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BDS Tag

The recent interaction in DC between high school students (one in particular) and an older activist who is Native American reminded me of a warning I once received from a colleague as to how I needed to prepare myself if I ever was in a hostile crowd or confronted. A classic leftist/occupy activist tactic, I was warned, was to confront a target and immediately start screaming that the target was being aggressive even though that was not true.

Last week Durham, North Carolina’s Human Relations Commission (HRC) disappointed the vast majority of the city’s Jewish community by rejecting a draft proposal that had urged city officials to remove reference to Israel from their April 2018 ‘Statement by Durham City Council on International Police Exchanges’. At issue was the statement that passed unanimously on April 16t, 2018, by Durham’s City Council and which imposed a total ban on any and all law enforcement trainings with only one country in the world: Israel.

Rashida Tlaib is a new Palestinian-American congresswoman from the Detroit area. She's also an Israel hater and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is a modern version of the anti-Jewish boycotts dating back at least to the 1920s in the then British Mandate for Palestine. (See my lecture, The Real History of the BDS Movement.)

Two professional associations of police leaders and chief law enforcement officers in Georgia have condemned the virulently anti-Israel and undeniably antisemiticDeadly Exchange” campaign. That campaign, led by 'Jewish Voice for Peace', falsely blames Israel and American Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for U.S. domestic police practices and problems in minority communities.

Every year, at Christmas, Palestinian officials, activists, and a host of virulently anti-Israel groups exploit the holiday season for political purposes. As we’ve documented in several prior posts, for years Christmas holiday themes, symbols, and rituals have been continuously appropriated and put into service for anti-Israel propaganda:

When Airbnb announced in mid-November 2018 that it would delist Jewish homes in Judea & Samaria (the "West Bank"), the move met with cheers from anti-Israel activists, who had worked for years to pressure Airbnb. The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (fka U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation) is an umbrella group for numerous anti-Israel activists and groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. USCPR is one of the most extreme anti-Israel groups, as we have documented numerous times.

In recent posts we have discussed how anti-Israel faculty at some universities and colleges have gone rogue. Knowing that their institutions reject the academic boycott of Israel, these faculty members impose the boycott on students to deprive students of educational opportunities to study on approved programs in Israel.

That dog whistles are now a hot topic of discussion is easily the dumbest thing about 2018. When CNN fired Marc Lamont Hill over his speech at the UN where he talked of freeing Palestine from river to the sea, it was said that the expression in question was a dog whistle.

Anti-Israel activists thrive in darkness. On campuses and municipalities, they spend months and sometimes years planning attacks on Israel that are often unveiled only at the last second, leaving Israel advocates scrambling. That is unfolding with a vile antisemitic campaign called "Deadly Exchange," which seeks to blame Israel and American Jewish groups for domestic U.S. problems in the policing of minority communities. Run by the misleadingly named Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Deadly Exchange seeks to exploit pre-existing domestic racial tensions to stoke antisemitism in order to turn minority communities against Israel.

In December 2013, the American Studies Associations passed an academic boycott of Israel, part of the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The ASA boycott, which is the subject of ongoing litigation, was undertaken by anti-Israel faculty who methodically took over key ASA committees and National Council. Though only about 20% of the ASA membership voted for the boycott, that was enough given low participation rates in the voting.

CNN fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill after he pushed people to boycott Israel in a speech at the United Nations meeting of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. From Mediaite:
“Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN,” a CNN spokesperson told Mediaite. Hill urged countries to boycott Israel in a speech on Wednesday, calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” His comments sparked an immediate backlash, with many noting “from the river to the sea” is a phrase used by Hamas and other anti-Israel terror groups. The phrase implies the replacement of Israel by a Palestine stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — though Hill disputes this characterization of his comments.

Airbnb has been under a sustained pressure campaign by anti-Israeli activist groups to cease listing homes and apartments for rent in Israeli Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"). The area was ethnically cleansed of Jews by the Jordanians after Jordan captured the area in Israel's War of Independence. The 1949 Armistice Line was where the fighting stopped, and left many historically Jewish areas, including the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, in Jordanian hands. Israel recaptured the area in 1967.

In a highly unusual ruling, one of Israel’s chief rabbis has allowed a Palestinian Arab man to be buried in a special plot, reserved for those without religious faith, in the Jewish Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem. At issue is the decision of Aryeh Stern, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, to enable the West Bank-based family of Ala’a Qarash (also spelled Alah Kirsh) to bury him at the Jewish cemetery as an “exception” because the “Muslims themselves are unwilling to bury him” and he was a “righteous gentile” who “showed good will” to Jews.

Founded three years ago, Canary Mission is an anonymous organization that documents and exposes antisemitism and anti-Israel animus on America’s colleges and universities. By compiling online dossiers and a searchable database of the activities and the publicly-available statements and social media postings of anti-Israel activists, Canary Mission exposes the vitriolic rantings of people affiliated with the anti-Israel BDS movement, particularly on campuses.