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BDS Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 27, 2014 13 Comments
One of the beauties -- and sometimes nightmares -- of Twitter is that sometimes people tell you how they really feel without filters. Such as the NYU Dorm Stormers at Students for Justice in Palestine, who sent out the tweet in the featured image above. That tweet puts the lie to the claims of SJP and similar anti-Israel groups on campus that they do not seek the destruction of Israel, and merely want to have Israel leave Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank). http://youtu.be/TQxzojmhWW0?t=53s There are naïve followers of these groups who actually believe that spin, but that's not what the groups are about. When they say "Justice in Palestine," what they really mean is that Israel has no right even to exist. NYU SJP was called out on the tweet at Truth Revolt: Truth Revolt NYU SJP denies Israel's right to exist A funny thing then happened. The tweet was deleted, rendering this image at the Truth Revolt post:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 26, 2014 7 Comments
We mentioned before how Christian Zionist college student Chloe Valdary has come under highly racialized attack from anti-Israel Jewish leftists like Richard Silverstein, The ugly, repugnant attack on a pro-Israel black American student: https://twitter.com/richards1052/status/437086594546536448 She also is a frequent target of other anti-Zionist fanatics who find a unique threat in a black American female Zionist, because dividing people along racial lines is a key anti-Israel boycott tactic. In this interview at the AIPAC conference, Valdary explains how she has dealt with the attacks, how her Zionism is consistent with that of the great civil rights leaders of the 1960s and why (at 2:20):
"As a free woman of color, of course I would be a Zionist, it's only natural"
Valdary also discussed her own experiences in Israel, and the modern blood libel that Israel is an Apartheid state (at 8:45):
"There is no Apartheid in Israeli society ... it's an insult to the people who suffered from Apartheid in South Africa"
(Via CiFWatch) Valdary goes into even more depth about the racism of the anti-Israel left in this interview:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 26, 2014 14 Comments
We covered the NYU "Dorm Storming" by Students for Justice for Palestine. It's now received national attention through Greta Van Susteren, who I think did a good job in this interview with Laura Adkins at focusing on the provocative nature of the act. That's something we've focused on. Of course it's part of a greater BDS movement to demonize Israel, but it's also an attempt to intimidate students in their bedrooms. Local ABC News reports (if video doesn't load, click on link): It violated NYU rules, which protect the privacy of students. If NYU takes no action, which is what I expect, then it has rendered students captives in their own dorm rooms. Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728, 738 (1970)
“We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another…. That we are often ‘captives’ outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere.”
So what is NYU going to do?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2014 8 Comments

I had the pleasure of appearing tonight on The Mark Levin Show. We covered the anti-Israel boycott movement, and why it should matter to conservatives. Thanks to Mark for shining a spotlight on this issue. Thanks also to our friends at The Right Scoop for pulling the audio...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2014 4 Comments
As mentioned last night, and as expected, there was a protest by student groups seeking divestment from companies doing business in Israel in reaction to last week's 15-8-1 decision of the Cornell Student Assembly to table indefinitely the proposed divestment resolution. About 75 protestors attended the Student Assembly meeting. I heard one of them refer to hundreds, but it was not that many, and many drifted out after a while. Here's a video of the pro-divestment students walking from their gathering area to Willard Straight Hall, where the Assembly meets. You can see there just weren't that many, certainly not hundreds. A disappointing turnout considering the priority the anti-Israel groups place on the protest. The Assembly then voted to suspend the rules and its session, in what appeared to be a preplanned maneuver, according to multiple people who were in the room at the start. I arrived later, because I had class. Effectively, the Assembly went out of session, and then let the anti-Israel students spend almost two hours giving speeches, in what the protesters termed an alternative assembly. There also were other unrelated topics, such as free bus passes, that consumed some of the protest discussion. Here's the Alternative Agenda: Cornell Alternative Assembly Agenda 4-17-2014 The only interesting part was that David Skorton, President of Cornell, previously was scheduled to appear before the Assembly, and kept that appointment. So the President was present during part of this alternative assembly, but not because of the protest. There were some minor theatrics as protestors vented a little, but nothing major. Skorton gave a short speech about improving the process, and left:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2014 14 Comments
Max Blumenthal is experiencing what goes around coming around. Having blamed various critics of radical Islam as well as international Zionism for the 2011 mass murder in Norway, unfairly, Blumenthal now is in focus because the Overland Park shooter was a big fan of Blumenthal's Jewish money and Israel Lobby conspiracy theories.  The shooter was a Neo-Nazi and KKK leader for whom Jewish control of the media and international money was a core belief motivating hatred of Jews.  That's a shared space for anti-Zionists of multiple political ideologies and religions. Specifically, the shooter focused on Blumenthal's theory that Jewish campaign donors were trying to buy the 2012 U.S. presidential election for Bibi Netanyahu, as expressed by Blumenthal in a lengthy article and a Russia Today television interview, to which the shooter linked.  It's ugly stuff, but the type of ugly stuff for which Blumenthal has become known. I've been less harsh on Blumenthal than others, The Overland Park murders, anti-Zionist conspiracy theories, and the blame game:
Assuming Cross [aka Glenn Miller] linked to Blumenthal’s conspiracy theories about the 2012 election, would that mean Blumenthal is responsible for the Overland Park shooting? Absolutely not. Is the intersection between neo-Nazi and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories worthy of examination? Absolutely. We have seen in Europe in particular how anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism go hand-in-hand, often based on conspiracy theories about Jewish and Israeli influence. [image omitted] Those types of consipiracy theories regarding the alleged manipulations of Jewish money and interests are as old as hate itself. That is a fair subject of discussion. I wonder if the mainstream media will go there, as it did in the Norway shooting.
Others are more direct in drawing the connection between the shooter's adoration of Blumenthal's anti-Zionist conspiracy theories and the shooting, in part perhaps because Blumenthal tried to lay blame on some of  them for the Norway shooting (Pipes, Geller):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2014 8 Comments
We have featured Tulane University student Chloé Simone Valdary before. We highlighted a great video Valdary produced for a pro-Israel event to be held at Tulane. For that effort, Valdary was attacked by the usual suspects like Max Blumenthal, as being an Israel Lobby paid stooge. As Lori Lowenthal Marcus reports, the event Valdaray promoted took place with great success in late March, attended by over 400 pro-Israel students. But there has been a more sinister angle to the attacks on Valdary, as we highlighted in out post about The ugly, repugnant attack on a pro-Israel black American student, including a series of nasty racialized tweets by Richard Silverstein, like this one: https://twitter.com/richards1052/status/437086594546536448 Is race behind the attacks on Valdary? Yes, says an op-ed column in The NY Post by Anthony Hardy Williams, the Democratic whip in the Pennsylvania state Senate, whose father worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and broke the color barrier at Penn State, The racism of the Israel-bashers:
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