Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

BDS Tag

Posted by Occam's Razor on August 12, 2016 5 Comments
We wrote recently about the Black Lives matter platform statement (under the name MB4L: Movement for Black Lives) and, in particular the “Invest-Divest section,” which attacks Israel and accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ and being an ‘apartheid state’. As reported, the statement was condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Boston, and the Anti-Defamation League. Subsequent condemnations were issued by the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism, as well as the more left-wing J-Street (the liberal “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” lobby group), and T’ruah: the rabbinic call for human rights.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 10, 2016 5 Comments
While it is not new, there is an intensifying push in progressive circles, particularly among leftist Jews, to blame everything wrong in the Israeli-Arab conflict on the "occupation" of Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) by Israel. If only Israel would withdraw, then all would be good, it is claimed. Never mind that there is no evidence the result would be anything other than another launching pad to attack as happened when Israel left Gaza in 2005; or that Muslims will accept any Jewish national entity, regardless of shape, to occupy any portion of what now is Israel. Such facts don't get in the way of the narrative, which assesses terrorism as a result of the "occupation" and plays fast and loose with concepts of international law. (See, The Legal Case for Israel  and The Legal Case for Israel’s ‘Settlements’, as to why the "occupation" is not illegal, nor are the settlements.) This inverted assessment of terrorism is on full display in an Op-Ed in The Providence Journal by Nina Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Program, and Senior Lecturer in Political Science, at The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University .

Posted by Miriam Elman on August 07, 2016 1 Comment
On Sunday, July 31, 2016, I drove down to Ithaca, NY to give a talk titled “Hate Speech and the New Antisemitism: Why Anti-Zionist Extremism is on the Rise and What We Can Do to Stop It”. The lecture was sponsored by the Ithaca Area United Jewish Community (IAUJC). The Ithaca Coalition for Unity and Cooperation in the Middle East (ICUCME), a local grassroots anti-racism organization, assisted with the event logistics and publicity. A video of my 60 minute lecture is now available on You Tube (full embed lower in the post). Below I highlight its main themes, breaking the hour-long lecture into segments so that readers can click on to those portions of the talk that are of most interest.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 06, 2016 10 Comments
A war has been declared on Israel on campus by faculty and students supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The rallying cry is to blacklist those acting on behalf of Israeli academic institutions or participating in "normalization" events, such as musical and cultural events. On the faculty academic front, we have seen groups such as the American Studies Association and some smaller groups blacklist Israeli academics representing their institutions, as part of a formal academic boycott. That boycott has been declared by the American Association of University Professors to be a violation of academic freedom. There also are many reports from Israeli academics of a silent boycott, in which individual U.S. professors refuse to interact with individual Israeli scholars and students, resulting in denied access to journals for publication and peer reviews. The claim by many pro-BDS faculty members that BDS does not target individuals is an outright lie.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 04, 2016 14 Comments
For years we have been documenting the efforts by anti-Israel activists to stoke racial hatred of Israel through the concept of "intersectionality" - the notion that all revolutionary struggles, particularly against racism, are connected. The almost exclusive focus, however, is Israel.  Hence, Israel is falsely blamed for local police shootings of blacks in the U.S. based upon false and misleading claims I debunked in my post, Exposed: Years-long effort to blame Israel for U.S. police shootings of blacks. The movement to connect Ferguson-to-Palestine launched after the Michael Brown shooting, and has been a singular focus of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists ever since. Ferguson Palestine contingent

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 28, 2016 17 Comments
The burning of an Israeli flag outside the Democratic National Convention has received a fair amount of press. There's a bigger point here, one I have made many, many times before. The Leftist-Islamist coalition which hates and wants to destroy Israel also hates and wants to destroy the United States. Israel's fight is our fight, and vice versa. And by "our" fight I don't mean just conservatives or Republicans. We have common enemies -- the anarchists, radical leftists, and Islamists -- not because we chose to hate them, but because they chose to hate us. The video of the Israeli flag burning provides proof. As the Israeli flag is being burned, one of the leaders of the group is shouting "Death to the USA power" and someone else asked "where's the American flag":

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 23, 2016 5 Comments
The Turkish purge of academia, which has been ongoing long before the recent failed coup, has accelerated since the coup attempt. Over 1500 university Deans were dismissed, travel for faculty restricted, and faculty abroad ordered home. On Saturday, July 23, 2016, President Erdogan expanded the purge, as we reported earlier. The Christian Science Monitor further reports:
President Tayyip Erdogan tightened his grip on Turkey on Saturday, ordering the closure of thousands of private schools, charities and other institutions in his first decree since imposing a state of emergency after the failed military coup....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 21, 2016 2 Comments
Yesterday I asked the question, in light of the academic purge in Turkey, Will anti-Israel academic boycotters now also boycott Turkish universities? As noted in that post, over 250 university presidents and major university associations have condemned the academic boycott of Israel. In particular, the December 2013 adoption of the academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association was condemned as violation of academic freedom. Read the dozens and dozens of statements describing how the ASA has violated academic freedom here.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 20, 2016 7 Comments
It was one of the most notorious statements of the academic boycott movement against Israel. Shortly after the American Studies Association adopted the academic boycott of Israel in December 2013, and a firestorm of condemnation by University Presidents and associations erupted, then ASA President Curtis Marez justified singling out Israel because "one has to start somewhere":
The American Studies Association has never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities, said Curtis Marez, the group’s president and an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. He did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but he said, “one has to start somewhere.”
In that single phrase, "one has to start somewhere," was the hypocrisy and essential anti-Semitism of the BDS academic boycott movement laid bare.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 01, 2016 6 Comments
The core problem in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not "the occupation" of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") or the lawful Israeli military blockade of Gaza to keep out Iranian armaments. The problem, to which the Western world is just waking up, is the pervasive top-down and bottom-up incitement against Jews and Israel in Palestinian society in which even the youngest children are taught to hate Jews and to kill Jews by whatever means possible, including stabbing, shooting and ramming with cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLIzNGb9gI We have highlighted this problem for years, including these recent posts:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 30, 2016 11 Comments
Recently we posted videos documenting the incitement to violence against Jews in Palestinian Arab media, political spheres, social media, and schools, focused on "children": That incitement particularly focuses on urging children to carry out knife attacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnLIzNGb9gI

Posted by Dexter Van Zile on June 28, 2016 23 Comments
Last week, the Presbyterian Church USA, a liberal Protestant denomination with approximately 1.5 million members, held its General Assembly in Portland, Oregon. The assembly, which takes place every even-numbered year, is a regular scene of controversy over the church's stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fighting began in 2004 when the GA voted to divest from companies that did business with Israel's defense establishment. In 2006, opponents of divestment were able to convince the GA to reverse its decision to single Israel out for divestment, but the anti-Zionists kept at it until 2014, when the GA voted to divest from three companies that do business with the Israeli government: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola. This year, there was yet another round of proposals targeting Israel for condemnation.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 27, 2016 2 Comments
Just over a week ago I reported how Rhode Island legislature passes anti-BDS law, becoming the 10th state to pass legislation exercising the state's right not to subsidize the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). The forms of such legislation in various states focus on pension investments by and/or contracting with state agencies. None of these recent laws, or NY Governor Cuomo's Executive Order, criminalize or prohibit such boycotts, though some states have longstanding anti-discrimination laws barring boycotts based on national origin, race and other factors. In May, the New Jersey Senate passed a bill barring pension investments in companies engaging in BDS, and as it moved on to the state Assembly, BDS forces mounted a counter attack, but to no avail. An overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Assembly passed the law:
The New Jersey Legislature passed legislation that prohibits the state from investing  pension and annuity funds in companies that boycott Israel or Israeli businesses.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 25, 2016 3 Comments
The anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is very adaptive. As its tactics fail, BDS adjusts. The latest adjustment is moving its focus to graduate student unions, where the student population is a subset of the entire student population. In such unions (similar to some faculty associations), BDS supporters take over governing councils and turn the union into a BDS-controlled anti-Israel propaganda activist organization. We saw this in the U. Cal. system, and again at NYU. In each of those instances, the grad student union was an affiliate of the United Auto Workers. In the U. Cal. case, the UAW overruled the BDS resolution as contrary to the UAW's governing rules. It just happened again at NYU.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 18, 2016 2 Comments
The Rhode Island legislature has joined numerous other states in passing legislation prohibiting the state and its subdivisions from contracting with entities involved in discriminatory boycotts, which would cover the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Signature by the Governor is expected. The recognition that boycotts based on religion and national origin are discriminatory is a prime focus of such legislation. There is no doubt that Israel is singled out because it is majority Jewish and that Israelis are singled out because of national origin. Such boycott anti-discrimination laws have been on the books for decades in New York and California. The New York law caused the GreenStar Food Coop in Ithaca to reject a BDS resolution, and the California law forced the BDS-compliant American Studies Association to abandon its annual meeting policy of excluding representatives or officials of Israeli universities. The key component of the legislation passed by the RI House of Representatives provides:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 16, 2016 2 Comments
What should be first of its kind, a leading German bank has shut down an account connected to the anti-Israel boycott campaign -- also know by the acronym of BDS. Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, closed the account of anti-Israel and pro-BDS website “Der Semit”. The action is expected to have implications for other banks providing services to groups affiliated to the BDS campaign throughout Germany. Israeli Minister for Public Security Gilad Erdan welcomed the decision taken by Commerzbank and urged other European banks to take similar steps against anti-Israel and anti-Semitic groups raising funds and carrying out transactions in Europe.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 15, 2016 5 Comments
On June 10, 2016, I reported on how Someone wants to suppress this video of vile BDS shoutdown of Professor. The video in question showed Irish anti-Israel activist Joseph Loughnane verbally abusing and threatening Professor Alan Johnson, who runs the Fathom Journal and was giving a lecture against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. His speech was titled, Solidarity not Boycotts: the progressive case against boycotting Israel:
Thank you for inviting me to Galway University. I am the editor of Fathom journal, and Senior Research Fellow at BICOM. I speak as a friend of Israel, a friend of Palestine and friend of peace. I am not Jewish. I am a democratic socialist, an editor of Dissent magazine and a former editor of Historical Materialism. I am a Professor of Politics – my inaugural lecture was on the thought of the Auschwitz survivor, Primo Levi.
Accessibility by WAH