Category Archives: BDS & Anti-Semitism

To Combat BDS, You Need to Understand Intersectionality

(Previously published in Forward)

Over the last few years I have been asked countless times to explain why supporters of women’s and gay rights ally with an intolerant Palestinian Arab society in which misogyny and honor killings are commonplace. A place where homosexuality is still illegal, LGBT individuals are routinely abused, and hundreds of Palestinian Arabs risk their lives in order to flee to the relative sanctuary of Tel Aviv.

The answer is intersectionality, an ideology at the core of the BDS movement to destroy the Jewish State. To fight the anti-Semitic BDS movement, you must understand what it is.

Far left progressive and BDS groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) march to the drumbeat of intersectionality— a unity of all victimized and oppressed peoples. In this revolutionary worldview, Palestinians have become the most victimized and oppressed people on earth.

According to intersectionality, every victim in the world must ally with the Palestinians, no matter what the Palestinians and Israel’s other neighbors themselves do, no matter how their regimes treat women, gays, and sects not in power, because they are fellow victims. To somehow square this circle, they employ rationalizations, selective facts, or no facts at all for the myriad of contradictions and bias that are incorporated in their worldview.

Palestinian gay hatred? No problem. Just change the subject to pinkwashing; claim that Israel protects homosexuals only to deflect attention from their egregious crime of genocide against the Palestinians.

Hamas targets Israeli civilians? No problem. Claim that all Israelis were or will one day be in the IDF, so they are all legitimate targets.

Ziva Dahl wrote in the Observer, “Anti-Israel BDS campaigns have successfully injected the Palestinians into this intersectional mix…victims of colonialist oppression by pro-Western Israel. The marriage of intersectionality with the Arab-Israeli conflict allows any victim group to make common cause with the Palestinian.”

Intersectionality is being taught in our universities and is having a chilling affect on free speech. The far-left has aligned itself against Israel, so it’s no surprise defending Israel is taboo on campus.

Jewish students are told support for Israel is incompatible with social justice. Many of these Jewish Americans’ only association to Judaism is through tikkun olam, a universal social justice. If a student wants to show support for injustices committed against black Americans, Black Lives Matter insists they drop support of Israel. As its platform states, “The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”

NYU’s chapter of SJP, in alignment with BLM, said, “The same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians.” Progressive orthodoxy demands that you must embrace the boycott and demonization of Israel as an apartheid state. No wonder idealistic Jewish kids without the facts are confused.

Meanwhile, Professors have politicized academic study, resulting in today’s illiberal race and identify politics, transforming education into activism.

Fortunately, organizations like StandWithUs have been fighting for the legal rights of pro-Israel students and arming them with facts to defend themselves from anti-Semitism while remaining true to their liberal values while still defending the US-Israel relationship.

Many State Legislators and members of Congress on a bipartisan basis have come together to fight against the BDS movement, which they correctly see as a form of anti-Semitism.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York deserves great credit for taking on the BDS movement. He said, “If you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you…New York will not tolerate this new brand of warfare (BDS)…New York stands with Israel because we are Israel. Political opponents claim we are punishing both activism and freedom of expression…They are wrong…As a matter of law, there is a fundamental difference between a state suppressing free speech and a state simply choosing how to spend its dollars.”

So, what are some actions to combat BDS and its use of intersectionality to destroy the Jewish State?

Pro Israel philanthropists should endow university chairs mandating balance and protection of free speech.
• Donors shouldn’t support universities that don’t protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism.
• Support organizations that protect Jewish students on campus.
• Start educating your children about Israel from an early age.
• Tell them about all the great humanitarian work and social justice projects Israelis perform throughout the world, totally compatible with social justice.
• Get your kids to go on Birthright. Cheryl Aronson of CJP’s said, “entice them with the beauty, meaning, pleasure and joy of being part of a 3,500-year-old civilization – the Jewish people.”

Anti-Semitic, anti-Israel groups such as SJP see in “intersectionality” an opportunity to make siding with the enemies of Israel part of a package deal for right-thinking people of the left.

Now that you understand why intersectionality has become a weapon against Israel, step two is to begin to combat it.

Dr. Eric R. Mandel is the director of MEPIN™. He regularly briefs Congress on issues related to the Middle East and is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.

The State of Anti-Semitism on Campus

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A disturbing report was published this week on the rise of anti-Semitic activity at American universities in the first half of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. The report was the first time a quantitative account of the prevalence of anti-Semitism on college campuses was produced. It correlated the presence of anti-Israel groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activity, as strong predictors of hostility to Jewish students.

Learn more in Dr. Mandel’s latest vlog:

Is there a Role for Holocaust Education in Fighting BDS?

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(Previously published in The Jerusalem Post)

The BDS movement’s contemporary anti-Semitism and boycotts of businesses doing business with Israel are sadly reminiscent of yesterday’s Nazis.

The question of what if any role Holocaust education could play in countering the boycott movement against Israel has challenged me time and time again.

It was reawakened after I heard of the remarkable work of Father Patrick Desbois, exposing the little-known story of the nearly two million Jews massacred by the Nazis and their local collaborators in the unmarked killing fields of the former Soviet Union, while local populations watched or sometimes helped.

A Great Teaching Moment

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(Previously published in The Jerusalem Post)

Being heckled for speaking against BDS.

“He is brainwashing you, don’t believe anything he tells you, it’s all lies.”

This was the parting diatribe of a pro-boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activist, which he screamed at a group of students at Manhattanville College during my lecture on BDS.

On my spring semester speaking tour, I was invited to speak by Mellysa, an Emerson Fellow of StandWithUs at Manhattanville College, and their Hillel director. I was asked to give them a choice of topics that I usually speak about; Israel, the Middle East and regional conflicts, for a multicultural group of students on campus.

When it came time to choose a topic, I suggested that they consider a new lecture I had been asked to give to three northern New Jerseycolleges just two weeks before, where the students wrote the title, “Attacks from the BDS Crowd: 10 of the Nastiest Things and Falsehoods Thrown at Israel, and What To Do about Them.” I asked Rachel Klein, the Hillel director of Westchester County New York, if I could present the same topic, and she reluctantly agreed. She hesitantly said, “we don’t have a BDS problem on this campus, so I hope it doesn’t create one.”

Well, either I caused a BDS problem or there was a problem hiding just beneath the surface of this beautiful, leafy campus.

Manhattanville College is a liberal arts university in Westchester County New York with 1,700 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students from 76 countries and 48 states. Manhattanville’s mission is to “educate students to become ethically and socially responsible leaders for the global community” The group that came to hear me that Thursday night in April was a multicultural group of students, who on the whole were similar to other students that come to hear me speak on other campuses, not particularly knowledgeable on the issues of the Middle East, Israel, or the BDS movement to delegitimize Israel.

Lack of information or interest is the greatest enemy of those of us who want to create a factual understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and explain the 1,400-year hatreds within the Sunni and Shi’ite world.

When I speak to any college or highschool group, I watch the eyes of the audience during my talk to see if I am losing anyone, and will then immediately re-adjust the talk. But this group remained attentive right up until the time that a fifty-something member of the audience, sitting front-row center, interrupted my presentation.

A few weeks ago I wrote about pro-Israel speakers being shouted down by “social justice” activists, as far-left Progressives, in the name of human rights, claim that they should deny Israel’s defenders the right to speak.

The language of human rights, i.e.

apartheid, ethnic cleansing, racism, is the bludgeon they use to delegitimize Israel. Part of the reason for this illiberalism is that today, education and academic discourse at many of universities has degenerated into narrow- minded political indoctrination by teachers with a one-sided mission.

So it is instructive to describe what I and the students experienced, what it is like to be heckled.

Rachel Klein, the Hillel director, said, “What students saw at Manhattanville College was all too real – even when ‘armed’ withthe facts, discourse is not possible when the other party is engaging in harassment and bullying, and clearly not interested in facts. The real issue on campus is that colleges and universities are becoming places where harassment, intimidation and bullying silence civil discourse.”

So this became a teaching moment to help undergrads see the intolerance on today’s college campus firsthand, and begin to understand that this is a terrifying growing phenomenon.

(This was not the first time I have been heckled speaking on campus.) This gentleman who became my heckler at first began mouthing to himself that the information in my PowerPoint presentation wasn’t true.

Only I could see him becoming agitated; the students were unaware of what was about to happen.

Next came the hostile questions. He was particularly angry that I talked about the five times the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza could have had an independent state, and how each time either the greater Arab world, or the Palestinian leadership had rejected or didn’t respond to the Israeli offers.

He said that everything was about the settlements, that Israel stole the land, and that the 22 percent of the land the Palestinians were forced to accept was being taken away from them by settlementgrowth. These types of statements are usually followed with the claim that Tel Aviv is a settlement on stolen land.

When I asked him why no Palestinian state was created in the 19 years from 1949-1967 when there were zero settlements, while Egypt and Jordan occupied those territories, he said it wasn’t true, and then went on to attack me further. I decided to pursue the argument with him in front of the students.

I asked him, if this were about the settlements and is a purely territorial conflict, then why in 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in a defensive war, did the Arab League respond to Israel’s offer of returning all of the land with the response of “No Peace, No Negotiation, No recognition” of Israel. He said that was not true. I told him I could not debate with someone with his or her own set of facts, but he again simply said it wasn’t true, and I could see him seething with anger.

I told him about the Camp David and Taba peace talks in 2000 and 2001, where Israel offered control of the Temple Mount to the Arabs, east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, and over 90% of the West Bank for an independent Palestinian state, I asked why the response to that offer was the suicidal violence of the Second Intifada.

He merely asserted that was a lie.

I asked him if he knew about the Olmert offer in 2008 where Israel offered 100% of the West Bank with land swaps, the Temple Mount and east Jerusalem as the capital of the new Palestinian state, which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had never bothered to respond to. He said that was a lie. I told him I had even spoken to the cartographer who had been in the room with Olmert and Abbas to confirm the offer, but my heckler was not impressed; these things had to be lies, as they did not conform to his view of reality.

What about 2014, I asked him, when Israel accepted US Secretary of State John Kerry’s offer of negotiations without preconditions, but the Palestinians rejected the proposal unless all their preconditions were met beforehand.

All lies, of course.

His “facts” neatly fit into a hostile political agenda the goal of which is to destroy Israel – within any border.

That is what BDS is about, not a twostate solution.

After he starting ranting about Israelis never ever prosecuting anyone who commits a crime against Palestinians, I asked him to wait until my lecture was over and I would answer some more of his questions.

He became more belligerent and the organizers of the event asked him to leave, at which time he started confronting the students by screaming, “you are all being brainwashed, and it’s all lies.”

I wish I were the only speaker who has been verbally attacked in what is suppose to be the marketplace of ideas on a college campus. In fact America as a whole is supposed to be a place where free speech flourishes.

Just ask Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, whom pro-BDS advocates recently shouted down in San Francisco.

So what did I tell students to do? If they want to support Israel I recommended a few options: • First, educate yourselves • Tell personal narratives, which are more powerful than a list of facts • Build partnerships on campus with different organizations • Help someone connect to Israel via common interest • Tell the great story of Israel’s humanitarian record • Don’t give up or give in to those who have their own set of facts Why tell this story about a confrontation typical of those we run into as public speakers favoring a strong Israel? The moral of the story is that we all need to know enough of the history, enough of the facts, to be ready to push back wherever we can against the tide of misinformation that otherwise gradually seeps into the general consensus. Look at Europe, where a large percentage of ordinary people think Israel is a bully that should be brought to its knees.

Could this happen here? The enemy is working hard at it.

The author is the director of MEPIN™.

MEPIN™ (mepinanalysis.org) is read by members of Congress, their foreign policy advisers, members of the Knesset, and journalists. He regularly briefs Congress on issues related to the Middle East.

Can You be Against BDS and for BDS?

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Going forward, everyone needs to reflect on the reality of the world Israel lives in.

(Previously published in The Jerusalem Post)

Can an organization or individual claim they are opposed to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel, but still support boycotting Israeli goods, academics and people over the Green Line? There seems to be a strange phenomenon among American Jewish progressives, saying they oppose the BDS movement, except that it’s OK or a good thing to boycott Israel over the Green Line. They seem not to realize that the worldwide BDS movement is not a humanitarian movement trying to foster a two-state solution. The goal of its founders and supporters is the destruction of Israel, a non-indigenous people who they claim forced out the rightful indigenous Arabs.

Zionism is to them a racist movement based on colonialism and apartheid, which should be given no sanctuary at all in the Middle East. American progressives play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, to divide and conquer Israel by backing BDS for part of Israel.

Boycotting Israeli goods on either side of the Green Line is overwhelmingly opposed by mainstream Israelis of the Left and Right, who see clearly that any boycott is part of a strategy of delegitimization of Zionism itself.

Israelis across the political spectrum know this is true because their governments have painfully offered almost all of the West Bank with Jerusalem as a capital for a Palestinian nation three times within the past 15 years to no avail, with the Palestinian response being rejection and escalation of violence, the Israeli willingness to consider compromise being seen only as a sign of weakness.

The mainstream political Israeli Left and Center have made it clear that any boycott of Israel over the Green Line is part of the BDS movement. Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog said in regard to the newly announced EU boycott of Israeli products over the Green Line, “This decision is based on hatred, falsehood and ignorance, devoid of any moral value.” Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid tweeted: “Jews are being stabbed in the streets and the EU has given in to BDS. This decision discriminates against Israel and encourages terrorism.”

Hilik Bar, secretary general of the Labor Party and Deputy speaker of the Knesset told me, “We are against BDS over the Green Line, and BDS in Israel, and any kind of BDS.” Speaking last week before the European Parliament, he said, “When you label products, you are labeling yourselves as less relevant to solving the conflict, as an unfair broker… Be against boycotts and for promoting cooperation.”

Tzipi Livni of the Zionist Union said, “True, [the European boycott] starts with settlement [goods], but their problem is with Israel, which is seen as a colonialist country. Therefore, it won’t stop at the settlements, but [will spread] to all of Israel.”

Many on the American Jewish Left are more aligned on this issue with the Israeli far Left and Israel’s Arab parties than with Labor and the Zionist Union. American progressive organizations believe there is a real distinction between boycotts of Israel and boycotts over the Green Line. They find no contradiction between rhetorically standing strong against the BDS movement that delegitimizes the Zionist state, yet defending boycotting of Israeli goods from over the Green Line as legitimate.

They believe Israel needs to be pressured for its own good to remove all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, which are to them the cause of most of the problems of the Middle East. They do not distinguish between communities in Judea and Samaria that are necessary for Israeli security, Jewish majority areas of Jerusalem over the armistice line or areas that were part of the Clinton or Olmert land swap plans from other “occupied” territory. Until the Obama administration, areas such as French Hill, Gilo, or Gush Etzion were not considered controversial, and were always assumed to be part of a future Israeli state.

American Jewish progressives don’t seem to respect the judgment – born of decades of experience – and will of the Israeli electorate who have to live with the consequences of the boycotts, endure the nightmare of Palestinian terrorism, and who put their own children in harm’s way. They also ignore the true meaning of UNSC Resolution 242, whose language and authors clearly called for an adjustment of the 1949 lines, giving legitimacy to Israeli land claims over the Green Line. They subscribe to a politicized, biased view of international law which says that Israel is a semi-illegal stepchild state with fewer rights than every other nation on the planet.

This has also been the Obama administration narrative since taking office in 2009. Ambassador and former Obama Iran and Middle East expert Dennis Ross wrote in his new book, Doomed to Succeed, that the administration’s preoccupation “and collective view that the Israeli occupation and settlement activity – not Palestinian behavior – were responsible for the conflict argued for pressure [on] Israel.” It is a short leap from there to rationalizing boycotts of Israel, which the EU has already done.

The news from Europe is not all bad. David Harris of AJC opined that we should recognize and appreciate the 12 EU countries that did not sign the BDS boycott of Israel: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.

Which gets us back to the conundrum: Can you and your organization be against BDS if you subscribe to boycotting Israel over the Green Line? Can you feel comfortable contributing to the isolation of Israel in the world and singling out Israel for condemnation of the occupation of disputed territory, knowing that treating Israel differently from any other country is defined as anti-Semitism according to the US State Department’s definition? Can you just ignore the unprovoked, egregious occupations by Russia, Turkey, China, Pakistan and Morocco, while joining forces with those who want BDS to destroy all of Israel? Controversy has arisen in regard to organizations that have given a platform to those who want to boycott Israel or create a single binational state. J Street says it is against BDS, but has had a keynote speaker who endorsed BDS against Israeli goods over the Green Line and has had speak at its national meeting a group that is against the Jewish state itself. All is done in the name of freedom of speech, respecting all opinions, but its more than that: Giving someone’s odious views a platform on your stage gives them a seeming legitimacy, that goes beyond freedom of speech.

The New Israel Fund also claims to oppose BDS, but supports organizations that are full-time demonizers of Israel. Can they honestly say they are against BDS and still support anti-Israel organizations like Adalah, Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), Yesh Din and Machsom Watch, who directly or indirectly support BDS and whose agendas are more aligned with Palestinian propaganda than with Israeli interests? In this highly contentious debate, ad hominem attacks have taken place in the States. That should not happen; it is wrong, and counterproductive. However, defenders of boycotters of goods from Judea and Samaria should be called to task for the damage they do, whether from the pulpit or in the pages of Haaretz.

Going forward, everyone needs to reflect on the reality of the world Israel lives in; who its neighbors really are, and how difficult surviving in the Levant is when the world disproportionately criticizes you and refuses to acknowledge that you have been under an Arab siege to destroy your legitimacy for over 67 years.

The author is the director of MEPIN™ (Middle East Political and Information Network™) and a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post. MEPIN™ is a Middle East research analysis read by members of Congress, their foreign policy advisers, members of the Knesset, journalists and organizational leaders.

He regularly briefs members of Congress on issues related to the Middle East.