BDS campaigns are not Nazism reborn, but they are still anti-Jewish

[shira]

<snip>

Now I can already hear the BDS supporters protesting that I have unfairly leaped from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism. So let me emphasise that a BDS campaign could in principle be non anti-Semitic. If the BDS campaigners accepted Israel's existence in its pre-1967 borders and supported a two-state solution, their arguments concerning the protection of Palestinian human rights would deserve serious consideration. There is nothing prejudiced about questioning the legal and moral legitimacy of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank; highlighting the impact of the Jewish security fence on the daily lives of the Palestinian population in the territories; attacking continuing discrimination against Palestinian Arabs living within Green Line Israel; or noting the extent to which the creation of the state of Israel contributed to the historical injustice that has befallen the indigenous Palestinians.

But a two-state solution that respects the national and human rights of both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs is not the aim of the BDS movement. The leading Palestinian BDS advocate Omar Barghouti, in his 2011 book BDS: The Global Struggle For Palestinian Rights, explicitly vilifies Palestinians and Israeli leftists who support two states. All the official statements that emanate from the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel emphasise two key aims: one being to reverse the events of 1948 (i.e. the foundation of the state of Israel) that lead to the Palestinian refugee tragedy, and secondly to demand the coerced return of the 1948 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants to their former homes inside Green Line Israel. In short, they demand the elimination of the existing state of Israel, and its replacement by an Arab State of Greater Palestine in which Jews at best will be allowed to remain as a tolerated religious, but not national, minority.

The BDS objective of ending Israel translates into political anti-Semitism via two means. The first is that its call for the removal of an existing state is unique in international discourse. Many campaigns - mostly emanating from left-wing idealists - target human rights abuses and military invasions in other countries. There are ongoing protests against the Indonesian presence in West Papua, the Chinese takeover of Tibet, the Russian brutality in Chechnya, and the American et al presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. But to the best of my knowledge, no campaigners call for the elimination of Indonesia or China or Russia or the USA from the ranks of legitimate nation states.

The singling out of Israel cannot be divorced from its Jewish nationality and identity. Israel is a Jewish homeland which was created by the United Nations in 1948 as an affirmative action state to provide a refuge for a historically oppressed people who had recently experienced the Holocaust. Today, about 6 million people (or 80 per cent of its population) remain Jewish in national and cultural identity. The remaining Israeli citizens - Arab or otherwise - are entitled to, and should be ensured, full equality. But they are not the target of the BDS. It is the Israeli Jews who will suffer the most terrible consequences should the BDS campaign be successful.

<snip>

more...
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2906664.html

[dtexdem]

1. Israel should never have existed. But it does.

It was created in 1948 by the UN as a land theft from the Palestinian people to shirk the guilt of anti-Semitism that had its worst expression in the Holocaust but that had been guilt shared in lesser degree by all major European nations and to some degree by the U.S. (e.g., the U.S. had not admitted all Jewish refugees from the Nazis). Carving a Jewish homeland out of Germany after WWII would have been reasonable, given what Germany as a nation had done. Stealing Palestine was not. Very old historical claims to Palestine as a "Jewish homeland" were then and still are laughable, given the reality of the world for the past few millenia.

But now Israel has been a nation for over 60 years, and most of Israel's population is not responsible for 1948 atrocities and land theft because they were not alive then. A Palestinian claim to all of Israel can no longer stand; but a pragmatic claim to lands seized in 1967 can -- and the latter claim is in accord with UN rulings. A two-state solution is, then, a pragmatic response to current reality, if it can be undertaken in such as way as to create a viable Palestinian state and economy. Any one-state solution, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, if it respected human rights, would face the reality that the one state would inevitably have a Palestinian majority, so could not be a "Jewish state."

[oberliner]

2. It's stunning to me that people can be so misinformed

"Created in 1948 by the UN as a land theft from the Palestinian people to shirk the guilt of anti-Semitism"

That has got to be one of the most ignorant things I've read here in a while.

[aranthus]

6. The BDS campaigne, nay, the entire anti-Israel argument depends on misinformation and ignorance.

That they have been able to keep that up for so long is what is truly stunning.

[shira]

10. And it depends on promoting, excusing, ignoring, and denying antisemitism.

Gotta have passionate outspoken advocates for the cause, right?

The Jew haters are perfect for that.

[vminfla]

8. Give it a minute

We will hear something equally misinformed.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Should the UK or USA have existed?

Judging from your username, you come from a state which Mexicans might describe as being part of the USA through 'land theft'.

In and around 1948, i.e. just after WW2, many new independent states were created. Some had disputed borders. Some had problems with their neighbours. Many had serious internal problems. The Partition between India and Pakistan caused bloodshed and ethnic cleansing well beyond the I/P conflict in the Middle East. The creation of these states, whatever one may think of them (and remember, their previous condition was colonization under the British and other Empires, not some mythical Golden Age of perfect freedom and democracy), was not done as a punishment to other countries.

And the creation of a Jewish homeland was not caused by the Holocaust. That made it more urgent, especially as if there had been such a homeland 20 years earlier far fewer people might have died. But the Balfour Declaration was in 1917, and there were many Jews in the region, especially in Tel Aviv, long before statehood.

I do agree with the basic points of your second paragraph; but the first is full of inaccuracies.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Ish and definately not, respectively.

I entirely agree that it's a valid comparison, but the conclusion that should arise from it is "The USA should never have been founded", not "Israel should have been founded. The European treatment of the native Americans makes the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians look positively benign.

With regards to the UK, it's slightly less clear cut - most of it happened at a time when none of the rulers of any stripe had any mandate except birth and power, so which king ruled whom was less relevant. That said, my understanding is that - in the terminology of the immortal Sellar and Yeatman - the English conquest of Wales and the English/Welsh/British conquest of Ireland were Bad Things, while the unification of England, the union of England/Wales and Scotland, and the departure of the Republic of Ireland from the UK were Good Things.

> was not done as a punishment to other countries.

Are you sure? My impression that punishing Germany was part of the allied motivation in redrawing boundaries after the second world war (especially Poland), although admittedly to a much less extent than after WWI?

[shaayecanaan]

5. The USA should never have been founded...

I don't think its possible for any principled leftist to avoid that conclusion, either in the case of the US or the other post-colonial states - Australia, Canada or New Zealand. If the theft of land and dispossession of native peoples is a Bad Thing, then presumably it should have been avoided.

It is true that the conquest of the North American natives was a much greater crime against humanity in terms of its scale - perhaps 10 to 15 million people were killed (by both French and British colonists) making it the worst atrocity ever committed by the British empire. Certainly, they lost on a greater scale than the Palestinians did, but no doubt it did not seem like such a trifle to the Palestinians, from their point of view.

Equally, if transferring a bunch of Presbyterians to Northern Ireland against the wishes of its inhabitants was a Bad Thing, then equally transferring a group of Jews to Palestine in a similar fashion was a bad thing likewise.

[Shaktimaan]

7. Good Lord.

Read a book on this subject for God's sake. Your post is embarrassing in its factual errors.

Aside from all of the truly ridiculous historical errors, what in the world makes you think that carving a Jewish state out of Germany would have been preferable? Did people not live in Germany? Would you have advocated the cleansing of all of THOSE people who had been living in their land for however long? Germany for all its crimes was an established state. No international body had the authority to go in and carve out a new state there, it violates the cornerstone of the UN's agenda. Wold you have just armed the Jews and sent them in to throw out the Germans or what?

e.g., the U.S. had not admitted all Jewish refugees from the Nazis

Can't let this go. You mean that no one accepted pretty much ANY Jews, right? Before AND after the war. ie: Evian and Bermuda conferences.

[King_David]

9. It's a mystery why you continue spewing

Such ignorant garbage . Why ?

[sabbat hunter]

11. Show me on a map

where there was an independent state of palestine prior to 1948.

Palestine (or more accurately Syria Palestina) was a province of the Roman/Byzantine Empire. Then passed on to the Arabs finally the Turks, before becoming a mandate under the league of nations to England.
The partition of 1948 was supposed to create an independent Israel and an independent Palestine.

Even after all the revolts against Rome in the Jewish Wars, there still were Jews living in Syria Palestina up thru modern times. Right along side of Arab Palestinians.

Just like the Kurds the Palestinians deserve their own independent country (even though there never has been a country called Kurdistan either)

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 set the mandate of Palestine as the Jewish homeland, which as you can tell is well before the holocaust.