Everything you need to know about fighting BDS and the assault on Israel’s legitimacy. Find us on Facebook here.
Today’s Top BDS Stories:
1. Alan Dershowitz asks some hard questions about Europe’s support for BDS.
Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people by so many of the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. They must be shamed into looking themselves in the mirror of morality and acknowledging their own bigotry.
2. New York Times looks at cooperation project based around a multi-cultural hockey team.
3. The Northeastern University chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has been suspended for a year. Apparently, the suspension comes on the heels of an SJP stunt involving placing false eviction notices on student homes in Boston.
4. Haaretz columnist Carlo Strenger rejects the hypocrisy at the heart of the recent petition signed by pro-BDS academics including Judith Butler and Rashid Khalidi claiming their free expression is being stifled.
Butler and Khalidi correctly point out that boycotts are an “internationally affirmed and constitutionally protected forms of political expression,” and say they are therefore entitled to express their point of view freely. But their call for an academic boycott of Israel violates the very principle they invoke when they want to protect their right to voice their own political views.
In other words, it’s for Butler and others, it’s fine to stifle the academic freedom of Israelis but when there is pushback against the boycotters, the issue of free expression is suddenly paramount.
Meanwhile, BDS advocates such as Antony Loewenstein continue to promote the idea that BDS is the side being silenced, ignoring the fact that whole point of BDS is to isolate and silence Israel.
5. Commentary magazine columnist Jonathan Tobin argues that there is no reason to oppose legislation against academic boycotts.
Just as no one would question whether state funds should be used, even indirectly, to subsidize the Ku Klux Klan or any other racist group, neither should federal or state dollars go to institutions that are willing to underwrite the BDS movement and those that officially support its discriminatory policies.
See yesterday’s Fighting BDS Roundup.
