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BDS Tag

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.

Students for Justice in Palestine brought a thoroughly misleading and false resolution divesting from certain companies doing business in Israel before the Cornell University Undergraduate Student Assembly. The President of Cornell previously rejected the SJP divestment request. So the vote in front of the Student Assembly would have been merely symbolic.

House Republicans attempted to add pro-Israel and anti-BDS language into an unrelated resolution on Thursday. The resolution "aimed to end U.S. participation in Yemen’s civil war," which has caused a humanitarian crisis, "where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have sought to overthrow the country’s government, prompting a Saudi bombing campaign that has lasted nearly four years." It passed 247 to 175, but the pro-Israel amendment failed to make it in with a vote of 228-194.

After years of hostility to Jews and their pro-Israel views at California State University and San Francisco State University, a lawsuit was brought against the board of trustees, faculty, and even the President of the University. SFSU had been a particular thorn in the side of their Jewish students, more so than other universities around the country. They are rated within the Algemeiner's  list of campuses that are the "worst" for Jewish students.

Last week, Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs hosted a three-day conference, called DigiTell19, aimed at combating the anti-Semitic boycott campaign, or BDS Movement, hosting around 90 pro-Israel social media activists and bloggers from around the world. I had the privilege of representing my grassroots group, Indians For Israel, at the event in Israel.

The Senate passed a bill that denounces the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement 77-23 on Tuesday. The bill "allows state and local governments to boycott companies that boycott the country of Israel." The bill also contains a resolution that opposes President Donald Trump's vow to withdraw American soldiers from Syria and Afghanistan.

In December 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) became the first, and so far the only, major American academic association to adopt the academic boycott of Israel, part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). As I have documented, the BDS movement is a continuation of the anti-Jewish boycotts of the 1920s and 1930s in the then British Mandate for Palestine, the Arab League boycott of Jewish businesses (even prior to Israel's independence) and later of Israel, and the gross antisemitic activism at the 2001 Tehran and Durban conferences which launched boycotts in the current form.