Truth is the best disinfectant

The Wiesenthal Centre issued a major study on the BDS movement and published a major report.  Here is the executive summary. 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Boycott/Divest/Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Israel was formally launched in 2005, but really began gathering momentum as a result of the Second Intifada of 2000 and the UN’s World Conference Against Racism in 2001.

This Report documents and dissects the BDS’ impact across a broad front of battlefields in the western world. These include economic struggles in corporate boardrooms and among trade unions, BDS’ “academic jihad” against Israel on campuses, the pressure on entertainment and cultural figures to cancel appearances in Israel, and efforts to gain support for BDS from important religious institutions.

BDS claims to be a peaceful movement whose goal is to use “punitive economic means” to pressure Israel to rectify the wrongs done to human rights in the Palestinian territories. In reality, BDS is a thinly-disguised effort to coordinate and complement the violent strategy of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim “rejectionists” who have refused to make peace with Israel for over six decades, and to pursue a high-profile campaign composed of anti-Israel Big Lies to help destroy the Jewish State by any and all means.

Over and over again—whenever and wherever it emerged—the BDS Movement quickly threw off any trappings of moderate criticism of Israeli policies. Its true essence matches Natan Sharansky’s “three Ds” test for when legitimate criticism crosses the line into anti-Semitism: 

FIRST: Double Standards – singling out Israel for criticism while ignoring the more egregious behavior of major human rights abusers in the Arab and Muslim world and beyond.

SECOND: Demonization of Israel – distorting the Jewish State’s actions by means of insidious and false comparisons with the Nazis and/or South Africa’s Apartheid regime.

THIRD: Delegitimization – when Israel’s fundamental right to exist is denied—alone among all nations in the world—this too is anti-Semitism.

• BDS claims to be peaceful or to favor “nonviolent punitive measures” (while
refusing to denounce anti-Israel, anti-Jewish violence).
• BDS often downplays its programmatic commitment to the unlimited “right of
return” of millions of Palestinians, not born in Israel but claiming refugee status that would spell the end of the Jewish State.
• BDS ostensibly wants to right the specific wrongs done to Palestinians, yet attacks the foundations of Israel’s entire economy and society: all (Jewish) Israelis are collectively guilty.
• BDS is fueled by and reinforces a one-sided historical narrative denying any responsibility of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim “rejectionists” for destroying chances for peace and reconciliation—from before Israel’s establishment in 1948, to the 1980 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, to the 1993 Oslo Accords, to the 2000-2001 Camp David and Wye Summits, to the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and to this very day.
• BDS slanders Zionism and supporters of the Jewish State by falsifying the profound differences between Apartheid South Africa and democratic Israel.
• BDS utilizes—without admitting it—Christian “supersessionist” theological claims that Jews and Israel have lost divine favor because of the Jewish People’s alleged sins and as result Jews no longer have legitimate historic or moral claims to the Holy Land.

What’s the solution? Answer BDS’ Big Lies with cogent arguments and the historical record.

As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote, “Truth is the best disinfectant.”