Editor’s Note: The following statement was issued on November 19, 2020 by the Palestinian BDS National Committee in response to the Trump administration’s designation of the Palestinian-led campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) as a “manifestation of anti-Semitism.” Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked issues.
“It’s quite ironic that the Trump Administration, prompted by Israel’s apartheid regime, continues to enable and normalize white supremacy and antisemitism in the US and worldwide while simultaneously smearing BDS, a leading Palestinian-led human rights movement and its millions of supporters worldwide as ‘antisemitic.’ BDS has consistently and categorically rejected all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish racism, as a matter of principle.
“The fanatic Trump-Netanyahu alliance is intentionally conflating opposition to Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid against Palestinians and calls for nonviolent pressure to end this regime on the one hand with anti-Jewish racism on the other, in order to suppress advocacy of Palestinian rights under international law. This fraudulent revision of the definition of antisemitism has been condemned by dozens of Jewish groups worldwide and by hundreds of leading Jewish and Israeli scholars, including world authorities on antisemitism and the Holocaust.
“By this revisionist and fraudulent definition, even human rights organizations that are not part of the BDS movement but endorse banning settlement goods, for instance, as well as some 22% of Jewish Americans under the age of 40, who support a full boycott of Israel according to a recent poll, would also be designated as ‘antisemitic.’
“The BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality, stands with all those struggling for a more dignified, just and beautiful world. With our many partners, we shall resist these McCarthyite attempts to intimidate and bully Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders into accepting Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism as fate.”
Good news from Canada:
https://www.cjpme.org/?utm_campaign=em_2020_11_19_victory_un&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cjpme
CANADIANS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, NOV. 19/20EXCERPT:
Montreal, November 19, 2020 — “Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauds Canada’s decision to once again vote in support of Palestinian self-determination at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The resolution was overwhelmingly adopted 163-5 at the UN’s Third Committee and will now go to the UNGA plenary for a final vote. Earlier this month, CJPME and the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations had urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to repeat his vote, and more than 3,000 Canadians wrote to the government to stand up for Palestine at the UNGA.
“’It’s very significant that Canada decided not to backtrack on last year’s vote, but has decided to maintain its support in spite of intense pressure from right-wing groups,’ said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. ‘Today’s vote is a symbolic statement in support of the Palestinian human right of self-determination, which Israel has been denying the Palestinians in practice for many decades through dispossession, occupation, and apartheid,’ said Bueckert.
“Canada’s vote follows its unexpected decision last year to support the same resolution, which is titled ‘the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.’ In voting for this resolution, Canada partially breaks from its recent pattern of voting against Palestine-related motions, a bad habit which had been established under Stephen Harper. Under both Harper and Trudeau, Canada has repeatedly voted against resolutions on Palestinian human rights year after year, even when those resolutions were consistent with official Canadian foreign policy. This radical anti-Palestine voting pattern has isolated Canada from the vast majority of the international community, contributing to the failure of Canada’s 2010 and 2020 campaigns for a seat on the UN Security Council.”
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains how blatantly fake accusations of “anti-Semite” are aimed at legitimate critics of Israel. His statement is made to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, and is analyzed by Jimmy Dore in this video. Levy’s statement begins at 13:00.
“Israeli Journalist Rips Anti-BDS Resolution Passed By House”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeVaVcyrR_E
My deep thanks to the Palestinian BDS National Committee for courageously defending the universal, civilized human values of truth and justice.
The BDS campaign will come into its own once its appreciated the 2SS is no longer possible, violence is effectively rejected as resistance, and equality under law.and positive neighborly relations are widely understood to be the endgame.
“The peaceful BDS movement will prevail over the far right Trump-Netanyahu alliance”
Sod that. It is the US-UK-Australia-Canada-Israel alliance that you need to triumph over.
This is the delusion of a lost cause. BDS has made not a single dent in the last 15 years, and the “National Committee” that issued this statement is basically a tiny office in Ramallah with some Palestinian-Israeli supporters. They have no significance in international politics whatsoever beyond functioning as a boogeyman in pro-Israel circles.
If Palestine wants to make advances it must have the support of people who have nothing to lose and mobilize those communities, both in and around Palestine. Instead they are having western NGOs and college students beg corporations not to finance a lucrative military occupation and trying to pass off the consistent answer (which has been “No.”) as a victory.
Palestine will be free when there is a massive regional paradigm shift that results in overturning U.S. imperial support for Israel. It would require revolutions in all of the neighboring countries and the will to use oil and geography as weapons against the U.S. and Europe. In other words, there is nothing even vaguely in the status quo that suggests that BDS will “prevail” much less avoid being criminalized.
Obviously, I wish it weren’t so. But it is.