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Today’s Top BDS Stories:
1. Call it the SodaStream effect. Economic cooperation, not boycotts, may well be the new rallying cry for people promoting the two-state solution. Take this editorial from the Jerusalem Post as a case-in-point:
Any two-state solution will inevitably entail strong ties between Israel and Palestine. Fostering such ties could even be a means of moving toward a two-state solution organically, gradually and with mutual respect. BDS only hampers this process.
2. Omar Barghouti lashes out at New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, calling him a “bigot, not a liberal.”
Earlier this week, Cohen wrote that he does not trust the BDS because its real goal is to destroy Israel as a Jewish state by bringing millions of Palestinians into Israel. “This is the hidden agenda of BDS, its unacceptable subterfuge: beguile, disguise and suffocate.”
Barghouti replied that a real liberal would be fighting for equal rights for all.
Anyone who argues that Palestinians must continue to be denied their basic rights under international law, including the right to full equality and the inalienable right of refugees to return to their homes, in order to preserve Israel’s “right” to exist as a racist state, as a regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid, is a bigot, not a liberal.
3. Australian trial seen as test of BDS legality. Australian academic is being tried for discrimination for refusing to endorse application by Israeli because of academic boycott of Hebrew University. The Tower magazine features a profile of Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, the lawyer behind the suit.
Other BDS-Related Content:
* JCPA takes a “Brussels Insider” look at the possible wave of boycotts and sanctions from Europe Israel has been warned about. Meanwhile, European Parliament President Martin Schultz said he did not expect an EU-wide official boycott.
* NY Times reporter Jodi Rudoren takes a deeper look at West Bank boycotts, including perspectives from people for an against the move.
* Ben Cohen of JNS takes on the issue that BDS is about ending Israel’s presence in the West Bank.
If the idea that the boycott movement is a human rights project is one myth, then the contention that its goal is merely to end Israel’s presence in the West Bank is another. Again, read Friedman and Beinart, and you’d think that the presence of anti-Semites and supporters of Israel’s elimination within the boycott movement was a minor irritant. But destroying Israel as a sovereign state is the primary goal the boycotters themselves have never hidden, as much as some naive American Jewish liberals wish they would adapt and sanitize their tactics by concentrating on the West Bank alone.
See yesterday’s Fighting BDS Roundup.
