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BDS Tag

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.

The false claim that Israel is an 'apartheid' state underpins the intellectual foundations of the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement. The smear actually originated in anti-Zionist campaigns that were initiated by Communist states during the Cold War. Since the 2001 UN conference in Durban, which launched the BDS movement, the comparison of Israel with racist apartheid-era South Africa has also been a key leitmotif of anti-Israel activists.

One of the most important developments in the academic boycott of Israel took place a couple of weeks ago. A professor at the University of Michigan, John Cheney-Lippold, agreed to write a recommendation letter for a student, Abigail Engber, but later refused when he found out the letter would be used for the student to apply to a study abroad program in Israel.

The virulently anti-Jewish and anti-peace extremist organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has partnered with the organization Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA) on several new projects for its undeniably antisemiticDeadly Exchange” campaign which, based solely on spurious accusations, singles out U.S. police department trainings in Israel for prohibition.

The Algemeiner "was founded in 1972 by famed journalist Gershon Jacobson as Der Algemeiner Journal and was originally published in Yiddish." It's now one of a core of "Jewish" publications, but unlike some leftist publications like The Forward, it's more moderate in its politics. We often link to Israel and BDS-related stories that run in The Algemeiner. In that regard, there's an overlap with our coverage of those issues.

A Washington D.C. chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is spearheading a coalition of far-left groups who are calling on the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to end its participation in police exchanges and counter-terrorism training visits to Israel. The effort follows on a decision this past April by the Durham, North Carolina City Council to impose a total ban on police exchanges “with only one country in the world: the Jewish state of Israel.”

For many years we’ve been documenting anti-Israel activity on U.S. university and college campuses, typically part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and carried out by student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. In these prior posts we’ve described many instances when this Israel-related activism has crossed over the line into blatant anti-Jewish animus, including at schools as diverse as Vassar, Oberlin, and University of Illinois.