel.  He is, indeed, an expert on the Jewish Left in Australia, having published widely on that topic. Sometimes he has to suffer the slings and arrows of critics on both the Left and the Right of the Jewish community.  Nevertheless, he will not be intimidated and is always true to himself.

And now, on the website of the ABC (Australia's equivalent of the BBC, and just as left-liberal in its inclinations) Philip Mendes delivers a nicely argued attack on the BDS Movement and its advocates, chiefly its Aussie mainstays.

He writes:

"The international BDS movement has always targeted, not just the Jewish population of the state of Israel, but also Jews worldwide who support the continued existence of Israel (whatever their political views on conflict resolution) as the political enemy. And yet the movement is highly sensitive to charges of anti-Semitism...."

Then, having itemised a number of dodgy statements from leading BDSers that smack of antisemitism, he concludes:

"These examples of overt bigotry are bad enough. But even if most BDS advocates identify as opponents of racism, the fact remains that the core agenda of the BDS movement is anti-Semitic. The movement does not seek Israeli/Palestinian peace and reconciliation and/or the enhancement of Palestinian national and human rights by means of a two-state solution. Rather, it seeks to eliminate the existing Jewish State of Israel, and replace it with a new national state dominated by an Arab majority which I have called elsewhere a "Greater Palestine."

This means that the approximately 6.066 million Jews living in Israel, who currently constitute 75.1% of that country, would be completely disenfranchised as a national collective. That is, a country created as a refuge for European Jews who fled or survived Nazi genocide and Middle Eastern Jews who were ethnically cleansed en masse from the Arab world would suddenly cease to exist. At best, many Israeli Jews might become refugees joining the long queue to seek asylum all over the globe. At worst, they could suffer mass violence and genocide. But, according to the BDS movement, these outcomes would advance human rights rather than anti-Jewish racism.'  [Emphasis added]

Read the entire article here