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Today’s Top BDS Stories:
1. Brandeis student fraudulently featured in ‘Apartheid Week’ promotional video offers $5,000 for debate with activist who put him in the video.
2. Norwegian store reverses plan to boycott SodaStream.
General data shows BDS organizations have failed not only with Staples and SodaStream, but in regards to all trade between Israel a Norway. Norway’s Bureau of Statistics has recently published the preliminary figures for Norwegian external trade in 2013, and statistics show that Norwegian imports from Israel were at a total of 807 million Norwegian Krones (NOK), ($131 million), up from 761 million NOK in 2012.
3. ASA head Lisa Duggan denies upcoming ASA conference at New York University is “secret.” It will still be closed to the public and the press. It’s doubtful, however, that the conference will remain entirely out of the news. The lineup is full of boycott supporters, and it’s titled, “Circuits of Influence: US, Israel and Palestine.” NYU, it appears, is complicit with the conference and its contents:
“This weekend’s American Studies Program Annual Conference is an annual academic conference that is organized by graduate students in NYU’s American Studies Program and designed for faculty and students in this and related disciplines,” said Philip Lentz, the university’s director of public affairs. “Given the purpose of the conference and space considerations, it is not open to the general public or the press.”
Other BDS-Related Content:
* Scarlett Johansson speaks about her clash with the BDS in the latest issue of Dazed magazine, which hits the shelves on Thursday.
* Why is ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ effective on college campuses? New research indicates that Western anti-Semitism is primarily located among the educated class.
They’re hawking a blood libel against the Jewish state (the apartheid canard) precisely where it will sell most easily, because the educated mainstream found on college campuses contains a reservoir of people primed to believe blood libels against Jews. Then, thanks to the myth that modern-day anti-Semitism exists only on the far-right fringes, these people can in turn market it to their peers–the decent folk who would never knowingly traffic in anti-Semitism–secure in the knowledge that the libel’s anti-Semitic roots will never be suspected
* Was the recent episode involving BDS supporter Judith Butler and the New York Jewish Museum a win for those opposed to BDS? No, according to Chemi Shalev.
What were the spoils of this big victory? The Jewish Museum was humiliated, those supposedly acting in Israel’s name were seen as intellectual-muzzling brutes, BDS received tons of exposure and free publicity it did nothing to deserve and Butler was cast as an heroic academic victim persecuted for sins she did not commit. The next time she comes to town, even for BDS, you can rest assured that her star power will be greater than ever – especially in the eyes of the young and impressionable.
* Israelis participating in the New Zealand Gay Pride Parade were harassed by BDSers.
A handful of protesters dressed in pink and bearing placards protesting “Israeli apartheid” tried to approach the float organized by Israel’s embassy at the beginning of the parade in Auckland on Saturday night. They said they were criticizing Israel’s “pinkwashing” of human rights.
See yesterday’s Fighting BDS Roundup.
