Progressivism’s New Hate on Campus The ‘Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions’ movement against Israel aims to cripple that country By Andrew E. Harrod Summary : Across American campuses, college radicals are fi ghting hard as they try to harm Israel and celebrate Palestinians. Though they call themselves nonviolent left- ists opposed to racism, they actually have no problem with anti-Semites and violent terrorists. This report shines a spotlight on the outrageous deeds and words of numerous leaders in the “Boycott, Divest, and Sanc- tions” movement. he deck has long been stacked against Israel on America’s college cam- Tpuses. The Left’s BDS movement— the subject of this report—aims at Israel and Israel alone. BDS seeks to cripple the Jewish state whose creation gave refuge for the world’s Jews after Nazi Germany’s Ho- force—itself, a dubious concept—against its locaust incinerated six million of them. The enemies. Those who abhor Israel ignore January 2016 B, D, and S are the non-military weapons— the fact that it is surrounded on all sides by boycotts , divestments , and sanctions —that Muslim nations, many of which would drive CONTENTS Israel-haters use to undermine America’s the Jews “into the sea” if they could. strongest Middle East ally. Yet in the United States, anti-Israel cam- The movement’s activists mostly live on uni- paigners appear as occupying the moral high The BDS Movement versity campuses, dress themselves in moral ground. Fighting for its existence continu- Page 1 garments, and self-righteously denounce ously since 1948, the media depicts Israel Israel as racist, even genocidal, because it as a bully and a regional hegemon. Radical Briefl y Noted defends itself vigorously and refuses to die. pseudojournalist Max Blumenthal capital- No other country gets scolded by the na- ized on this perception in his 2013 book, Page 8 tions of the world for protecting itself from Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel , aggression or for using “disproportionate” which portrayed Israel as the “Little Satan,” Organization Trends compared to the “Great Satan” (America). The BDS movement “has exercised tactical the rights of Palestinian refugees to return This kind of propaganda is the norm when sophistication in ‘dressing up’ its radical link- to their homes and properties as stipulated it comes to Israel. ages and extremist ends,” analyst Dan Diker in U.N. resolution 194. writes at the Jerusalem Center for Public The BDS movement has managed to ac- Affairs website. Yet behind the façade of (Editor’s note: The Wall refers to the barrier complish so much with so little money (or a “progressive, nonviolent campaign” that built by the Israeli government in the West at least, so little money discoverable by the seeks “merely to pressure Israel toward Bank. Israel credits the separation barrier usual means). The movement is amazingly a two-state solution” lurks a hate-fi lled with reducing terrorist attacks, including sui- well organized. Its activists stir up much “political and economic warfare campaign cide bombings, against Israelis. West Bank controversy, media coverage, and under- against Israel.” residents complain that the wall impedes their graduate angst, draining activist energy away ability to move freely and commute to Israel from more worthwhile causes. The money BDS sprang out of events like the infamous for work. U.N. Resolution 194, adopted Dec. the movement gets its hands on comes from 2001 U.N. World Conference against Racism 11, 1948, established a theoretical framework relatively obscure foundations and from in Durban, South Africa—a conference so aimed at allowing Palestinian refugees to anonymous donors through donor-advised outrageous that the U.S. delegation walked return to their homes.) funds. We can only speculate whether out in disgust and the Ford Foundation, Muslim oil barons overseas are secretly which had funded Palestinian attendees Diker opines that “all three of these condi- underwriting BDS operations. linked to terrorism, had to apologize and tions can be understood as promoting the institute a grantmaking reform: requiring dissolution of the State of Israel as a Jewish Covering up radical ties grantees to promise not to “promote violence democratic state” and the “creation of another Israel is widely popular among Americans, or terrorism” or to call “for the destruction Arab-majority state in its place.” BDS “activ- while those who oppose Israel tend to be radi- of any state” (see “The Ford Foundation’s ists have more accurately characterized their cally left-wing in their politics. To increase International Agenda,” Foundation Watch, activities as a complementary strategy to the the popularity of the anti-Israel movement, its June 2004). The movement has become the policy of terror and political violence” of leaders are forced to pretend their supporters latest in a long line of Arab and European groups like Hamas that are trying to destroy are moderate, reasonable people. boycotts against Jews, Diker observes. Israel. The fi rst demand “sounds at fi rst hearing like a reference to the territories The BDS movement emerged on July 9, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War” by Israel, Editor: Matthew Vadum 2005, when 171 Palestinian non-govern- but “Hamas and other rejectionist groups Publisher: Terrence Scanlon mental organizations launched a campaign consider all of Israel to be occupied Arab to pressure Israel to “compl[y] with Inter- land.” Indeed, the “Palestinian Authority’s Organization Trends is published by Capital Research national Law and Universal Principles of offi cial media promote the notion that all of Center, a non-partisan education and Human Rights.” These Palestinian groups Israel is ‘Occupied Palestine.’” research organization, classifi ed by sought to force Israel, which they equate to the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity. apartheid -era South Africa, to “recognize Diker fi nds it “noteworthy that two of these Address: the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to three demands are unrelated to the aftermath 1513 16th Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20036-1480 self-determination.” The campaign makes of the 1967 Six-Day War.” Consider the sec- three demands of Israel: ond point, which he describes as a seemingly Phone: (202) 483-6900 Long-Distance: (800) 459-3950 “innocuous and uncontroversial appeal for 1. Ending its occupation and colonization of equal rights for Israel’s Arab citizens.” Yet E-mail Address: [email protected] all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall. in the “political discourse by Israeli Arabs” the “concept of collective equality between Web Site: http://www.capitalresearch.org 2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of Jews and Arabs means by defi nition that the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to Israel can exist only as a binational state.” Organization Trends welcomes let- full equality. The third point leaves unmentioned that the ters to the editor. “standard UN defi nition of a refugee does not Reprints are available for $2.50 pre- paid to Capital Research Center. 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting apply to ‘Palestinian refugees’” from Israel’s 2 January 2016 Organization Trends 1948 war, because those refugees “uniquely director Munayyer himself refused to de- Baltzer in turn differs little from her USCEIO inherit their status,” which is to say they pass nounce Hamas as a terrorist group during colleague Josh Ruebner, an American-Israeli their refugee status on to their progeny, and a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity Jew with an Israeli father. In 2004 he wrote so the number of “refugees” has naturally (July 24, 2014). about burning his Israeli draft papers in increased to over fi ve million in 2014. A front of Israel’s Washington, D.C., embassy “demand that Israel grant citizenship to some Munayyer’s USCEIO colleague, Anna Bal- and how with Zionism Jews “have turned fi ve million Palestinian Arabs who reject the tzer, some might argue, is the epitome of a our backs on our religious obligations and existence of Israel as the nation-state of the self-hating Jew. Her website offers typical should cooperate with this evil enterprise no Jewish people is essentially a call for Israel’s distortions of Israel, such as the canard that longer.” He often utilizes the dual-loyalty, destruction,” Diker notes. Israeli Arabs suffer discrimination in land anti-Semitic smear of “Israel Firsters” against purchasing. She has also claimed that Arab Israel’s supporters and considers American USCEIO armies invaded a newly independent Israel military aid to Israel a “sure-fi re sign of The BDS campaign, Diker notes, is a “Red- in 1948 to prevent Israeli ethnic cleansing a morally bankrupt policy.” He made the Green alliance” of “either far-left organiza- of Palestinians. During a 2015 appearance distorted claim in a March 2012 speech that tions or Islamist groups,” as analysis of the in Malaysia, she praised it for having “been the Israeli government studied Nazi Warsaw umbrella group U.S. Campaign to End the Is- a leader in having no diplomatic ties with Ghetto tactics in order to “attack and kill raeli Occupation (USCEIO) shows. Founded Israel.” Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” in 2001, the group’s formal name is Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, and it had a Baltzer was most outrageous during a 2010 Mike Coogan, who has written that “Israel budget of just $477,740 in 2013, according to Irish radio interview in which she described views the mere existence of Palestinians as IRS fi lings. The group has received $20,000 how as an American Jew she became “anti- a threat,” and Ramah Kudaimi, round out from the Genevieve McMillan-Reba Stewart Zionist” during her travels to the Middle USCEIO staff radicalism. Kudaimi once Foundation (Cambridge, Mass.) since 2012, East (See http://theinfounderground.com/ wrote that Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian who and $20,000 from the Firedoll Foundation archives/TiU.Radio.25th.Jan.2010.guest.