(Jerusalem Post) Dan Diker - The German parliament's recent passage of a resolution that censured the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel for being anti-Semitic sets an important precedent. It smashes the glass wall erected by the European far Left, Islamist and Palestinian activists, and political progressives in the United States who have insisted that BDS is a pro-Palestinian human rights campaign whose condemnations of Israel are defined as "legitimate criticism." The BDS movement possesses a demonstrably anti-Semitic character, links to terrorist organizations and convicted terrorists, and a goal of destroying the State of Israel. The German parliament's moral linkage of Nazi-era boycotts, fascist extremism and modern BDS is instructive. Lawmakers passed the "BDS is anti-Semitism" resolution in the shadow of a 20% spike in anti-Semitic acts in Germany in 2018, 90% of which were attacks reportedly carried out by right-wing extremists. The Palestinian-led global BDS movement does not criticize Israeli policy; it categorically rejects Israel's existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people and calls for its dissolution. THE BDS National Committee in Ramallah includes founder Omar Barghouti, who has reiterated ad nauseam his unequivocal rejection of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, emphasizing that "No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine." The connection between BDS and anti-Semitism is rooted in the BDS National Committee (BNC) in Ramallah. The BNC includes five Islamic and Palestinian terrorist organizations that sit with Barghouti and others as co-equal members of the BDS National Committee. Participating terrorist organizations include Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the PFLP GC, and the Palestine Liberation Front. The BDS movement's student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, currently operating on about 250 North American university campuses, has harassed, intimidated and threatened Jewish and Israel-friendly students and faculty. The writer is the director of the Project on Political Warfare and BDS at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2019-05-30 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive