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The Boycott Israel Movement Is Driven by Bigotry
(Telegraph-UK) Brendan O'Neill - It's hard to think of any political movement as ugly, vindictive and packed with prejudice as the Israel-bashing BDS movement. Its backers want every institution, retail outlet and right-minded person to refuse to have anything to do with Israel. They want us to stop buying Israeli produce. To refuse to read books written by Israeli academics. Even to refuse to listen to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The ugliness of BDS was thrown into sharp relief when it was revealed that a former Cambridge academic refused to answer a 13-year-old girl's curious questions about horses because the girl is an Israeli. "I'll answer your questions when there is peace and justice for Palestinians," the academic responded. It's just cruel to crush a girl's curiosity after she has sent you a sweet, respectful email. And to hold a 13-year-old responsible for what her government does is bizarre. It takes the foul idea of collective guilt to a new, barrel-scraping low. It has exposed the rotten heart of a movement that fancies itself as progressive but is in fact driven by bigotry. BDS is a forcefield erected around the chattering classes of the West to protect them from the stuff and thinking of one nation and one nation only. It's a moral purity movement, designed to deflect the products of a people that some have judged to be uniquely evil. Even their kids.