In an article entitled "Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic?" he observes, inter alia:
'.... BDS assertions that they are condemned simply because they are policy critics distract us from the more complex and troubling ways that the movement enhances anti-Semitic aims....
Arguments that Jews have no ancient connection to the land, that Israelites and Hebrews never existed — positions that some academic BDS advocates promote — also have an anti-Semitic component. The demand that the citizens of Israel give up their right to political self-determination and the unsupportable assertion that the Israeli government is an exceptionally egregious human rights violator are also consciously or unconsciously underwritten by the long-term history of anti-Semitism and the history of efforts to isolate and “other” the Jewish people....
[Addressing the issue of BDS] also requires that we confront the policies vigorously promoted by virtually all of the BDS movement’s major spokespeople, whether or not the movement officially endorses them. These include advocacy by Omar Barghouti and others of a one-state “solution” encompassing Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank in which Jews would become a minority. That demand is typically accompanied by the call for the Palestinian diaspora’s “right of return” to this new state, a plan that would further marginalize the Jewish population....
The confidence with which some BDS advocates assure us Jews could live peacefully and safely and have full religious freedom in an Arab-dominated state is so contradicted by regional history, culture, and politics that one has to consider the possibility that they really do not care about the fate of Israeli Jews.... Equally worrisome are those BDS supporters who ally themselves with Hamas, despite the organization’s ferociously anti-Semitic and genocidal charter. One might well wonder why those in the West who would ordinarily oppose a group that vilifies gays — and has an appalling view of women — would overlook these facts because of Hamas’s stance toward Israeli Jews.
.... Debates about BDS resolutions and petitions often invoke the standard tropes anti-Semitism has deployed, notably that BDS opponents are organized and funded by an international Jewish lobby ... That both NGOs and foreign governments fund BDS activity is rarely mentioned.
.... The fact that a number of Jewish academics support the BDS movement does not absolve anyone of the possibility they harbor an anti-Semitic bias, though the BDS movement likes to say it does.....
.... It justifies its one-state advocacy by demonizing the State of Israel with hyperbolic and irrational accusations.
Meanwhile, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere puts the lie to the confidence that Jews do not need a homeland whose future and right to self-defense they control....'
Meanwhile:
'Civilians in Gaza told me they were suffering because of the Israeli bombings, and they also confirmed that the bombings came because Hamas was fighting from door to door and from one house to another. Also, strangely Hamas is asking people not to leave their homes when they receive text messages from the IDF telling them to do so. In other words, Hamas even went on TV and its websites telling people to never leave their homes. A Gazan journalist told me Hamas would kill and shoot at anyone evacuating their homes and even there was an incident where people who ran towards the Israeli army were shot by Hamas. Hamas wants to make a point on behalf of Qatar and Iran and Jordan, and it has...very well....
I have been speaking to my people here in the West Bank about this [BDS], Israel means jobs and jobs means Israel, the boycott has blown Israeli economy some influence especially that institutions boycotted are mainly Israeli businesses in the West Bank and that resulted in Palestinians losing their jobs. I believe the BDS is not interested at all in my people's welfare or future, and all they want is either get the funding from those who hate Jews, or else how come they are not boycotting Jordan where Palestinian children who make up 88% of the population with the rest of Palestinians are not even allowed healthcare? I was forced to leave Jordan and live in exile and I was sentenced to live in prison by the king, what would have happened if I was sentenced by Israel? All BDS groups would out there condemning Israel. How comes they won't even bother to pay attention to someone like me?....'
So declares Jordanian opposition leader, Mudar Zahran, a Palestinian, in conversation about the Middle East with Sharon Oppenheimer; for the entire interview click here
And for a mere taste of anti-Israel fanaticism see this Scottish Israel-hater's extraordinary proposal (in an exchange with Scottish PSC chief Napier) that Friends of Israel groups should be outlawed in Britain! Things don't come much more totalitarian than that!
We're beyond the point where it's productive to argue whether BDS is or is not founded on Jew hate. In most cases it is. But that's not the issue. The problem is it's wrong. And it's hypocrisy unless those people freely abandon most of the goods and services they THEMSELVES come to define as human rights such at the internet and modern medicine and social welfare, gay rights and a thousand other things. If they're willing to unilaterally unwind their own social clocks a hundred years or more then we can discuss it. But it will have to be face to face so as to avoid all that noxious 'Jewy' stuff they have to boycott. And that to me is fine.
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