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BDS Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 28, 2015 20 Comments
This could be a series. In fact, with this post, maybe it is a series. We have covered many times the faculty members who demand the boycott of Israeli academic institutions (BDS) -- which necessarily involves boycotting the individuals who work at those institutions -- and then complain when the boycotters become the boycotted. Controversial professor Steven Salaita had his contingent offer of employment to join the American Indian Studies Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rejected by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees after Salaita went on a multi-month Twitter rant.  Salaita, a leader of the anti-Israel academic boycott, claims academic freedom for himself as he seeks to deny it to others. (Salaita's federal lawsuit is going through motion and discovery practice now.) As a result of the Salaita non-hiring, an academic boycott of UI-UC was organized, to the cheering of pro-Salaita pro-BDS UI-UC professors in the Humanities and Social Sciences. But something funny happened on the way the the boycott -- it turned out that the only people hurt by the boycott of UI-UC were the pro-Salaita folks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. As we reported in Academic boycotter doesn’t like being boycotted, UI-UC professor and anti-Israel academic boycott supporter Susan Koshy, an associate professor of English, Asian-American studies, and South Asian and Middle Eastern studies at UI-UC, complained:
For someone like me, who is inside the university and supports Salaita, the boycott [of UI-UC] represents an experiential impasse. I find myself in the impossible position of being the target of a boycott as a member of an institution whose actions I and many others here have challenged. Unlike faculty members outside Urbana-Champaign whose safe target is another university, our target is our own. The frequently repeated joke here—How do we boycott ourselves?—captures this problem. How do you oppose your own institution yet protect valuable parts of it at the same time?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 26, 2015 1 Comment
This is the third in our series revisiting our coverage of the 2014 Gaza conflict. In the first post, we reported how the war did not start the way the anti-Israel propagandists content, with an Israeli attack in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by a Hamas-affiliated cell in the West Bank. To the contrary, the kidnapping resulted in an Israeli crackdown in the West Bank, but it was relentless Hamas rocket fire from Gaza into Israel that precipitated Israeli air attacks on Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Gaza July 8, 2014 – Hamas Rockets Ignite War. Having debunked (again) the myth that Israel started the Gaza conflict, we debunked another myth, that the thousands of deaths and injuries were the result of Israel's desire to assault Gaza. In fact, after the first week of air attacks and Hamas rocket fire and infiltrations, Egypt proposed a ceasefire. Had both sides accepted that ceasefire, there would have been no Israeli ground invasion, and the deaths and casualties a small fraction of the ultimate total. Israel accepted the ceasefire, Hamas rejected it. The result was more Hamas rocket fire, and an Israeli ground invasion. Gaza July 18, 2014 – Ground War After Hamas Rejects Ceasefire. Now another myth busted -- that protests in Europe and elsewhere were merely anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic, and in any event, isolated. In fact, virtually everywhere there was a major "pro-Palestinian" rally, there was blatant anti-Semitism accompanied by threats and violence. And not just overseas. In Miami, Boston and San Francisco as well. Here are the events we covered. It's not an exhaustive list, by any means.

Posted by Miriam Elman on July 24, 2015 2 Comments
On July 16, Israel’s Christian Empowerment Council (CEC) released a short pamphlet titled Test The Spirits: A Christian Guide to the Anti-Israel Boycott Movement (BDS). It’s authored by Father Gabriel Naddaf, a Greek Orthodox priest from Nazareth in the Galilee. The new guide garnered some publicity in Israel. But here in the U.S., other than a press release featured by JNS and a few other websites, it hasn’t received a lot of attention. Spread the word about this terrific new resource. Test The Spirits rejects the isolation and vilification of Israel under the banner of Christian values. It’s an unreserved and heartfelt vindication of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. http://www.cecisrael.org/

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 23, 2015 20 Comments
On Wednesday, July 22, 2015, I was on a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Keynote speakers at the Annual Meeting include Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. The topic of my panel was Freedom of Thought in Higher Education. The panel chair was Utah State Senator Howard Stephenson, and fellow panelists Dr. Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars, and Robert Shibley, Executive Director of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The panel was the best attended workshop of the day, with over 100 attendees, mostly state legislators. [caption id="attachment_135470" align="alignnone" width="600"]William A. Jacobson Cornell ALEC Annual Meeting 2015 [L-R - Robert Shibley, Peter Wood, Howard Stephenson, William Jacobson][/caption]My portion focused on the anti-Israel academic boycott and broader boycott movement (BDS). About one-third of the more than 100 mostly state legislators in attendance had heard of BDS. I covered the history of BDS, which was created at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban Conference, and how systematic academic boycotts pose systemic risk which is appropriate for narrowly tailored legislation that protects the system without unduly infringing on academic freedom and free speech. I discussed, among other things, my challenge to the tax exempt status of the American Studies Association.

Posted by Miriam Elman on July 12, 2015 9 Comments
In recent posts we have discussed Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a U.S. based organization that has established itself as the “Jewish wing” of the Palestinian solidarity movement. JVP plays a critical role in numerous aspects of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States by giving Jewish cover. In so presenting itself as the Jewish justification for BDS, JVP serves the role of washing away the stains of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism which are central to the BDS movement's founding and conduct.

1. JVP - Not a Major Player in Jewish Life

Founded in 1996 by a small group of left-wing San Francisco Bay Area Jews, JVP worked in relative obscurity for years. Today it looks poised to break into the big leagues of American Jewish organizational life. According to its website and recent press releases, JVP currently has a youth wing and a Rabbinic Council, over 65 member-led chapters across the country, and 200,000+ online supporters. But looks can be deceiving. It’s difficult to pin these numbers down. According to Yitzhak Santis, Chief Programs Officer for the Jerusalem-based watchdog group NGO Monitor, “JVP provides no evidence” for its claim of tens of thousands of Jewish American followers. It doesn’t actually require that its members be Jewish or American.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 11, 2015 19 Comments
Marie Brenner, writing in Vanity Fair, explores whether Jews should leave France. The French language version of the article is titled Paris En Flammes. With my distant recollection of high school french, that translates as Paris in Flames. But the English language version has a more descriptive title, The Troubling Question in the French Jewish Community: Is It Time to Leave?:
How can anyone be allowed to paint a swastika on the statue of Marianne, the goddess of French liberty, in the very center of the Place de la République?” That was what the chairman of one of France’s most celebrated luxury brands was thinking last July, when a tall man in a black shirt and a kaffiyeh leapt to the ledge of Marianne’s pedestal and scrawled a black swastika. All around him, thousands of angry demonstrators were swarming the square with fake rockets, Palestinian and Hamas flags, even the black-and-white banners of ISIS. Here, barely a mile and a half from the Galeries Lafayette, the heart of bourgeois Paris, the chants: “MORT AUX JUIFS! MORT AUX JUIFS!” Death to the Jews. It was Saturday, July 26, 2014, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration turned into a day of terror in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods of the city.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e7b_1420820113 We covered those riots last summer (some of the videos in the posts have gone bad):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 07, 2015 4 Comments
This week the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its supporters will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the supposedly grassroots launch of the BDS movement by Palestinian "civil society" organizations. The Associated Press, through its writer Tia Goldenberg, has a lengthy article on the BDS movement. The article is receiving a lot of attention, including a Drudge link, and because it is AP is being reprinted (under varying titles) at numerous news website. The article starts with BDS's supposed grassroots beginnings, Boycott Israel drive gains strength, raising alarm:
Ten years ago, a small group of Palestinian activists had a novel idea: inspired by the anti-apartheid movement, they called for a global boycott movement against Israel as a nonviolent method to promote the Palestinian struggle for independence.
That narrative of how the BDS movement began is false, and demonstrably so. The boycott call issued in July 2005 was not the result of a small group of activists getting together, it was the result of a multi-year organized effort for a global boycott of Israel, most prominently in a boycott call issued at the 2001 UN Durban Conference which was so anti-Semitic the U.S. walked out. We have explored this history many times at Legal Insurrection. Here is the actual history of the BDS movement:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 05, 2015 10 Comments
In the spring of 2014, a series of ugly incidents rocked the campus of Vassar College, a small liberal arts college just north of New York City. It started with a boycott protest against a course that involved travel to Israel and the West Bank, including forcing a professor and students to walk a gauntlet of people ululating (audio example here). It culminated in the posting on social media of a Nazi cartoon portraying Jewish control of the U.S. The group mounting the protest and posting the plainly anti-Semitic cartoon was Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine. The series of events was ignited by passage of an academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association, a rejection of the boycott by Vassar's president (along with 250 other university presidents), and a counter-reaction by 39 Vassar professors who defended the boycott.  SJP took it from there. It's all detailed in my post Anti-Israel academic boycott turns ugly at Vassar and a series of follow up posts, including about my debate challenge to the 39 professors (which was not accepted): With everything happening on the anti-Israel boycott front, both good and bad, Vassar had faded a little from memory, until I saw a July 3, 2015 Op-Ed in The Washington Post by Jill Schneiderman, one of the two Vassar professors teaching the boycotted course. For Schneiderman, the memories obviously haven't faded, and remain raw. The Op-Ed is How academic efforts to boycott Israel harm our students. Read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 03, 2015 4 Comments
The United Church of Christ recently passed a resolution adopting part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) platform. The resolution purported to demand divestment from the "occupation," but in fact a late amendment broadened it substantially to include virtually every Israeli company, as I explained in my prior analysis. (Another resolution, declaring Israeli guilty of the Crime of Apartheid, had a split vote short of the 2/3 needed for passage.) Throughout the committee-level and annual meeting debate and presentations about divestment, aligning UCC with BDS was repeatedly stressed as part of a peaceful process of ending the conflict. The anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace played a central role in Jew-washing the nature of the BDS movement, allowing BDS supporters at UCC to say - hey, look, there are Jews who support what we are doing. [caption id="attachment_132637" align="alignnone" width="600"][Speaker in support of divestment says "Stand with Jewish Voice for Peace"] [Speaker in support of divestment says "Stand with Jewish Voice for Peace"][/caption]If UCC's delegates and leadership thought aligning UCC with BDS was a move towards peace, it was severely duped. Here's a perfect example of how BDS is against peaceful reconciliation. The YaLa Young Leaders conference attempts to bring Israeli youth together with Arab youth from around the world. We first wrote about the conference in 2014. Since then, it has grown to even greater success:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 02, 2015 5 Comments
After the United Church of Christ passed an Israel divestment resolution on June 30, 2015, there was concern that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement might score three victories at church annual meetings this week. But that did not happen. The Mennonite Church USA tabled the divestment resolution, and the Episcopal Church House of Bishops voted it down overwhelmingly on a voice vote (I listened, and there were almost zero people shouting "yes" and a loud chorus of "No"). AP reported on the Mennonite vote:
A leading Mennonite group has delayed a decision on divesting from companies with business tied to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Mennonite Church USA was set to vote this week on whether they should sell off stock in companies "known to be profiting from the occupation" and from "destruction of life and property" in the territories. A church spokeswoman said delegates at a national meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, voted 418-336 to table the resolution until their next assembly two years from now. Twenty-eight delegates abstained.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 30, 2015 13 Comments
We highlighted recently resolutions at the United Church of Christ's 30th Synod in Cleveland seeking (1) divestment from certain named companies (such as Caterpillar), and (2) declaring Israeli guilty of the Crime of Apartheid as defined in the 1998 Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court. These take place through years-long efforts by anti-Israel Christian groups like Sabeel, which use Jewish Voice for Peace as religious cover for the noxious efforts. The divestment resolution originally was limited to specified companies, but in committee at the Synod was amended to include sweeping language governing any company that does business, directly or indirectly, in "occupied" territory. United Church Christ Israel Divestment Resolution 1 This would include, for example, companies doing business in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which was illegally captured by Jordan and then enthically cleansed of Jews and Jewish landmarks before Israel liberated it in 1967.

Posted by Miriam Elman on June 28, 2015 19 Comments
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, a Palestinian Christian organization headquartered in Jerusalem, is a group you probably never heard of. But Sabeel plays a critical role in seeking to reverse Christian support for Israel around the world. In the U.S., Friends of Sabeel - North America (FOSNA) is behind or involved in virtually every divestment resolution pending before various Christian denominations, often teaming up with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). You need to know about Sabeel, and how Sabeel and JVP team up against Israel. Sabeel provides the Christian liberation theology, JVP provides the Jewish cover.

1. United Church of Christ

For the past few days, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC) has been deliberating in Cleveland, Ohio on several resolutions related to Israel. Back in 2005, the UCC passed a resolution condemning Israel’s security barrier and calling on Israel to “tear down the wall” (Israel’s construction of the security barrier began in 2002 as a counterterrorism measure). This week its General Synod is considering a divestment resolution modelled after the one that narrowly passed last year by a 310-303 vote in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest of several Presbyterian denominations in America.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 24, 2015 5 Comments
The anti-Israel activists employed as professors who led the fight at the American Studies Association to pass the academic boycott of Israel in December 2013, have been patting themselves on the back ever since. Forget that over 250 university presidents and the major academic organizations condemned the move as a gross violation of academic freedom.  Even the NY Times called the ASA a "pariah." The ASA humiliatingly had to back down from its plan to bar representatives of Israeli academic institutions from its annual meeting, eventually promising that even Bibi Netanyahu could attend. The profs seething with hatred of Israel, and anti-Zionist websites which promoted their academic boycott agenda, saw it differently. In their own minds, they were on the cusp of a historic anti-Israel paradigm change. The future belonged to the boycotters, in their minds. The reality has not worked out that way.  Other than some very small faculty organizations, no major academic group has adopted the boycott. No university in the U.S. is even considering a boycott. But the hyperbolic hateful rhetoric by the profs did have an effect.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 21, 2015 20 Comments
The progressive United Church of Christ is no stranger to controversy when it comes to Israel. UCC has had close ties (see pp. 44-46 of linked pdf.) to Friends of Sabeel - North America, the U.S. branch of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, a Jerusalem-based non-governmental organization that leads efforts to alienate Christians from supporting Israel. (See Recent NGO Monitor Report (pdf.)).  We will have more on Sabeel in a later post. Those ties included a UCC Church in Boston hosting a Sabeel conference in 2007 on finding new paradigms to fit Israel under the definition of Apartheid. But UCC may be about to elevate its controversial status dramatically, with the 30th General Synod commencing June 24 26 having placed before it three resolutions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, among a total of 16 resolutions. All three of the resolutions carry the following explanation: "The Board of Directors recommends this resolution be sent to a Committee of the General Synod." Anti-Israel activists are treating all three as up for consideration, but whether it goes to a general vote is unclear as of this writing. UCC's promotional material also suggests all three resolutions will come to a vote:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 19, 2015 2 Comments
There is a growing "boycott the boycotters" movement afoot in the United States, targeting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. On the federal level, the 1970s-era anti-boycott legislation addressing the Arab League boycott of Israel is being supplemented by legislation to address the new BDS-form of boycott.  Provisions in pending trade legislation would require that free trade agreements with the European Union impose anti-BDS goals.  A House Resolution has been introduced condemning BDS, and simlar resolutions were passed in Tennessee and Indiana. Illinois and South Carolina have gone further, and passed anti-BDS legislation. The New York State Assembly just passed an anti-BDS resolution, as a prelude to anti-BDS legislation:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 17, 2015 1 Comment
The academic boycott of Israel has generated a lot of attention and noise in the past few weeks, even though it has not generated much actual boycotting. No university in the U.S. is considering a boycott, as far as I know, and in many ways ties are expanding. The American Studies Association and a handful of much smaller faculty professional organizations have adopted the boycott, but even ASA had to back down from its key provision excluding most Israeli academics from its annual meeting. There have been, and undoubtedly will be more, attempts to get larger faculty organizations to adopt the boycott, but so far that has not happened. There are complaints from some Israelis also of an undeclared boycott of them personally in the humanities, with some American professors refusing to interact. But beyond the actual results, there is no doubt that the academic boycott movement is a malicious attack not just on Israel, but also on our entire academic system. It is led by some of the most outrageous campus characters, the rhetoric often is abusive, and the environment hostile and threatening. It is no wonder that over 250 university presidents, as well as major academic groups like the American Association of University Professors, condemned the ASA academic boycott. Over 100 members of Congress also signed a letter condemning the ASA. Soon we may be able to add a formal House Resolution to the list.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 07, 2015 6 Comments
My wife and I are back, after an intense two weeks in Israel. From the Lebanese to Gaza borders, from the Mediterranean Sea to Judea and Samaria, from the cool evenings of Jerusalem to the heat of the Negev Desert, from an apartment in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to Bedouin villages in the north and south, from university campuses to military bases, from faculty to students, from Jews to Muslims ... I can't say we saw it all, but we saw a lot. I've documented most of our big events in daily posts, with the exception of our emotional meetings with the families of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, students killed in the 1969 Supersol supermarket bombing by Rasmea Odeh; that post is coming, but I still have new photos, documents and information I have to work through. Here are my 5 Big Takeaways from the trip:

1. Our Revenge Is That "We Are Still Here"

Near the start of our trip, we visited Moshav Avivim on the Lebanese border, where we met Shimon Biton, a survivor of the 1970 bazooka attack on a school bus by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Biton, who was six and one-half years old, lost his father in the attack, and himself was shot point blank range by the terrorists when they realized he survived the bazooka attack.  Ten days before we met Biton, he was reunited for the first time in 45 years with the nurse who helped save him.  (Featured Image)
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