Image 01 Image 03

American Friends Service Committee runs anti-Israel BDS hate camp

American Friends Service Committee runs anti-Israel BDS hate camp

These Friends are not friends of Israel or justice in the Middle East.

Earlier this summer the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) held a BDS camp. The BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement, which we have covered extensively, targets Israel.

AFSC BDS

These groups claim only to seek an end to the “occupation” of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. That territory, as we’ve covered here many times, is not illegally occupied.

AFSC has a long history of demonizing Israel and seeking to delegitimize Israel under the seemingly benign Quaker movement name. AFSC is one of the most active BDS supporters, providing support for BDS groups on and off campus:

AFSC BDS Handout

AFSC seeks the de facto destruction of Israel as a Jewish state by pushing for a “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees, based on the false claim that such right of return is required under U.N. Resolution 194. In fact, as readers know, there were as many Jewish refugees from Arab countries as the other way around.

There’s a very telling remark at the end of Philadelphia Jewish Exponent’s Philly-Based Quaker Group Criticized For BDS Camp:

Alexis Moore, an AFSC spokeswoman, said her group rejects “the idea that BDS is anti-Semitic. We are not targeting a country.” Instead, it is targeting specific companies like Israeli-owned Sodastream, that has its home fountain soda maker factory on the West Bank. “We see nothing anti-Semitic in the use of these non-violent tactics. Our work is rooted in human rights and equal justice for everyone.”

By mentioning SodaStream she gives away her game.

You see, SodaStream is a prime example of coexistence. Palestinian workers there make good salaries and have room for advancement. If there was a place in the Middle East that demonstrated “equal justice,” SodaStream would be an excellent example of that.

On the other side, Mahmoud Abbas recently said, ahead of the John Kerry sponsored peace-talks, that there would be no Jews allowed in a future Palestine. That call for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank and East Jerusalem (which would include the historic and ancient Jewish Quarter and The Western Wall) is typical of anti-Semitic agitation against Israel in Palestinian media.

In Gaza, the dwindling Christian population finds itself under ever increasing pressure to convert or leave.

So if there was one government in the Middle East that stood for “human rights and equal justice,” it would be Israel. That Israel is targeted by BDS instead of Fatah and Hamas despite their blatant violations of basic human rights shows the true intent of the organization.


The AFSC’s accomplices in running this camp is JVP, whom we’ve discussed previously. JVP claims to be adhering to Jewish tradition as a justification for their anti-Israel activities, even though there’s nothing Jewish about the organization save for its membership list.

The cost of this camp was only $100 for five days so clearly, it was highly subsidized. So the next question is whose agenda are the AFSC and JVP promoting (aside from their own)? Though JVP is opaque when it comes to its funding, FresnoZionism offered some speculation a few years ago.

Yitzchak Santis of NGO-Monitor, identified a few funders:

In sharp contrast, JVP’s funding sources are non-transparent. Its website carries no information on its donors. There are no annual reports or other financial data. Limited financial information is available through public IRS documents and other databases. NGO Monitor has found that JVP’s budget in 2011 (the last year such information was available) was nearly $900,000. JVP has received funding from the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust (an Arab-American foundation that also supports the virulently anti-Israel Electronic Intifada), the Firedoll Foundation, and the Wallace Global Fund, which all contribute to numerous anti-Israel groups.

Despite the protests of the AFSC that they are not antisemitic, Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon citing the Simon Wiesenthal Center, succinctly explained the problems of the BDS movement.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center report said the BDS program meets Natan Sharansky’s “three D’s” test for anti-Semitism: It follows “double-standards” by criticizing Israel while overlooking human rights abuses across the Arab world; “demonizes” Israel by comparing its actions to those of Apartheid regimes; and attempts to “delegitimize” the Jewish state by targeting its existence.

They are not seeking to correct injustice, but to perpetrate a new one.

Meanwhile as anti-Israel groups in North American engage in a political war, training the next generation of activists to delegitimize Israel on campuses across the United States, terror groups in the Middle East have set up their own training camps. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas teach children military tactics in their summer camps. The UNRWA teaches its campers that Israel has no right to exist.

No word if AFSC or JVP objects to this anti-human rights and anti-equal justice indoctrination.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

Why do so many American Jews hate Israel? Because regardless of what they say – this is case of hating Israel. It is not about justice for Palistine.

    mzk in reply to Musson. | August 19, 2013 at 12:31 pm

    Please note that Friends refers to the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. The AFSC pioneered in hating Israel. (Don’t the Obama kids go to Friends’ School?)

… and here I thought BDS was Bush Derangement Syndrome

    NeoConScum in reply to Neo. | August 18, 2013 at 5:31 pm

    I did too. It’s been hijacked by these(cough)peace louts.
    May they eat that which they so richly deserve.

So AFSC pushes for a “right of return” for Arabs. How about a right of return for the Sudeten Germans who the Allies forcibly removed from their homeland of 400 years after WWII? The Benes decrees confiscated all their real and personal property. In fact all over Europe ethnic Germans (not Reich Germans) were uprooted from their homes, put into boxcars and taken to Germany, some 16 million. Two million died, mostly women and children from this massive forced transfer. Do they have a right of return too? None of this is secret, and has been a big issue in Europe, and is all well documented. Naturally our schools in the U.S. don’t cover this part of the history of WWII. In contrast some 600,000 Arabs left Israel circa 1948. Some revisionist historians claim the Arabs were forced out, but they are a minority. Most left with the intention of returning after Israel was vanquished. A similar number of Jews were forced to leave Iraq and other Middle East counties.

Thus AFSC has one standard for Israel and one standard for the Arabs, Europeans and Americans. So don’t give me this right of return. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Going nowhere ….

General El Sisi, though, has shown the world how to respond to American lunatics. Refused to take obummer’s call.

Best answer, yet.

Or, Raijin, eastern Poles…Volga Germans…Hindus from Pakistan and Muslims from India…Cypriot Greeks on the Turkish side…and for that matter, Jewish refugees from Arab countries? Coincidentally, that number roughly equates to the number of Arabs who left Israel for whatever reason.

I’ve followed AFSC for a while on this. Oh, they’re pacifist and non-violent. When Israel responds to several thousand missiles by Cast Lead, the AFSC is first to criticize that.

When Jews are blown up, however, well, they don’t condone it but they…understand. We have to discover what fears and anger could drive people to do such things.

Jew-haters. I don’t care what they say. It’s like Bishop Tutu said, “The Jews are a particular people and cannot expect to be judged by the standards applied to other people.”

    raijin in reply to Alex Bensky. | August 18, 2013 at 6:01 pm

    There’s a shelf full of books on the expellations, but until last year, most or all of them were foreign publications, although many in English. Then last year Yale University Press published “Orderly and Humane: “The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War” by an American professor at Colgate University. He’s originally from Ireland. This book while it only scratches the surface has a lot of detail. As an American, I feel terrible about what my government (along with France, Britain and Russia) did to millions of innocent people. You can listen to an interview with Douglas on the podcast channel “New Books in History.” The book is also reviewed all over the place. Buying the book is a good idea too if one is interested in the history of the post WWII occupation, and how no one’s hand’s are clean.

    Although Jewish, I quote Jesus, from John 8:7, (KJ21) So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

    BTW a lot of European Jews were caught up in the expellations too and had to suffer yet again.

    raijin in reply to Alex Bensky. | August 19, 2013 at 1:36 am

    Ah yes the Bishop. A man named for his IQ.

    You know this is not new. The AFSC (Friends = Quakers) have been anti-Israel before it was fashionable.

    Don’t Obama’s kids go to Friends’ School?

How far up their fecal canals do they have to search to come up with the utter absence of critical thinking which these views require? What an OUTRAGE.

So, Golda’s message is still unheard!

Her message, as I understood it, was that until the Palestinians loved their kids more than they hated Jews, there would be no peace!

It really does take two sides to make a peace and so far, only Israel has shown any willingness to do so.

I hope the IDF remains strong because it’ll be needed to exert more to defend Israel in the near future. I only wish that our USA would be a true friend to Israel, but our current American government is not such a friend.

BannedbytheGuardian | August 18, 2013 at 6:50 pm

I hate Quakers.

I hate camps .

Hello mother hello father …..

Their selective indignation destroys any credibility they may have otherwise enjoyed.

TIAA-CREF had better NOT cave to these people. I’ll be watching them closely.

A leftist, fascist indoctrination camp, nothing less, and nothing more.

Our wonderful First Amendment. Even when I was young I saw it! By letting people say anything they want you’re actually ensuring freedom. If you want to curtail it. Then you put laws into place that frighten people into not speaking.

Thomas Jefferson said he knew our newspapers were free, because when he read stuff in them it made him want to throw up.

As to saying negative things about Israel … It’s on par with the territory. There’s more freedom there than you think. And, most people have an aversion to the lunatics who hate Jews … than to anything else.

I was once having a fright with my mother. We were yelling back and forth. (In front of a boyfriend I really liked.) I thought I got off some good shots. But afterward he told me I’d have been better off not to say anything. Because then I would have gotten sympathy.

Instead, I went for the laugh.

But ya know what? Even lawyers have to learn this. Freedom of speech is wonderful … because in an argument you can win if you just let your opponent mouth off.

Staying calm. And, carrying on.

Golda Meir also said that what the world wants is “a fine, liberal, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, dead Jewish people.”

These idiots whine about Israel defending itself but give a pass to the Palestinians who murder innocent children. The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a pal of Hitler and called on Arabs to kill allthe Jews, a theme that Hamas and Hezbollah continue to this day.

There is a concept in law where when one commits a felony where someone dies, even if it is one of the perpetrators of the crime at the hands of one of the victims, the perpetrators are guilty of murder. By the same token these yahoos at AFSC are guilty of murder since they condone and abet murderers.