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BDS Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 31, 2017 18 Comments
It's not like I told you so. But I told you so. Many, many times. To those in the U.S. academic community who support the academic boycott of Israeli academics because they don't like the policies of the Israeli government, I warned that they better prepare for the day when foreign academics start to boycott them for the actions of the U.S. government. That day has arrived sooner than I thought. Though the boycott of U.S. academics being mounted is much less severe than the boycott sought against Israel, it's a boycott nonetheless.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2017 8 Comments
I was going to write something profound and deep tonight about the takedown of Legal Insurrection's YouTube account after the Modern Language Association filed three (3) copyright claims with YouTube relating to my coverage of the arguments made at an MLA annual meeting town hall in favor and against the academic boycott of Israel. *Perhaps* it was total *coincidence* that three (3) claims were filed considering that YouTube has a well-known three strikes rule -- three claims and they may remove your channel and account. Which is what happened even before I knew there was a copyright claim by MLA (it never contacted us). *Eventually* we'll find out *why* three (3) claims were filed. I sure hope people are not deleting emails, that would look really bad.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 12, 2017 126 Comments
UPDATE: As of approximately 7:30 p.m. on January 13, 2017, our YouTube Channel was restored, though there are still legal battles to come over the videos. ------------- YouTube took down Legal Insurrection's Channel without any prior notice based on "multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement," but we never received any claims of infringement. We have lost hundreds of videos, including a lot of original content on important news subjects. You now will see disabled videos in hundreds of our posts. I have no idea what the supposedly offending videos are. We are pretty careful when it comes to copyright, so I'm suspecting that someone about whom we posted a video made the claims. We've filed the appeal forms, but if anyone has a contact at YouTube, I'd appreciate the help. Please email me.

Posted by MLA17 Attendee on January 08, 2017 5 Comments
As reported extensively on this site, the Modern Language Association held its annual convention this weekend in Philadelphia. At the meeting a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions was defeated and a resolution opposing academic boycotts was passed and is now before the general membership. For coverage see here and here. I am an MLA member, and I was there. Unfortunately, for professional reasons, I am not able to write under my own name. Such is the nature of the BDS academic boycott. The under-the-radar boycott is for real, even as pro-BDS faculty push for a formal boycott such at that attempted at MLA. Here's what I observed, and what I think the implications are for the academic boycott movement - and the opposition.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 04, 2017 3 Comments
We previously covered, in exhaustive detail, the upcoming vote on Saturday, January 7, on three resolutions at the Modern Language Association:
The Modern Language Association is at it again: at this year’s annual MLA meeting in Philadelphia, academic boycotts of Israel are on the agenda. Thus continues the Settler Colonial attempt by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) to hijack American faculty organizations. The 24,000 member organization, comprised of faculty in the fields English and other non-classical foreign languages, will be debating (again) whether to boycott their colleagues in Israel, and would extend to the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

Posted by Miriam Elman on January 01, 2017 8 Comments
Despite its name, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) isn’t Jewish or for peace. It’s a radical group that provides cover to the anti-Israel movement, particularly on campuses, by legitimizing and mainstreaming its assault on Jewish identity. As we’ve noted in prior posts, JVP usurps various Jewish celebrations, religious holidays, and commemorative life-cycle events by incorporating within them virulently anti-Israel themes and reinforcing that this Israel-bashing is consistent with Jewish values. Last year, as we highlighted in our posts, this identity theft of Jewish heritage was particularly visible during Passover and the High Holidays. Now, JVP is hijacking Chanukah (also spelled "Hanukkah") too.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2016 9 Comments
In all the fury over the anti-Israel UN Resolution 2334 the Obama administration marshalled through the Security Council, with an "abstain" vote providing cover for the perfidy, few people have focused on a particularly pernicious and dangerous provision. I'm not talking about the provisions effectively declaring it illegal for Jews to live in Jewish Quarter of the Old City or to worship at the Western Wall. Here is the provision I'm talking about in Resolution 2334 (pdf.):

Posted by Miriam Elman on December 22, 2016 8 Comments
In a number of recent posts (see here, here, here, and here) we’ve highlighted how anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) is being promoted in America’s mainline churches. As we discussed, a malicious strain of virulent anti-Israel sentiment is being inserted into U.S. Protestant denominations largely because of a deep-seated organizational dysfunction in these churches. Basically, the churches are being hijacked from within by small groups of pro-BDS activists. They’ve led the charge, aided and abetted by a host of vehemently anti-Israel Palestinian groups, who they frequently promote and with whom they collaborate.

Posted by Occam's Razor on December 22, 2016 3 Comments
The Modern Language Association is at it again: at this year’s annual MLA meeting in Philadelphia, academic boycotts of Israel are on the agenda. Thus continues the Settler Colonial attempt by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) to hijack American faculty organizations. The 24,000 member organization, comprised of faculty in the fields English and other non-classical foreign languages, will be debating (again) whether to boycott their colleagues in Israel, and would extend to the Academy of the Hebrew Language. The vote on January 7th involves the 297 members of the Delegate Assembly.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2016 1 Comment
On December 4, 2016, I was a speaker at a national conference sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), held at Harvard Law School. The conference was co-hosted by HLS Alliance for Israel, and was titled "War By Other Means - BDS, Israel and the Campus." My presentation was on the history of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. While I have written hundreds of posts about the BDS movement, including its history, this presentation gave me an opportunity to pull it all together in one place, and to do more research to obtain documentation. BDS is a direct and provable continuation of the Arab anti-Jewish boycotts in the 1920s and 1930s and subsequent Arab League Boycott, restructured through non-governmental entities to evade U.S. anti-boycott legislation and repackaged in the language of "social justice" to appeal to Western liberals.

Posted by Miriam Elman on December 17, 2016 5 Comments
What’s happening to Jewish and pro-Israel students on many American universities and colleges from coast to coast is horribly ugly. On “hotspot campuses” the problem is only getting worse. “Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus”, a new 70 minute documentary recently released by the organization Americans for Peace and Tolerance, chronicles the rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activism prevalent on many of America’s institutions of higher learning. We featured the film’s trailer in a recent post and the movie premiered in NYC on November 30. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the film in its entirely. In this follow-up post, I review the documentary’s central themes and take-home messages.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2016 9 Comments
I appeared on the Mark Levin radio show on Wednesday night, December 14, 2016, to talk about my post, VIDEO: Activists manipulate third-graders into hating Israel. Video of the event is at the link above, which also has extensive background. The short version is that Ariel Gold from Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace arranged for Bassem Tamimi to appear before the third grade classes at an elementary school in Ithaca, NY. Tamimi is best known for using children, including his own, to confront Israeli soldiers in the hope of creating viral photos and videos. Tamimi urged the children to become activists and "freedom fighters for Palestine."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 05, 2016 12 Comments
It has not been a good couple of weeks for Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison in his quest for Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison was fast out of the gate, with major endorsements from Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi and many others. But then some inconvenient facts came out about Ellison: His past support for Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam during college and after; once proposing a separate country for blacks; his flirting with tutherism by claiming 9/11 was Bush's Reichstag Fire; his cozy relationship with some of the worst anti-Israel groups at the Democratic National Convention last summer and generally being the go-to congressman for that segment of the Democratic Party; and most recently, release of a partial audio clip of 2010 comments at a Muslim community fundraiser in which he questioned why the U.S. has such a special relationship with Israel considering it's only 7 million people and the Arab world is 350 million. All of this was documented by many people, including by us in the following posts:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2016 2 Comments
We have documented for years how anti-Israel protests at campuses frequently cross over into antisemitism, both directly and by creating a toxic environment for Jews. Ryerson University in Toronto is a case in point. A resolution to boycott Israel passed in 2014
Another Ontario university student union has voted in support of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) campaign. In a tense Annual General Meeting this week, several hundred Ryerson University students voted “overwhelmingly in favour” of supporting BDS.
Given the toxic environment, some Jewish students felt it important for the student government to support a Holocaust education week, and openly planned to present a motion at a recent student government semi-annual general meeting.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2016 6 Comments
Americans for Peace and Tolerance is releasing a 70-minute documentary on the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campuses and the role played by the BDS movement and Students for Justice in Palestine. The movie is titled Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus. I was interviewed for the documentary, along with others such as Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, Richard Landes of Boston University, Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal and Caroline Glick of The Jerusalem Post. Here is one early review of the film:
I’ve written about the phenomenon more than once, so I didn’t expect to be surprised by anything in the film. But despite knowing about the various incidents described, the sheer volume and intensity of them taken together left me shaken. Yes, shaken, and I’m not easy to shake....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2016 10 Comments
On Friday morning, September 18, 2015, the third grade classes at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, NY, heard a presentation on “human rights” by Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi and local anti-Israel activists, led by Ariel Gold. In fact, through the investigative and litigation efforts of Legal Insurrection, it has become clear that the Tamimi event was an anti-Israel propaganda event targeting young children, and as we just learned, caused at least one student to suffer nightmares.

The Attempt to Portray the Tamimi Event as Loving and Promoting Peace

On Sunday night, September 20, Legal Insurrection broke the story, Anti-Israel activism hits elementary school in Ithaca, NY. Because of Tamimi’s notoriety for exploiting children in videotaped confrontations with Israeli soldiers, Tamimi’s mere appearance in a third grade class raised suspicions about the event.
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