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For Israel boycott movement, racial tension is a feature, not a bug

For Israel boycott movement, racial tension is a feature, not a bug

NY Times covers BDS-inspired racial tensions on campus, but misses the big picture.

http://kron4.com/2015/01/19/protesters-block-westbound-lanes-on-san-mateo-bridge/

For years we have been documenting how stirring racial tensions on campus is one of the tactics employed by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The methodology is to tie unrelated movements into the fight against Israel by portraying a common enemy — in their terminology, “white settler colonialism.” Israel and the U.S. are lumped together in that theory, so that whatever goes wrong in the U.S. from a racial standpoint is tied to Israel.  

So problems at the Mexican border are used by BDS groups on campus to bring Mexican-American student groups into the BDS fight; police problems in Ferguson or elsewhere are used in movements such as “Ferguson2Palestine” to blame Israel; the BlackLivesMatters movement is brought into the fight against Israel in the same manner.

Here are some of our prior posts on the subject:

The NY Times focused on these racial tensions in a front-page, below the fold article yesterday, Campus Debates on Israel Drive a Wedge Between Jews and Minorities:

The debates can stretch from dusk to dawn, punctuated by tearful speeches and forceful shouting matches, with accusations of racism, colonialism and anti-Semitism. At dozens of college campuses across the country, student government councils are embracing resolutions calling on their administrations to divest from companies that enable what they see as Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.

And while no university boards or administrators are heeding the students’ demands, the effort to pressure Israel appears to be gaining traction at campuses across the country and driving a wedge between many Jewish and minority students….

College activists favoring divestment have cast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a powerful force’s oppression of a displaced group, and have formed alliances with black, Latino, Asian, Native American, feminist and gay rights organizations on campus. The coalitions — which explicitly link the Palestinian cause to issues like police brutality, immigration and gay rights — have caught many longtime Jewish leaders off guard, particularly because they belonged to such progressive coalitions less than a generation ago.

The Times overstates the problem, to begin with. While we take BDS on campus very, very seriously here because it is such a nasty movement, there is no need to overstate the problem. While The Times portrays a nationwide movement against Israel, it also notes a relatively small number of student government divestment motions:

There are now Israel-related divestment groups at hundreds of major colleges, including the University of Michigan, Princeton, Cornell and most of the University of California campuses. Their proposals are having mixed success: So far this year, students have passed them on seven campuses and rejected them on eight.

Most of those successes were in the U. California system. Elsewhere BDS has not had a lot of success, as the overwhelming rejection at Bowdoin College of a true boycott referendum proves. Those motions that have passed usually are watered down resolutions calling for the university to divest from a small number of companies involved in the Israeli security barrier or construction in the West Bank. Even then, the motions take place in a student forum that has no power to implement anything.

So the record is mixed.

It is true that BDS is stirring up racial tensions, but it’s not a natural occurrence. It’s part of the plan.

BDS should be fought for that reason — it is a malicious ideology that, while relatively small nationwide, serves no good purpose.

[Featured Image: KRON4 Video -Anti-Israel protesters unfurl Palestinian flag on San Mateo Bridge during BlackLivesMatter protest]

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Comments

It’s pure Frankfurt School divide and conquer ideology.

The Collectivists of the Frankfurt School recognized that the normal antagonisms used in Europe…class distinctions mostly…were simply not applicable in America. They needed some other antagonisms or either exploit or simply create out of whole cloth. Race was readily exploitable, but others were simply not in existence, and had to be created via “Critical Theory”. So they were, and are still being.

It’s been so successful that now we have fractional feminists at each others throats, and races fighting each other for ascendancy in who’s the most victimized.

Pure evil, IMNHO.

But there is one unifying concept; the Underpants Gnome Theory Of White Man Bad.

1. white men

2. do something (build a nation, create art, develop philosophy, etc.)

3.

4. racial oppression!

If the attitudes of the kids I know, and the ones I see on Reddit are any indication, BDS is so last-two-years-ago in most places.

Also, the ONLY way BDS can get anything done at all is because it chooses unimportant, overlooked forums as vehicles for ultra vires actions by groups that have no such purpose or authority. When they get caught, the students repudiate them, even in the UC system.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/08/living/feat-uc-irvine-student-council-ban-american-flag/index.html

(Trigger warning: that CNN link contains automatic sound that got by all of my preference settings.)

Finally, this anti-intellectual movement is guided and perpetuated by a select number of parasites that have taken shelter in an over-fed academic system. These individuals have names an should be exposed.

quiksilverz24 | May 11, 2015 at 12:42 pm

Just curious: If I were to step out of my vehicle, trounce on that flag, then set it aflame, what do you think would happen? We already know the reaction to burning an American flag…

Whoa, this is so cute! Were those “wonderful” people using “Jazz Hands” or a variation of twinkle fingers?

10-years from now, I bet their collective resumes will be something to behold!

./sarc off

What a bunch of idiots and to realize they could even vote!

While I abhor identity politics labels for obvious reasons, the article’s headline is puzzling in the obvious fallacy that it promotes. If ever there was a minority group, a religion that has roughly fourteen million adherents globally would seem to count as one. I guess the Times thinks that Jews in the U.S. are too white and “privileged” to retain minority status.

They still hope to exploit the “apartheid” angle; but, will Hamas ever produce a charismatic leader?