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BDS Tag

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.

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 antisemitic “Deadly Exchange” campaign which, based solely on spurious accusations, singles out U.S. police department trainings in Israel for prohibition.