Surprise! New York Times Stumbles on BDS Antisemitism

The New York Times finally acknowledges that BDS opposes Israel's existence, but seems to ask: Is that so bad?

CAMERA.org..
30 July '19..

The New York Times has long history of whitewashing the extremism of the BDS movement.

BDS stands for “boycotts, divestment, and sanctions,” and the BDS campaign seeks to leverage those tools to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Arab-majority state.

Although BDS leaders openly admit they seek to disenfranchise Jews by eliminating the country’s Jewish majority — BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has admitted his goal is “a unitary state where, by definition, Jews will be a minority” — the Times has consistently downplayed the movement’s goals by reporting, for example, that BDS merely “seeks to pressure Israel into ending the occupation of the West Bank,” or that the its activists are simply “critical of Israel’s policies toward the West Bank.”

Language of this type had prompted Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg to charge the paper with having “dramatically misrepresented [BDS’s] stated aims and implicit goals, whitewashing the movement’s radicalism.”

Another Whitewash?

Days after the U.S. House of Representatives delivered an overwhelming, bipartisan rebuke to BDS with a 398-17 vote explicitly opposing “the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,” the New York Times jumped in with a piece titled “Is B.D.S. Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign.”

The piece purports to provide “answers to some of the most difficult questions” about BDS. And this time, the paper did manage to acknowledge that the campaign opposes the existence of the Jewish state, an improvement over earlier coverage that falsely cast the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement as merely anti-occupation. In that respect, at least, it is a needed improvement. Still, the article relies on distortions and omissions to make BDS extremism more palatable to readers.

Throughout the piece, reporters David Halbfinger, Michael Wines, and Steven Erlanger put their fingers on the scales in support of BDS, including by:

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The Many Levels of Hypocrisy in BDS - And Will You Have Fries With That? (Daled Amos)

How widespread is this use of Israeli products by members of BDS? Consider Omar Barghouti, one of the BDS leaders.

Daled Amos..
Elder of Ziyon..
29 July '19..

In a recent post, Elder of Ziyon pointed out an ignored truth about the campaign to boycott Israel: BDS isn't about boycotts. It is about turning Israel into a pariah state.

Even BDSers admit that they choose their targets of boycott for maximum leverage and publicity, even as they use Israeli products themselves. The boycotts are indeed a sideshow to their real aim - to have average people associate Israel with racism and apartheid.

By repeating the lies that Zionism is racism, Israel is an apartheid state, Israel must be boycotted for human rights abuses, and so on - over and over again - it makes an impression on college students and people who don't follow Israel closely.

When an artist boycotts Israel, it makes a huge impression on people who want to identify as supporting social justice.

When an academic group calls to boycott Israel, it puts an aura of respectability on hating Israel.

BDS is a tactic, it is not a movement whose goal is to remake Israel as the previous boycott movement was capable of forcing change on the level it did with South Africa.

And the strategy behind that tactic is publicity.

Now more than ever, especially in the age of social media, it is possible to reach people without having to engage the mainstream media, who in the past were the gatekeepers who could to a larger degree control who got access to the public audience.

When small groups like If Not Now want attention, they stand outside and say Kaddish for Hamas terrorists -- not Jews who were murdered by terrorists -- because that is what gets attention, and it is that attention that is the crucial oxygen to breathe life into the membership and create the attention that such movements need.

Recently on Twitter, it was pointed out that both Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar -- vocal supporters for boycotting Israel -- used Israeli technology, Wix, for their website:

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The New York Times Inquires ‘Is BDS Anti-Semitic?’ - by Ira Stoll

It’s often a bad sign when an article fails to answer the question in the headline. The Times waffles. In a section headed, “Is B.D.S. anti-Semitic?” the article reports, “Leaders of B.D.S. insist that it is not anti-Semitic… But many Israelis and American Jews say it is.” That’s not particularly helpful. In a different section, the Times article does eventually concede, “There is some overlap between support for B.D.S. and anti-Semitism.” What a coincidence!

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
28 July '19..

The New York Times devotes a full page in its Sunday newspaper to a deeply flawed look at the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.

Given all the advance work that usually goes into a long Sunday feature, you’d think the Times could be troubled to get the facts right the first time around. Yet by Sunday morning, the Times article already carried a two part correction: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the status of legislation in Ireland concerning goods produced by Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Ireland has advanced legislation to ban the import of those goods, it has not banned them. Also, the article misstated the status of Omar Barghouti, a B.D.S. spokesman. He is a Palestinian resident of Israel, not a citizen.”

That correction, though, only scratches the surface in terms of the problems with the Times article, which extend well beyond the errors that were corrected.

The so-far-uncorrected problems begin with first sentence, which claims, “In a matter of months, a campaign to boycott Israel has moved from the margins of politics — liberal college campuses and protest marches — to Congress.” Yet the overwhelming Congressional vote was to condemn the BDS campaign, indicating that the campaign remains marginal. And, far from being a recent phenomenon as the phrase “a matter of months” indicates, the effort to boycott Israel, and Jews, dates back to before Israel even existed. Laws forbidding American companies from cooperating with such boycotts were passed in 1976 and 1977, a fact the Times almost invariably ignores in its coverage attempting to hype the boycott as some sort of innovative, new, or recent development.

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Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. More of his media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

Roi Klein was my commander and my friend - by Yoseph Haddad

Thirteen years have gone by, but Roi Klein will be remembered forever, a symbol of friendship, mutual responsibility, caring for others and, above all, friendship. If each of us could only learn a small lesson from him we would only build the true civic strength of our nation.

Yoseph Haddad..
Jerusalem Post/Opinion..
25 July '19..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Roi-Klein-and-I-596835

Friday, July 26, marks the 13th year since the death of Maj. Roi Klein. I have the privilege of being able to say that I personally knew Roi. He was my commanding officer, but he was also a family member – the family of the Golani Brigade’s Battalion 51.

For me he was Klein the “samgad,” the deputy brigade commander. As a soldier and officer under him I had the opportunity to be with him for a significant amount of time. We had many conversations and had a special relationship, despite the fact – or maybe because of the fact – that I am an Arab-Israeli from Nazareth and he a settler from Eli.

I remember when our battalion was deployed in Ghajar, a village on the Lebanese border. There, lying in wait for hours before an ambush, we past the time in conversation. During this time I got to know the man behind the shoulder mark.

Klein took a sincere interest in me and in the community from which I came. He wanted me to tell him about the Arab sector of society. He had a very difficult time understanding that I was cursed at when I went home to Nazareth in uniform.

He told me about himself, and about Judaism. In one of our conversations we spoke about the value of friendship, which he held as the highest value in the army. It is because of Roi that we in Battalion 51, young men hailing from completely different worlds, often complete opposites, found ourselves to be one big family.

In the staging areas before we entered Lebanon for war, I saw Klein praying and I said to him jokingly, “Klein pray to your God on my behalf too.” He responded with a smile and said, “You’re my brother, of course I will pray for you.” I will never forget this sentence.

Those who make hatred of the world's only Jewish state part of their moral and political doctrines - by Aaron Kliegman

Criticizing Israel is fine, but demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state crosses a clear, red line, into the realm of something much worse. When progressives discard the truth to demonize Israel, they also demonize the Jewish community, whether they know it or not. They are creating an environment hostile toward Jews—an environment that, one day, may make Jews in the West that much more grateful for having Israel as a refuge.

Aaron Kliegman..
Freebeacon.com..
25 July '19..

In February, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) received a well-deserved backlash after she accused American politicians of supporting Israel because of the "Benjamins," referencing money and America's foremost pro-Israel lobbying group. Omar's suggestion—that American leaders only back the Jewish state because Jews buy their political support—is, by any reasonable definition, anti-Semitic. The next month, however, Ben Rhodes, who served as Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, went unnoticed as he used the same slur. "The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the donor class," Rhodes told the New York Times. "The donor class is profoundly to the right of where the activists are, and frankly, where the majority of the Jewish community is." Sure, Rhodes's wording is more eloquent than Omar's (although inaccurate about the Jewish community's positions), but his implication is the same: scheming, wealthy Jews are gaming the political system to help Israel and, naturally, to hurt the Palestinians. Rhodes, of course, has a history of undermining the Jewish state as a prominent member of the Obama administration.

It should not be surprising, then, to see Rhodes lie and mislead to demonize Israel. He did just that earlier this week, retweeting a story on Israeli crews demolishing Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem with the added message: "Imagine having your home destroyed just because of who you are, and that being the point." Naturally, Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) both endorsed Rhodes's tweet. To say that Rhodes mischaracterized the situation would be a radical understatement. It is possible that Rhodes is remarkably ignorant about Israeli affairs and did not read the article, but he is an intelligent man who presumably follows international news closely. More likely he had at least a basic idea of the truth, which would mean he intentionally misled the public.

Here are the facts that Rhodes conveniently ignored:

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Aaron Kliegman is the news editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, Aaron worked as a research associate at the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank, and as the deputy field director on Micah Edmond's campaign for U.S. Congress.

The Grand Mufti's War Against the Jews - by Sean Durns

In 1937, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini released an “Appeal to All Muslims of the World,” urging them “to cleanse their lands of the Jews” and laying the foundation for the anti-Semitic arguments used by radical Arab nationalists and Islamists to this day.

Sean Durns..
JNS.org..
24 July '19..

This month marks the 45th anniversary of the death of Amin al-Husseini, the one-time Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi collaborator. Hailed as a “pioneer” by current Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, during World War II al-Husseini raised SS regiments in the Balkans, promoted the Reich’s propaganda in the Arab world, toured death camps and plotted the genocide of Middle Eastern Jewry. After he escaped justice, conventional wisdom has it that the Mufti ceased to be a political force in the post-war years. But conventional wisdom is wrong.

Declassified CIA documents—many revealed for the first time—and a recent book tell a different story, one in which al-Husseini continued to be influential more than a quarter-century after the war’s end. Although he would never regain the power that he once wielded, the Mufti remained a force to be reckoned with. Intelligence agencies closely monitored him, and Arab regimes variously sought his support or his assassination. Through it all he remained not only an unapologetic anti-Semite, but also an inveterate schemer.

The Mufti’s rise to power was itself owed to intrigues. The British, who ruled Mandate Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, made al-Husseini the grand mufti of Jerusalem in 1921, making him both the country’s highest Muslim cleric and leading Arab political figure.

As Wolfgang Schwanitz and the late Barry Rubin revealed in their 2014 book Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, the 24-year-old with no religious training was likely chosen in recognition of his service as a spy for the British in the final years of World War I. The decision, the historians conclude, “was one of the most remarkable errors of judgment ever made in a region rife with them.”

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The writer is a senior research analyst for the Washington, D.C. office of CAMERA, the 65,000-member Committee for Accuracy and Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

Omar Shakir, BDS, and the Real Goal, Elimination of Israel - by Prof. Gerald Steinberg

Regardless of the High Court’s decision, Shakir has been exposed as a major activist in the elimination campaign. And far beyond the legal arena, HRW and Shakir, like Corbyn and his ilk, are clearly in violation of basic moral norms.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg..
Opinion/JPost..
24 July '19..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/BDS-Omar-Shakir-and-Israel-Eliminationism-596641

They call it by different names -- demonization, BDS (short for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions), anti-Zionism, or Israel derangement syndrome. But the bottom line is best summed up as “eliminationism.” Because the elimination of Israel is the real goal of all of these campaigns.

The scale and depth of the effort to remove Israel from the world map was dramatically highlighted in an hour-long BBC documentary on the visceral hatred of the UK Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn. The problem that they have is not with specific Israeli policies or leaders, but with the existence of a Jewish-majority state, in any form. They want a reversal of the outcome of the 1947 UN Partition vote and of the 1948 war, as well as a Palestinian “return,” meaning millions of descendants of 1948 refugees, three generations and 71 years later. These measures, wrapped in the language of justice and human rights, would ensure that Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, would cease to exist.

Eliminationism is also the underlying issue regarding the government’s rejection of Human Rights Watch (HRW) employee Omar Shakir’s request to renew his visa to work in Israel. Shakir’s appeal is scheduled to be heard by the Israeli High Court on July 25. As in the lower level courts, which ruled against Shakir and HRW, the arguments will focus on whether the government was justified in determining that his “work” in promoting BDS is grounds for non-renewal.

While Shakir, his lawyer, and their supporters try to shift the discussion into philosophical debates on free speech and the right to criticize Israeli policy, the case is far more concrete.

Shakir has the title of the “Israel and Palestine” director at HRW, a powerful NGO that has been among the leaders of anti-Israel demonization for two decades. A more accurate title would be director of BDS campaigns, reflecting his long history of activism on behalf of Israel eliminationism, and the focus of his social media posts, including while employed at HRW. Like others at HRW, Shakir’s activities before being hired were also BDS-centered, and in the past three years, he sought to have Israel expelled from FIFA -- the world football (soccer) federation, promoted boycotts of Israeli banks and other businesses, and pressured companies like Airbnb to single out Israel for sanctions. Although Shakir and HRW ultimately failed in all of these efforts, they succeeded in adding to the demonization of Israel.