An LA Times editorial plays down the true aims of the BDS movement, and claims that Israel’s law against BDS activists entering the country is an attempt to “wall out its critics.”
These visitors would be turned away not because they are suspected of a crime or pose a security risk, but because they have expressed an opinion in favor of a nonviolent protest movement that is unpopular in the country. Frankly, this is not an attempt to combat anti-Semitism, as some claim, nor will it end what the law’s backers call the “delegitimization” of the Jewish state. It is, rather, an attack on freedom of expression and on political dissent.
While people of course have the right to freedom of speech, that does not extend to hate speech and incitement. And BDS is not just about expressing criticism of Israel and supporting nonviolent protest.
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The LA Times says that BDS
calls on people and companies to boycott Israel until it ends its occupation of “all Arab lands,” tears down its border barrier separating Israelis from Palestinians, ensures equal legal rights for Arab citizens and acknowledges the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the former homes of their families in Israel.
But what the LA Times doesn’t explain is that the Palestinian “right of return” would mean the end of Israel as the Jewish state, which is exactly what BDS aims for. Although BDS may use the language of human rights, its true goal is not about helping Palestinians, it is to isolate Israel and undermine its very existence as the Jewish state. That’s why BDS activists don’t care about Palestinians who suffer because of their own leaders, or about when their efforts to harm Israel end up harming Palestinians and their livelihoods even more, for example in the case of SodaStream.
The editorial claims: “Israel has turned away travelers for political reasons in the past, including denying a visa earlier this year to a researcher from Human Rights Watch. It has also restricted the foreign travel of Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement.”
The Human Rights Watch researcher they are referring to is Omar Shakir, also an anti-Israel campaigner and a BDS supporter, which would no doubt impact his work for HRW. HRW itself has consistently demonstrated its biased agenda against Israel at the cost of genuine work to improve the lives of Palestinians. In any case, Shakir was granted the work visa in the end.
Omar Barghouti
As for Omar Barghouti, a BDS founder who supports Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, he was placed under a travel ban because he was arrested for tax evasion – although the ban was suspended.
Barghouti has stated that:
Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” [meaning the whole of Israel.]
[Palestinians have a right to] resistance by any means, including armed resistance. [Jews] aren’t indigenous just because you say you are… [Jews] are not a people
[The one state solution means] a unitary state, where, by definition, Jews will be a minority.
The Right of Return is in danger, the right of our people to the 1948 lands is in danger.
When asked “If the occupation ends, would that end your call for BDS?” Barghouti replied: “No, it wouldn’t… The majority of the Palestinian people are not suffering from occupation, they are suffering from denial of their right to come back home.” He has also promoted blood libels, accusing Israeli soldiers of shooting Palestinian children “for sport;” saying that they “provoke” the children, “entice them like mice, and then shoot them” for no reason, because they are “bored.”
Peaceful political expression?
The LA Times says: “whether one agrees with the goals of BDS or not, the fact remains that boycotts are a form of speech, a classic tool of peaceful political expression.” Well, most definitely not in the case of BDS. It is not only a bigoted and discriminatory movement that singles out the Jewish state, but one that sometimes justifies or even calls for Palestinian terrorism, undermines Israel’s very right to self-defense, and advocates for its destruction. There is nothing peaceful about that.
The editorial ends:
Truly free countries tolerate peaceful dissent. The 50-year occupation of the Palestinian territories seized during the Six-Day War has gone on for too long and must eventually be brought to an end. For Israeli authorities to demonize — or exclude — those who publicly oppose it is a terrible mistake.
For a start, in 1967 the territories were occupied by Jordan, and Israel did not “seize” them – it was forced to capture them while defending itself from five Arab armies’ attempts to destroy the Jewish state.
The LA Times accuses Israel of demonizing and excluding BDS activists, who it misrepresents as merely opposing the occupation – but why is the LA Times less concerned about the hateful, vitriolic BDS movement that demonizes and excludes Israel and Jews, while perpetuating hatred and violence towards them?
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Featured image: CC BY-SA Takver;
