“Behind the Mask” — Israeli Report On How the BDS Movement “Desensitizing West to Antisemitism”

“Behind the Mask” — Israeli Report On How the BDS Movement “Desensitizing West to Antisemitism”

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has released a report exposing the antisemitic agenda being the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). The anti-Israel boycott campaign now direct “classic antisemitic tropes and motifs once directed at “the Jew” at “the Jew among the nations,” the State of Israel,” the reported said.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan released the report titled Behind The Mask: The Anti-Semitic Nature of BDS Exposed at the European Parliament building in Brussels. The minister urged the European Union and Western governments to stop funding organizations promoting the antisemitic BDS movement.

“The aim of this report is to unmask the BDS movement’s antisemitism, demonstrating how it uses antisemitic tropes to advance its practice of stigmatizing and demonizing Israel, with the long-term goal of bringing about the end to Israel as a Jewish state,” Erdan said. “We have proven beyond a doubt that BDS is an anti-Semitic campaign led by supporters of terror with one purpose: the elimination of the Jewish state,” he added.

U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism Elan Carr joined the Israeli minister at the press conference to launch the report. “I am here to express the United States’ position that this is Antisemitism, and we stand unequivocally with the State of Israel in combating this scourge,” Carr said.

Today the Ministry of Strategic Affairs released “Behind the Mask”. This is a new report that reveals the antisemitism, classic and new, embedded in the BDS Campaign.

Today we tear off the mask. #UnmaskBDShttps://t.co/oQOpJWFpaY pic.twitter.com/aVKlI9lD4A

— 4IL (@4ILorg) September 25, 2019

According to the report, the BDS movement is a driving force behind the surging Antisemitism in the West. “The BDS movement’s relentless attacks on the State of Israel invariably contribute to the overall global surge in antisemitism,” the reported said, adding that the campaign has “helped make antisemitic rhetoric focused on Israel acceptable” and “succeeded in desensitizing the West to antisemitism.” The 94-page document cited several examples of BDS branches using antisemitic content to promote their anti-Israel campaign.

Here are some key takeaway points from the report (download the full PDF report here):

The BDS National Committee (BNC) based in Ramallah, serves as the headquarters and mastermind of the international BDS movement, setting the agenda, campaigns and the overall tone of the discourse worldwide relating to the boycott and the delegitimization of Israel. The BNC has a strong online presence, under the umbrella website bdsmovement.net, as well as representatives in key countries worldwide, thus creating a unified strategy and messaging for an otherwise loosely-knit network of organizations that promote BDS globally. (…)

“Under the guise of advancing Palestinian human and civil rights, the BDS National Committee orchestrates an ongoing delegitimization campaign, harnessing civil society against the Jewish State. The BDS movement found fertile ground in the anti-Zionist sentiment that long existed in certain parts of academia, among progressive social justice groups, and among international organizations and multinational institutions.” (…)

The BDS movement helped make antisemitic rhetoric focused on Israel acceptable, and thus succeeded in desensitizing the West to antisemitism when it appears in an anti-Israel context. (…)

The BDS movement draws on the most sinister of antisemitic tropes, including the blood libel, in which Jews were accused of murdering Christian children and using their blood for religious rituals; the poisoning of water sources, based on the accusation that Jews in the Middle Ages poisoned water wells bringing about the Black Plague; and Jews being responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. (…)

[The BDS tactic of] blaming the Jewish citizens of the Jewish State for actions similar to those committed against the Jews by Nazis during the Holocaust, serves to undermine and deny Israel’s moral legitimacy. With the Nazi as the contemporary metaphor for ultimate evil, comparing the Jews or the Jewish State to Nazi Germany is the ultimate form of demonization. (…)

The BDS movement consistently demonizes and delegitimizes Israel and holds no other nation to a similar standard. Its leadership denies the right of Jewish self-determination within any borders, denies any Jewish historical or religious connection to the Jewish homeland, and seeks to create a climate ripe for the dissolution of the Jewish State. In a word, the BDS meets the antisemitism test.

The report also highlighted the ties between the BDS network and Palestinian-Islamic terrorist organizations. “The BDS National Committee is made up of a coalition of 28 Palestinian organizations; the first listed constituent of this coalition is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine,6 also known as the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces (PNIF), which includes US and European Union-designated terrorist organizations, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamic Jihad,” the reported said.

The report urged other European countries “to follow the lead of the German parliament” and “expose the connection
between the BDS movement and antisemitism.”

The reported lauded the German parliament for passing a bill barring the BDS Movement from getting state funding in May 2019. Germany’s Bundestag overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning the BDS as antisemitic.

The Bundestag resolution described the boycott campaign as “a stigmatization of Israeli citizens and citizens of Jewish faith as a whole. This is unacceptable and must be most strongly condemned.” The bill equates “Don’t Buy” stickers used by the BDS Movement to deface Israeli products on market shelves in Germany to the “Kauft nicht bei Juden” (Don’t buy from Jews) slogan used by the Nazis in the run-up to the Holocaust.

The U.S. Congress has also passed a similar resolution. In July 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution rejecting “efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel.” The bipartisan bill was passed 398 to 17.

In recent years, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs published a series of documents shining a light on extensive links between designated terrorist organizations, especially Hamas and PFLP, and some of the leading figures behind the BDS movement. The BDS network connects Palestinian terrorist organization to Left-wing groups in the West.

The BDS agitators posing as “human rights activists” have successfully managed to infiltrate academic faculties and college campuses across the U.S. and Europe. The campaign “has found fertile ground in the anti-Zionist sentiment that existed in some parts of the academy and among international organizations and multinational institutions,” the report said.

Western governments play a huge role in financing this antisemitic hate. “The German federal government provides millions of euros to political advocacy NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, through a variety of frameworks,” a 2018 report by the watchdog group NGO Monitor showed. “The European Union (EU) is the largest governmental funder for NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including some of the most radical and politicized groups,” the NGO watchdog said.

If the EU and Western governments are serious about combating the growing Antisemitism in their midst, they need to stop funding the BDS promoting groups. Anything less is merely empty posturing.

[Cover image via YouTube]

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.