Image 01 Image 03

BDS Tag

In April 2020, we published an in-depth investigation: How Anti-Israel Activists Are Hijacking The Coronavirus Crisis And Turning It Against Israel. Our research demonstrated how proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel have exploited the COVID-19 pandemic: namely, blaming the Jewish state and its supporters for as many aspects of the outbreak as possible. Now, we've taken a closer look at how international Arab, Muslim, and especially Palestinian sources have rhetorically weaponized the virus against Israel. And it's clear that the BDS campaign's appropriation of COVID-19 is only part of a larger effort to fold the pandemic into pre-existing anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish ideology.

A (now former) Gaza-based "consultant" with the 'human rights' behemoth Amnesty International has suddenly found herself in hot water after she allegedly sold out out fellow Palestinians in Gaza to the terrorist group Hamas. Self-styled "journalist" Hind Khoudary took to Facebook last week to alert three Hamas officials that a group of her fellow Gazans had had held an online chat with Israelis about the coronavirus crisis.

We have written a lot about how anti-Israel activists routinely hijack causes, events, and crises unrelated to Israel, using "intersectional" theory to turn those issues against the Jewish state. That phenomenon is playing out again with the coronavirus pandemic, providing the 'usual suspects' with yet another issue to exploit.

From March 1-3, 2020, I attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Annual Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. on a press pass. As part of my coverage of the conference, I spent nearly four hours interviewing, taping, and photographing anti-Israel protesters who had gathered outside the venue. Though their chants of "Judaism, yes! Zionism, no!" might have been meant to convey a rejection of anti-Semitism, the protesters' statements and behavior both during and after the rally shows how deeply and often anti-Jewish hatred informs anti-Israel worldviews.

Austria's parliament passed a unanimous resolution on Thursday condemning the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) as antisemitic. The resolution, tabled by the ruling People’s Party, was supported by all political groups represented in Austria’s National Council.

Rasmea Odeh is a terrorist who not only was convicted of killing two Israeli students, she lied to get into the U.S. and become a U.S. citizen. Odeh was convicted of immigration fraud and deported in September 2017. Now she's making a comeback on campuses, glorified by groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, and just recently at UC-Berkeley, where anti-Israel activists ripped up a photo of her victims.

The UN Human Rights Council has issued a blacklist of over a hundred companies doing business in Israel's Judea and Samaria region (also referred to as the West Bank). The database published on Wednesday comprises mostly of Israeli firms, but also includes big international names such as Airbnb, Expedia, TripAdvisor, and Motorola.

In the years since our founding, Legal Insurrection has covered anti-Israel activism on our nation's campuses. Though expressions of anti-Zionism on campus are often the work of radical student groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), behind many such groups and their anti-Israel messaging stands faculty support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
For a recent example, see the latest attempt by a small minority of faculty to pass a BDS resolution at the American Historical Association's annual meeting in American Historical Association Rejects Anti-Israel Resolution for the 4th Time.