NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio: Stop BDS hijacking progressive movement

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio: Stop BDS hijacking progressive movement

The hijacking of progressive causes by the anti-Israel boycott movement is a frequent focus of mine, as I laid out (for the umpteenth time) recently, BDS is a Settler Colonial Ideology:

BDS itself has become a settler colonial ideology, which imposes itself on other peoples and other struggles, conquers, and subjugates the goals of others, particularly people of color, to the anti-Israel agenda.

Jewish Insider reports, Bill de Blasio Challenges Progressives to Oppose BDS:

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has a message to his fellow progressives: rejecting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a progressive cause.

“There are plenty of people who support BDS who have advanced degrees and who call themselves progressives. I look forward to challenging them because it’s ahistorical,” De Blasio, a prominent progressive leader, told congregants in an address after Shabbat morning services at the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, New York on Saturday. “I think it’s one of the most ahistorical things I’ve ever seen.”

Taking pride in serving as mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, de Blasio said that defending Israel as a progressive “is a matter of being consistent with progressive values” and “an understanding that we must always learn the painful lessons of history and do something about it.”

According to the mayor, the BDS movement “seeks to undermine the economy of the State of Israel and makes it harder for Israel to exist – therefore, renouncing the very notion that the Jewish people need a homeland in a still dangerous and unsettled world.”

“We in the United States, or in any nation, you can disagree with a particular government’s policy at that moment in time, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t believe in that nation, or its right to exist, or its founding ideals,” de Blasio asserted. “Israel, in good times and bad, tough times and easier times, has been a beacon. The ideas running through this still young nation, the nation that actually sought to be a beacon to the world. And then did so many good works, including this very day where there are disasters around the world Israel is one of the first to be there in defense of those in need, regardless of their background regardless of [faith].”

Guess who’s upset? The leader of the excorable Jewish Voice for Peace, which isn’t Jewish and isn’t for Peace.

I'm quoted in this story about DeBlasio's terrible speech defending Israel against BDS. #ProgressiveExceptPalestine https://t.co/55tbeBCjiz

— Rebecca Vilkomerson (@RVilkomerson) August 24, 2016

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