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"BDS Is Anti-Semitic"; "It Poisons the Atmosphere"

(Times of Israel) Amanda Borschel-Dan - At the annual meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Monday, Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser drew a comparison between BDS and the current wave of stabbing and car-ramming attacks. "Stabbings are not 'popular resistance,' they are terrorism. Just as BDS is terrorism. BDS is anti-Semitic; it is a form of anti-Semitism - they deny the right of Jews to have self-determination." He showed several examples taken from Palestinian television in which children joyfully sing: "When we die as martyrs we go to heaven. What meaning is there to childhood without Palestine?" "Every Palestinian child knows this song [which states] everybody has a way to fulfill their mission to bring the demise of Zionism," said Kuperwasser, the project director of regional Middle East developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "BDS is just one expression of the battle." Brig. Gen. (res.) Michael Herzog said that from a macro-economic perspective, the impact of BDS is marginal. However, it is extremely effective in that it "poisons the atmosphere." "The word 'Zionism' is now so charged that people want to keep their distance from it." Herzog, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, said there needs to be "a line in the sand" - an understanding that Israel "has the right to exist and be self-determinant as the national state of the Jewish people in its ancestral homeland."
2016-02-19 00:00:00
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