A big part of our work is trying to bing the Palestinian crisis to the United States, and generate a crisis in U.S. foreign policy, and in Zionism itself; and this week there was good news. The best and the brightest signed on! The Harvard Crimson editorial board came out for BDS targeting Israel, 20 years after it had opposed BDS, now declaring that BDS is a “living breathing movement of great promise.”
The Harvard students’ move is significant because their newspaper is a rehearsal space for establishment journalists; and in fact the editors acknowledged they were putting their professional careers at risk. You will be shunned in newsrooms for advocating for Palestinian “liberation,” they wrote.
How many other liberal organizations are now going to emulate the Harvard paper? Who wants to tell their grandchildren they were late to support Palestinian freedom? No wonder a leader of the Israel lobby, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, immediately condemned the editorial as a threat to Jewish life on campus. Greenblatt’s claim is in line with the ADL’s latest report on spiking antisemitism, which thoroughly conflates anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and it’s a very cynical strategy. By melding Zionism and Judaism, the ADL is trying to keep the Israeli brand from tanking in the U.S.
But as the Harvard paper stated, it’s Israel’s own murderous conduct that is giving it a bad reputation. And the country appears to be incapable of reform. When it is not persecuting Palestinian human rights workers, it is allowing thousands of Jewish settlers to pray on the Haram al-Sharif, in defiance of international agreements (a story that we reported and the New York Times buried.)
Even right-wing Zionists in the U.S. are worried by the fact that the Jewish state has lost the political ability to even look at the occupation. Its plan is to keep Palestinians persecuted forever, while the Biden administration plays chief enabler. Surely because of the major donors who seek to set the rules for Democratic Party candidates — Don’t do anything to “undermine” support for Israel.
More student papers are sure to call for BDS in months to come. The apartheid reports are catching up with Israel’s p.r. So please sign up above to see Yumna Patel’s documentary on apartheid, which will drop in five days. I hear it’s great.
