Is it perversion? blindness? The anti-Israel BDS movement’s take on the coronavirus
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel would have us believe that everything about Israel should be shut down — that is, until the BDS backers themselves would suffer if Israel did shut down.
The founder of BDS — Omar Barghouti — said in a Arabic-language webinar, April 5, that if Israel invents a vaccine for the coronavirus, it’s OK for the boycotters to use it.
That’s because “there is no problem in cooperating with Israel to save millions of lives.”
Earth to Barghouti: That is exactly what Israeli inventions have been doing for decades: savings millions of lives.
That is exactly what “boycott,” “divest from” and “sanction” want to achieve: shutting down Israeli technologies and medical breakthroughs that save millions of lives.
That is exactly the goal, the practical effect, of BDS: the loss of millions of lives.
From prosthetics to cancer to heart disease to birth defects to families with disabled children, Israeli research from Technion to Weizmann, from Hadassah to Shaare Zedek, from other major universities and hospitals, rated among the best in the world — Israel has invented technologies and social experiments that save human life.
“If you use medical equipment from Israel — it’s not a problem,” says Omar Barghouti, as if there is an “if” here. Medical equipment has been used to save or improve Palestinian lives without stop, even during the Palestinian terror campaigns against Israel. Just read the names of the patients in Israeli medical facilities, during war and during peace. The Arab names are all there for Barghouti and any other opponent of Israel to see.
But if the Palestinian Authority or other Arab states maintain relations during the period of the coronavirus, this, says Barghouti, is wrong. But how is one supposed to “use medical equipment from Israel” if there is no relationship with Israel? Is Israeli medical equipment supposed to drop out of the sky into Barghouti’s cordon sanitaire — his territory empty of every Israeli?
Not to mention, look at Barghouti’s ethics. Under his definition, one may ethically use medical equipment from Israel, but one may not say thank-you for its use, for its invention or for the inventor’s human assistance in administering it.
Selfish.
That is the one-word summary of BDS. To the extent we can exploit Israel, go for it. Otherwise, destroy it.
Is it any wonder that despite the massive publicity that the BDS movement has garnered for itself, it is has not succeeded in persuading just about any entity — any university, multinational corporation, or democratic government — to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel? The anti-ethics and hypocrisy behind the movement is not shielded by all the publicity the movement has managed to garner.
The coronavirus has brought the world to its feet. Of course there is no vaccine against it now. If Israel were magically to devise one now, the BDS movement would save itself by using an Israeli invention, which would be designed to benefit humanity without distinction, but BDS advocates would simultaneously fight against “normalization” with Israel. That’s Barghouti’s curse word. That’s his enemy: “normalization” with an entity that he himself says could save humanity medically.
If the inhumane vision of the BDS founder had anyone fooled up until now, the character of BDS should be perfectly clear. We do not normalize with an entity that we ourselves see could save humanity with an anti-coronavirus vaccine. That’s humanity, BDS-style.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
