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BDS Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 23, 2017 2 Comments
CPAC 2017 has shown its support for Israel in numerous ways, but the panel on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) provided excellent points to defeat the movement. "BDS isn't about taking Israel out of business," said Lisa Daftari from Foreign Desk News. "It's about taking Israel off the map."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 12, 2017 2 Comments
You may recall the incident in the summer of 2015 involving Jewish American musician Matisyahu. His appearance at the Spanish Rototom Reggae festival was cancelled after threats from local Spanish activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Movement (BDS) movement. Spain has a particularly malicious BDS movement, which until recently, has had success convincing municipalities to boycott Israel, creating so-called Zionist-free zones. Those municipal boycotts have been declared to be illegal discrimination by Spanish courts. Matisyahu made a name for himself as a religious Jewish Reggae singer with hits advocating peace, such as One Day.

Posted by Miriam Elman on February 10, 2017 11 Comments
On Wednesday, the New York State Education Department apologized for including an ‘anti-Israel’ political cartoon on its global studies Regents Exam. The exam was administered to 10th graders back on January 24. In an earlier post on the controversy, we wrote that critics—including students, teachers, and a prominent NY politician—had charged that the cartoon was offensive anti-Israel propaganda.

Posted by Miriam Elman on February 02, 2017 23 Comments
Anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda are common on America’s college and university campuses. But as we’ve highlighted in a number of recent posts, this discriminatory and biased messaging and materials appears to be filtering down into the public education system. In a post last April we noted how anti-Israel materials have been systematically introduced into the curriculum of a Newton, MA high school. Then at an Ithaca, NY third grade classroom we recently documented efforts to indoctrinate kids into becoming “freedom fighters for Palestine”:

Posted by Miriam Elman on February 01, 2017 4 Comments
On Monday Jan. 30, Israel’s parliament (the Knesset) was set to pass into law a bill that bars BDS (boycotts, divestments and sanctions) advocates from the country. The bill would extend the ban to those who back the anti-Israel BDS movement as well as those who support the boycott of settlement goods in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank. The bill has been in the works for over a year, passing its first Knesset reading back in November.

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.
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