BDS | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 18
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BDS Tag

Germany's leading national student associations have joined forces to fight the anti-Israel boycott movement—Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)—on college campuses. Perhaps the first academic initiative of its kind in Europe, the alliance comprises student groups from across the political spectrum.

When a coalition of student groups at Cornell University, led by Students for Justice in Palestine, recently tried to pass a divestment resolution against certain companies doing business in Israel, a couple of interesting things happened. First, as is now a common tactic, the dispute was racialized to portray it as a coalition of "students of color" against the white supremacist (Jewish) Israelis.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs just released an electronic "book," documenting the ties between the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and Palestinian terror groups. The book, written by  Dan Diker and Adam Shay lays out the connection between Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)—effectively the clearinghouse in the United States for all BDS activity—and BDS National Committee (BNC), based in the West Bank, and comprised of members groups that have been designated as terrorist groups by the U.S.

In the first part of my documentation of the bias of Human Rights Watch, I focused on HRW’s “Israel and Palestine Country Director” Omar Shakir. I demonstrated that, given his long record of anti-Israel activism, it is laughable for HRW to insist that Shakir would be able or even willing to impartially monitor Israel’s human rights record.

In a devastating blow to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Germany's parliament has passed a resolution condemning BDS as antisemitic. The resolution titled "Stand Resolutely Against the BDS Movement: Combat Antisemitism" calls for cutting state funding to organizations supporting anti-Israel boycott. The motion is first of its kind adopted by any European country.

Israel has refused to renew a visa for Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch (HRW) to remain in Israel as a human rights worker, based on his long history of anti-Israel activism. This has caused a storm of controversy and lawsuits, leading to the fair question: Is Shakir entitled to a work visa to promote human rights if what he really is promoting is anti-Israel activism and the destruction of Israel? Not surprisingly, the international media has taken Shakir's side.

In an exclusive report this week, Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which is tasked with fighting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to isolate Israel internationally, revealed that the BDS movement has deployed hundreds of bots to promote a campaign to boycott this year's Eurovision Song Contest, which is slated to be held in Tel Aviv later this month.

A fierce backlash was perhaps all but inevitable when a recently published special issue of the academic journal Israel Studies provided a powerful counterpoint to the incessant delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state. Under the title “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” the volume (co-edited by Legal Insurrection contributor Professor Miriam Elman) examines the “academic jargon draped in scholarly prestige” that is used to imply “that Israel’s founding in 1948 is not settled history” but rather a “historical wrong” that can and should be righted according to Palestinian demands.

It's not like we haven't been warning about this for the ten-plus years Legal Insurrection has been in existence. We have. In posts too numerous to link, we have warned that the anti-Israel movement, including anti-Zionist and far left-wing Jews, has been so relentlessly demonizing and dehumanizing Israel that they were normalizing antisemitism.

Germany's center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) has introduced a bill to end government support for anti-Israel BDS Movement. The proposed legislation seeks a ban on state funding to organizations involved in boycott and delegitimization campaign against Israel. Germany—directly as well as thorough European Union institutions—hands out millions of euros each year to activists and NGOs that run the anti-Israel boycott campaign.

Last month, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill held a conference on its campus called “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities." According to its website, it:
...will shed much needed light on the current realities in the Gaza Strip, giving participants a deeper understanding of the context of these realities and offering concrete options that can better the lives of Gazans. The conference also highlights Gazan culture–music, films, food, and art–to showcase the beauty that goes along with the challenges of life in the Gaza Strip.