With perverse genius, the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement against Israel has entangled its opponents in a quandary. The problem is this: One can only guess at the ultimate goals of BDS. Not one of the three words in its title spell them out or even hint at them. What does BDS want? To take down Israeli settlements? to dismantle the separation wall? to eliminate checkpoints? to allow unrestricted trade in and out of Gaza? These are the usual complaints about Israel from the Palestinian side, but “BDS”merely signals a non-specific, punitive intent. Yes, its tactics are quite clear — boycott, divest, sanction — but to what end?
One can trace the origins of BDS to 2005, when, according to The New York Times, some 170 Palestinian organizations signed a statement of principles. What has become only too well known since 2005 is, again, the b, d, s, but let us focus on the second of the three principles agreed upon. This was the demand to allow the return of all Palestinian refugees to Israel and to their property, with a “refugee” defined (uniquely among all other refugees the world over) as not only a resident of Palestine in 1948, but also all of the descendants of these original refuges.
This is estimated to be some five million people by now.
This includes children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees from 1948.
This includes people who left Palestine in 1948 voluntarily, expecting to return in short order to a territory with no Jews — they would be killed in the Arab-initiated war in swift victory.
If five million Arabs from outside Israel became residents of Israel, there would be no more Jewish state. The bottom line of BDS is the destruction of the Jewish state. BDS is not merely punitive in intent. It does not only oppose various Israeli policies.
But this is nowhere spelled out in the term, “boycott, divest, sanction.” Hidden behind the term is the desire to destroy Israel as a Jewish state.
Put it this way: BDS does not only oppose Israeli settlements on the West Bank. BDS would not be satisfied for Israel to return to the 1949 armistice lines (the so-called pre-1967 borders). BDS objects to the original Zionist movement, long preceding Israel’s independence in 1948, because the internal logic (and eventual realization) of the original Zionist movement is a Jewish majority- population, an independent Jewish homeland, on the Land of Israel.
The BDS narrative is absolute: Palestine belongs to Arabs; Zionist Jews displaced them; all the displaced Arabs and their descendants have the right to return. The destructive impact on Zionism is, at the least, irrelevant and, at best, justice long overdue.
The BDS narrative is built on a long list of historical fabrications and selective truths. Among them:
• The original Zionists displaced the indigenous Arabs. This is wrong on two counts.
First, Jews are indigenous to Palestine. They lived and built their national and religious identity in Palestine long before Arabs or Islam existed. And the Jews, indeed, left Israel involuntarily (to put it mildly).
Second, the original Zionists did not displace the Arabs living there. Here is how this claim is refuted by BDS: Israel was established on territory that was close to 100% Arab when political Zionism began, in about 1881.
The facts are otherwise: In 1881, virtually all of the territory on which Israel was established was empty, uninhabited, unfarmed, unsettled, unused. To call this territory “Arab” simply means that the only population in Palestine before the modern emigration of Jews to Palestine was Arab. To say that political Zionists “displaced” the original Arab population really means: Merely by being Jewish, a person living in Palestine “displaced” an Arab. Merely by diversifying the local population of Palestine, Jews “displaced” Arabs. This, of course, is racism, and has nothing to do with territory on which Arabs lived. When Arabs in and out of Palestine rejected the UN partition plan of 1947, which would have created two independent states, one Israeli and one Arab, the rejection said: We don’t want any Jews on any land anywhere in Palestine, even if we get to keep all the land on which Arabs live. BDS supports this racist viewpoint.
• Israel is racist because it is only for a single ethnic group.
Forget, for a moment, that many Arab countries are indeed for a single ethnic group. Forget that BDS tolerates racism when it is within Arab countries, and it is only the alleged Jewish racism that exercises it. The question is: Is Israel, as BDS would have it, for a single ethnic group?
Go ask the Jewish black Ethiopians, the Arab Iraqis, the white South Africans, the Hispanic Argentinians and other ethnic groups that Israel is for. One would have to be blind to say that Israel is for a single ethnic group. To which BDS would reply: But they’re all the same religion! Israel is racist!
Really? Go ask the Israeli Jews, the Israeli Druze, the Israeli Christians, the Israeli Baha’i, the Israeli Muslims. One would have to be blind to say that Israel is for a single religion. Indeed, going all the way back to the Hebrew Bible, the vision is for a majority Jewish state with rights for minorities living on the same territory. To which BDS would reply: Still, Israel discriminates against Arabs! There is no equality for all the non-Jews in Israel! Israel is racist!
Really? Go ask the Arabs in the land of Israel, be they Israeli Arab citizens or residents of the West Bank or Gaza, whether they want to live within Israeli communities. The vast majority will say no. But what if some do? They do. It’s as simple as that. Witness the French Hill neighborhood in Jerusalem.
It is true that Israel has laws that seek to preserve Israel as a Jewish state, and to preserve Jewish communities as such. But if some Arabs wish to live among Jews, they do. Meanwhile, while BDS focuses on what it sees as discriminatory Israeli behavior, let BDS ask what happens to a Jew who wants to live in a Palestinian community. He is likely to be murdered. It is as simple as that. Everyone in Israel knows that every day countless thousands of Arabs walk the streets of Jewish Jerusalem without incident, while virtually no Israeli walks the streets of any Arab city or village in the West Bank without armed protection, if that. There is a reason.
Here we have a classic example of the double standard that animates the BDS crowd: what they demand of Israel, or criticize Israel for, they overlook in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab countries around the world. It’s called the double standard. It’s calledanti-Semitism.
Does all this mean that Israel is perfect? that every Israeli resident of the West Bank is an exemplary human being? that Israel’s Arab citizens have no valid complaints? that for all of the love and execution of terror against Jews by large numbers of Gaza and West Bank Arabs, there is also no Jewish terrorism? The answers to all of these questions are no. At the same time, the answers to all of these questions, while demanding better answers and better policies from Israel, do not alter the larger historical or moral picture.
As readers of this page know, we cry out against the unjustified, brutal, unJewish instances of Jewish terrorism — which remain extremely rare. On the Israeli-Palestinian question, balance is required. Which is precisely what is absent from BDS on historical, moral and factual grounds. This is because BDS’s intent is not only punitive, but destructive. It does not want to reform Israel, it wants to destroy the Jewish state.
B”H Do not forget to stay in touch with Canary Mission.
For a few years now, the SJP has been holding enthusiastic rallies, and including non-Arab college administrators and Jewish JVP members, to advocate for iNTIFADA NOW in America, meaning that BDS is not enough, for them. You can see those videos, there. There is a similar group, like SJP, for businesspeople. They are asking as many Muslims as possible to do well in university and colege, and get high positions in law, government, business, medicine, and other top, influential fields, here in the USA, so that they can influence policy and practice in these fields. They would particularly like to target AIPAC, but, really, they are interested in (it seems, snuffing) the lives of any Jew who lives in America and believes that it is right for some Jews to live in what we call Israel, which used to be called Palestine.
To reference another IJN article I saw a few weeks ago, although I do not believe that Ms. Tlaib’s comment about how her people hospitably welcomed Jews fleeing war-torn Europe and the camps where half of our number were gassed and burned, was deliberately skewed, I do believe, given her relatively young age, that she was never taught the truth, that no peace would be tolerated once 1942 came and Israel was established, and, even, a wealthy non-Palestinian Arab offered to make camps for many refugees where they could stay within the borders of the main part of Israel, and train for jobs, and keep their lives together, although displaced, and the proud Palestinians rejected it.
The leadership commanded the less powerful members of their society to rejeect any Israeli offers of aid, so that the new country would not work out, as far as having peace with the previous inhabitants of that land, and their nakhba was forced to become a degrading, violent expulsion when Israelis of Jewish background tried their hardest to make it otherwise. No peace could be had. It was hatred for hatred’s sake, and pride and militance won over all, in the Palestinians’ philosophy and their message to their people, to ensure that their psople should come to hate Jews returning to teh Holy Land, and to view Jewish presence there as an Occupation.
There is no winning, when the other side is determined to make one look bad, whatever one chooses to do, and thus to incite violence and war. Photos were taken and miscaptioned, news articles were skewed, and history itself was rewritten.
Don’t forget that Prague nearly accepted a re-done Atlas of Palestinian or other Muslim origin, with no Israel on the map, within the last few years, until someone protested and Czechoslovakia had to have it pointed out that this was not a genuine map, that Israel really is there, and what was masquerading as an Atlas was just propaganda. They made a speech and rejected the book!
They are doing their best to rewrite history, so Ms.Tlaib likely never got an education on how Palestinians actually treated Jewish refugees from Europe. She is, anyhow, in Congress to represent one of the poorest districts in the country, and ran unopposed because no one with her skills was able to step up to this responsibllity of representing that particular Detroit neighborhood. She may or may not have been directly encouraged to run for Congress by the SJP, but you can count on it that they are very happy, and all it takes is for the stage to be set just right, until someone mobilizes all the Muslim professionals now peppering our higher professions… Heaven forbid… for an event.
Much of the material they use to criticize and denounce Jews among those followers they wish to acquire is very familiar to those of us who scout around… it may be directly from David Duke’s website, ‘Diversity and Freedom’ and an affiliated site coming out of CA, that shares his articles. I do not think they made up the articles or research, I think they just know where to look. And a former Nazi joined ISIS, a couple years ago, and he was in FL, and I do not remember if he killed someone or someone killed him, but from this story, you see that they have shared around some people, too.
A book came out, around Pesach time, 2017, for children. Sold out of a boutique-type bookstore near Central Park, and it was about Intifada, which they translated, for children, as ‘doing what is right’. But, we know from its use in Israel, it means ‘snuff’ – meaning not what you smell, as in tobacco, but sending someone, or many someones, to the next world.
Many people in high places are busy improving the relationship of Islam with the Western world. I warned a family member of my significant other not to move to Teaneck, as the new mayor there is a Muslim who claims his main civic interest is establishing more Halal restaurants and improving the image that Islam has, in society in general. He followed up after a female Jewish mayor who gave up the job with no struggle, being quite friendly with him. I guess Teaneck likes it. They are so New Age, so liberal. (Nausea.)
I warned him not to move there but it seems he had no choice. His wife makes the decisions, and she has a sister and a teenage brother there. They like the countryside. How long can a mouse play in the cage of a boa constrictor? Most mice have no idea what the boa will do once it gets hungry. Rest assured, there are many FEMA camps in the central plains of the USA, far off the beaten path, and infrastructure (highways) is to be rebuiit so they can be accessed quidkly and easily. They are well equipped, with barbed wire, one-way turnstiles, and crematoria. I keep running into this info and the accompanying photographs, on line when watching videos on other topics.
Do you think it is just a theory? I remember when all the tunnels in Israel were discovered after the tragic murder of three bochurim hY”D in June 2014. The story was told after Musaf that summer in 770, about a young woman who had a hairdresser’s salon in Israel, and she told her mother and sister that she heard tunneling underground. She told them a few times and took her to see a psychiatrist and got her medicated, as they were sure she was just ‘hearing things’. Of course, we know what happened with the tunnels. A tunnel was indeed found to have its mouth surfacing right next to her salon.
So, it’s all very nice to sniff at conspiracy theories, but if you have seen the photographs and heard the narration, of factual context, what the camps look like and where they are, how hidden and off-limits they are, one begins to see a familiar story emerge. To top it off, read what was posted by Rebbetzin Jungreis z.tz.l. during the week of shiva for her, if it can still be searched for on her site. In the days before she left this world, still beautiful and vibrant, she was telling her familiy that she could smell the smoke, not physically, bur rather, in a sense of intimating something that seemed to be developing here, from signs she had seen, the details fo which I don’t know, something about how American society is developed. It was an intimation of what we have to be on guard about, those of us who live past the day of her passing.
When I was about 15, in about 1974, I noticed somewhere near the back of, I think, the Rocky Mountain news, on a page with no photos, a tiny little article, that Fred, and then a 5-letter name, is researching how to build gas chambers in America. No explanation was given as to who ‘Fred’ is, clearly people who look in that part of the paper already knew.
About a year or so ago, I began to realize where I had seen the name ‘Trump’ before.
An issue of Ami magazine that was published in April 2016, whose cover story was something like “New Hope for (SMR)”. with his picture, showing renewed confidence. Towards the back is a much briefer article ‘The Klan in HIgh Places’ and one of their top Kleegles, name Fred. It’s based on interviews with a well-respected historian whose estate is in FL, who had the inside story on Kleegles in the WH.
Is this puzzle starting to fit togetheri the pieces of which I am trying to delineate?
Maybe keep this post somewhat internal, and not on Google… as it may not be met with kindly there.
If anyone dares to go on Birthright or Nefesh b’Nefesh programs, he/she may encounter interference and/or false representation to divert them from their purpose, by the JVP.
Another danger faces us. Now, there is no religious exemption for vaccines in New York, and in California, neither religious nor medical exemptions. In CA, any doctor who authorizes more than 5 medical exemptions in a year can go to jail for improper use of his authority to issue an exemption.
In January 2014, I found Dr. Trappler sheyicyeh, a successful psychiatrist who trains others, now, and no longer sees patients, to be very depressed, due to lack of success in getting equal rights about mandatory vaccines. Muslims in the five boroughs had been exempted, but Jews had not. I guess the government figured they would always be healthy, but Jews might not.
Not every child has a serious outcome after a vaccine, but for those who do, and their families, life will never be the same again. Unfortunately, for some, lo aleinu, after a few hours, life will not BE again, at all. What cannot be permitted to be foregone, in terms of ‘preventive treatment’, when the objection is due to religious conviction, affects us as a people. This issue may sully my whole response, and it is not an anti-vaccine statement. It’s about being denied the right to choose, for whatever reason, and is more troublesome as the vaccines become more numerous, with more administrations being required, more combinations being required, more different types of vaccines for newly identified and rare illnesses being required, and beginning at a younger age, such as within the first 24 hours of life, when the immune system is not developed until age two, and thus there is no way for the inoculation to actually provide benefit. I mentioned NY and CA as there are considerable centers of population of our people there, and these are the places where the laws are toughest. I am sure that sympathizers with the SJP who hear of these legislative developments are quite happy.
Torah, Tefillah, u’Tshuvah maaviran ra’ah hagezeirah.
Someone might want to tell those BDS supporters that “Palestine” is not even Arabic.
Good luck with that whole “indigenous” population thing.