Ignoring Anti-Semitism in the BDS Movement Is Intellectually Dishonest [View all]

[shira]

Within the Jewish community, there are people (albeit a minority) who genuinely believe that all criticism of Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism. They are wrong. But so too is the inversion of their position, as exemplified in a recent Forward column by Mira Sucharov, which shows the author’s apparent unwillingness to recognize any anti-Semitism within the ranks of the BDS movement. Her column reminded me that, when we rightly oppose something, it is all too easy to become a mirror image of the very thing we oppose....

...Now, reading Sucharov’s comments with the above in mind, I came to a realization: Her view seems confined to the most palatable face of BDS — the Peter Beinarts of the world — and ignores the well-documented behavior of those in the movement who have a less-than-healthy attitude toward Jews.

Is Sucharov not aware that the Green Party was forced, just weeks before the BDS vote, to distance itself from former candidate Monika Schaefer, who declared that the Holocaust was the “most persistent lie in history”? While Schaefer did not author the Green Party’s BDS resolution, she was among those who openly attacked party president Paul Estrin as a “Zionist shill” simply because he expressed concern for the welfare of Israelis during Operation Protective Edge. Estrin recently wrote that anti-Semitism within the party is threatening its very existence. Does she forget how the Free Gaza Movement, in a deeply embarrassing faux pas on the part of its founder, Greta Berlin, tweeted that “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews”? Even if one accepts Berlin’s apology that she “just sent it forward without looking at it,” does it not bother Sucharov that this is the type of material that makes its rounds among BDS proponents?

Or for that matter, has she not heard BDS founding father Omar Barghouti’s clear admission that the destruction of Israel would be the direct outcome of a stated goal of the BDS movement, the Palestinian “right of return”? “If the refugees were to return you cannot have a two-state solution…you will have a Palestine next to a Palestine rather than a Palestine next to Israel.” Barghouti recognizes Palestinian national rights but offers no such recognition to the Jews, who have a proven 3,000+ year link to the land of Israel and the Palestinian territories. This zero-sum approach is inherently unjust — and we’re talking about a founder of the BDS movement here. And yet, Sucharov seems to give BDS activists every benefit of the doubt while refusing the same for the Jewish community and its representatives. She suggests Israel’s supporters are opponents of free speech and have effectively invited BDS activists to target Israel (“If you ask me, part of today’s BDS clarion call is a reaction to attempts to squelch debate around Israel,” she writes). But she ignores the fact that this cuts both ways.

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http://forward.com/opinion/347684/ignoring-anti-semitism-in-the-bds-movement-is-intellectually-dishonest/?attribution=articles-article-listing-9-headline