By Amy Zewe—
In our continued effort to expose BDS, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, is designed to delegitimize and demonize the state of Israel and as such, BDS demonstrates it root inspiration of antisemitism under a cloak of anti-Zionism. The BDS movement claims to be about buzz wordssuch as social justice, occupiers, oppressors and even apartheid state –and ironically a notion of “a right of return.”
The problem is, the use of buzzwords such as right of return, oppressors and expulsion are all twisted up in a narrative that is often unchallenged, thus gaining naive followers on college campuses, political and community organizations, economic associations, and even within entertainment.
The BDS movement on college campuses is spearheaded by several nefarious groups, and most commonly it is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an organization whose roots and foundations are blatantly traced back to terrorists and unabashed Jew-haters. An attempt to legitimize their position includes partnering for Jewish Voice for Peace—a group not at all representative of American Jewry.
But cloaked under the label of student organization and wearing the veil of human right and justice advocates, SJP and other organizations like it on college campuses uses buzzwords that perk up the ears of inquisitive and well-meaning students and lure them into a position of hate an intolerance, all under the guise of equality and, you guessed it, tolerance.
One way the movement causes divisiveness and proves that it is not truly seeking problem-solution avenues is that the BDS organizers present their arguments leading receivers to feel one of two ways—void of nuance or perspective, let alone historical context or even true contemporary facts, according to a report by Honest Reporting, Hiding Behind Buzzwords: How BDS Spreads its Anti-Israel Agenda by Sara Goldstein posted in Nov. 2020
BDS has contributed to fostering a binary political social environment in which each individual believes that they are forced to make a choice: that is, either to advocate against Israeli policies, and, as a corollary, be on the “right side of history,” or, by contrast, defend Israel and risk being considered “oppressors.”
The end result is that if one is even Jewish in identity, he or she must renounce all ties and even sympathies to the land and the state in order to free themselves of any label and accompanying disdain because without that, the Jew or even the Jew supporter or Israel supporter is, by their definition, an oppressor and even a genocidal racist.
In addition to the basic buzzword abuse of social justice, occupiers, oppressors, and genocidal racists, BDSers apply all sorts of hackle-raising words into their so-called arguments including the annual and often uncontested Israel Apartheid week that BDS proponents put on college campuses, for an entire week, literally using the term apartheid in a most erroneous way. Even South Africans themselves, the most ardent anti-apartheid South Africans, have and will attest and declare that Israel is not an apartheid state and bears no resemblance to apartheid South Africa. But those voices are often unheard and ignored by academics, let alone the press, and are certainly kept under wraps by BDS proponents. The result of Israel Apartheid Week is not an educational forum designed to carefully examine the problems of the Middle East in the full context and history from which it has sprung, but rather to spend a week bashing Israel and ultimately intimidating Jews on campuses and even threatening speakers who come to provide any counter position and threats against any student, faculty or by-stander who does not go along with the BDS narrative—a narrative that ultimately vilifies and proclaims Israel (or Jews) are foreign to the land, the root of all problems the Middle East, and the direct cause of all suffering for non-Jews in the region.
Never mind that Israel is comprised of not just Jews, but also Arabs who are Muslim and Christians as well as other ethnic groups including the Druze—all of whom enjoy equal rights under the law and in the only Middle East nation that is a democracy with a judicial arm with equal protection under the law for all its citizens, no matter gender, religion, race, culture or even sexual identity. Any alien from outer space that comes to earth seeking a most progressive and tolerance society demonstrating the bastions of civil liberty under a representative government—well, Israel would likely be held up not just above all its regional neighbors, but even held up as the best example in the world.
So why the distain? The age-old antisemitic vein of hatred borne of a spiritual nature and manifesting in news ways, but repeated ways, with every generation.
Keep your eyes open and be critical of words. They matter, as you may have well seen even in the US Congress this week. Re-writing and re-defining words are a form or warfare.
Do not be led astray.
Shavua Tov and have a great week.
