Vermont BDS activists target Ben & Jerry’s ice cream
Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel recently launched a campaign calling on Ben and Jerry’s to end links with Israel. The American ice cream company, headquartered in South Burlington, Vermont, operates worldwide, and even manufactures products in democratic Israel. According to the anti-Israel US group, Ben and Jerry’s is “commercially complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine” and violates its own social mission which calls for a respect for “human beings inside and outside…and for the communities in which they live.” The pro-Palestinian organization also alleges that the company is selling ice cream in “Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and is planning to increase the number of scoop shops” in the Jewish state. In addition, activists claim the Ben and Jerry’s factory, near Kiryat Malachi, is built on a former Palestinian village “de-populated” during Israel’s War of Independence. “Israeli trucks distributing Ben and Jerry’s ice cream travel seamlessly from the factory…on super highways…circumventing military checkpoints and roadblocks that torment Palestinians,” the activists stress. In a petition and letter to Ben and Jerry’s, the Vermont-based anti-Israel group demands the former stops manufacturing and selling ice cream in Israel, and issues a statement calling for an end of Israel’s “occupation and settlement enterprise.” Some 3,000 people have already signed the petition.
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Pro-Palestinians petition British band to cancel Israeli performance
BDS activists recently circulated an online petition calling on Depeche Mode, an English electronic music band, to cancel their planned Tel Aviv concert. The group last played in Israel in 2009. The campaign “Don’t Play Apartheid Israel” alleges that since their last concert “Israel has engaged in further brutal oppression of Palestinian people, including land theft, home demolition, ethnic cleansing and enacting more laws enshrining the apartheid system.” The petitioners even claim the production company, Shuki Weiss Promotion and Production Ltd., has actively “participated in the infringements of human rights, by assisting the State of Israel in whitewashing its war crimes against the Palestinian people; co-opting human rights organizations in opaque interactions including offering bribes; adopting state propaganda rhetoric, which has a clear goal to distract attention from state violations in its communication with its business partners and clients; and willfully participating in parliamentary debates that aim to stifle the freedom of speech and prevent legitimate protest.” The band is scheduled to perform in May.
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Anti-Israel campaign calls on Morgan Freeman to shun Jewish democracy
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel recently sent a letter to actor Morgan Freeman over his plan to accept an award from an Israeli-linked group in Toronto. The Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University will be awarding Freeman “The Key of Knowledge Award” for the actor’s “dedication to combating racism and promoting knowledge and education worldwide.” “Given that Israel practices forms of racism through its system of colonialism, occupation and apartheid, and violates the rights of Palestinians to education and life, it is cynical, and nothing short of dishonor to your lifelong achievements to be accepting an award from a group that is in deep support of an Israeli University complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of human rights and international law,” the pro-Palestinian group wrote. The letter stresses that “prominent actors who accept awards from the friends of Israel around the world…lend their names to the state’s propaganda effort…To accept an award from such an institution would send a message that the Hebrew University can continue its complicity, and still receive international acclaim and publicity by honoring respected moral figures such as you.” Freeman has been known to champion many charitable causes worldwide.
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US-based relief organization votes to boycott Israel
The board of directors of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a US-based relief (Akron, PA), service and peace agency, recently decided to stop investing in companies that “benefit from products or services used to perpetrate acts of violence” against Palestinians. Although the group, representing 15 Protestant and Amish bodies in North America, pointed out that it would also do so against companies acting in violence against Israel, their current list only names companies that support Israel’s “occupation” of Judea and Samaria and Gaza. A press release underlined that MCC “will not invest in direct holdings in companies on the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)…and will join efforts to encourage the mutual funds it holds to adopt” similar measures. “With our partners, we desire peace, justice and reconciliation for all,” MCC’s executive director added. Two years ago MCC called for an ending of the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. MCC has nearly 1,200 workers and an annual budget of $82 million.
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Human rot. The Muslims learned from the best: the Nazi, with the complicity of the West. The sooner the Pal are counted according to UNRHC and not UNRWA the better things may become.
The BDS movement is a lot like the new anti-oil movement taking place against Canada. In both cases, those pushing for BDS and those who are against “dirty” Canadian oil are people ignorant of the facts and filled with propaganda they accept at face value from people they viscerally respect (heroes of left wing causes or “stars” the left admire).
In the case of the anti-oil people, they are funded by billionaires (like the Rockefeller Foundation) hiding behind small leftist lobby groups. In the case of BDS, they are wealthy individuals (like George Soros) and big governments like those in the OIC and Europe, hiding behind small campus Palestinian groups, “Jewish” extreme leftists with the blessings of the United Church, Marxists and unions who tag along because they have bought into the Arabs-are-good and the Canada-is-bad biases of confused liberals.
It does not matter that Canada has higher technological and environmental standards than hateful Saudi Arabia or Venezuela; Canada is still morally lower in their minds and is an easy target. One thing about leftists, they are lazy, they feel morally superior and they are filled with fear. They do not like to attack those who will fight back. Israel and Jews fall into the category of targets who won’t fight back with any conviction and so it is open season on Jews and open season on Canada.
The way to wipe out the BDS movement is to fight back with the same weapons and tactics that they use. Why not engage in BDS against OIC countries and institutions that target Israel? Why not target Saudi oil and Iranian oil in the same way the left targets North American oil pipelines and oil from Canada? Leftists want to pay high prices for foreign oil and they also support terrorism against their own families in the west and Israel if it means “Palestinians” get all they want. Insane people? You bet they are!