On October 3 the two candidates for Arizona state treasurer participated in a televised debate where the subject of Israel consistently came up.
GOP incumbent Kimberly Yee criticized her Democratic challenger, state Senator Martin Quezada, for his alleged connections to the BDS movement. At one point in the debate, amid touting her longtime support for Israel, Yee criticized Quezada for using a “Free Palestine” hashtag on Twitter. “Any time there is a pro-Israel statement or post on Twitter or a social media platform, my opponent will quickly note, hashtag,” she told Quezada. “It’s very clear that you do not support the people of Israel and that is antisemitic, it’s discriminatory and it’s wrong.”
“First of all, the antisemitism charge, flat-out wrong, and it’s ridiculous to even suggest that,” responded Quezada. “I am not antisemitic, hard stop, full period right there.”
In recent weeks Yee has attacked Quezada for screening the 2021 documentary Boycott at the state capitol. The film follows the stories of three individuals who mount legal challenges against their states’ anti-BDS laws. According to Palestine Legal, 261 bills targeting Palestinian advocacy have been introduced within the United States and 34 states have passed laws designed to prohibit boycotts of Israel.
Quezada says he organized the event so that lawmakers could learn about the constitutional issues associated with such legislation, but Yee claimed that he was attacking Israel and went so far as to compare the nonviolent BDS movement to the United States government’s interning Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
“This is the latest demonstration that Sen. Quezada has aligned himself with the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Hate Movement (BDS),” Yee tweeted. This is a national campaign aimed at harming Israel and its trade partners.”
“80 years ago, Arizona hosted internment camps for Japanese-American citizens on the basis of their national origin,” she continued. “As a person of Asian descent, I believe we must ensure discrimination on the basis of national origin is never again tolerated.”
Yee wasn’t the only Arizona politician to condemn the screening. Republicans and Democrats signed a memo strongly advising people not to attend because they are “likely to be documented by anti-Israel and antisemitic groups.”
In September 2021 Yee divested all of Arizona’s state funds from Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever, after the ice cream manufacturer announced that it would stop selling its products in illegal Israeli settlements. “#IStandWithIsrael and I will not allow taxpayer dollars to go towards anti-Semitic, discriminatory efforts against Israel,” she tweeted at the time. Unilever has since caved to pro-Israel pressure and have moved to continue selling ice cream in the settlements, but Ben & Jerry’s is currently suing the company over the issue.
In August 2022 Yee wrote to the company Morningstar informing them that their Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) rating system violated Arizona’s anti-BDS law. Morningstar had already abandoned its use of a human rights research product in response to the concerns of pro-Israel lawmakers and hired an outside law firm to investigate alleged anti-Israel bias. It found none.
During the debate Yee accused Quezada of trying to politicize Arizona’s investments. However, after she said she invested in Israeli bonds because she supports Israel, one of the moderators asked whether her decisions have been politically motivated. “..We support companies that bring the highest return on the investment for the taxpayer, and so that is consistent with all of our investments,” claimed Yee.
Yee’s attack on the “Free Palestine” hashtag was referencing a tweet that Quezada posted in May 2021. While Gaza was being bombed by Israel, Quezada shared a speech that Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) made on the House floor. “Meanwhile, Palestinians’ rights to nonviolent resistance have been curtailed and even criminalized,” said Tlaib. “Our party leaders have spoken forcefully against BDS, calling its proponents anti-Semitic, despite the same tactics being critical to ending the South African apartheid mere decades ago. What we are telling Palestinians fighting apartheid is the same thing being told to my Black neighbors and Americans throughout that are fighting against police brutality here: There is no form of acceptable resistance to state violence.”
“Take 10 minutes out of your day, and listen to Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s words,” wrote Quezada. “And always ‘speak truth to power, even if your voice shakes.’ #FreePalestine.”
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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-09-24/ty-article/.highlight/palestinians-are-not-israels-neighbors- Subject: “Palestinians Are Not Israel’s ‘Neighbors’: 11 Corrections for PM Yair Lapid’s UN Speech” by Amira Hass. Haaretz. Sept. 2022 Analysis |
“Palestinians Are Not Israel’s ‘Neighbors’: 11 Corrections for PM Yair Lapid’s UN Speech”
The prime minister is not the first in the history of the UN to give a speech filled with slogans & lies. In UN reports on Israel’s domination over the Palestinians, leaders & their aides can find information to refute them. The following remarks are meant to help them navigate between the details. Amira Hass. Haaretz. Sep 24/22.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid was not the only one on Thursday, & not the first in the history of the United Nations, to give a speech before the General Assembly filled with slogans, lies, half-truths, propaganda, historical distortions, fantasies & beaten-to-death statements. If there were those expecting an original, honest & inspiring speech from Lapid – they are the ones with the problem.
Lapid is also not the first Israeli politician & he won’t be the last to use the memory of the Holocaust in vain, as Israel’s most successful propaganda nuclear weapon. Mentioning the Holocaust is utterly predictable as a tool to silence, in advance, even the mildest criticism of Israel’s rule over the Palestinians.
The problem is that there are too many heads of state in the General Assembly willing to believe, or pretend they believe, the propaganda that Israel is a peace-loving democracy, & also an innocent victim of conspiracies & terrorism. This pretense rescues those countries from the obligation to honor international conventions & international law, & take firm measures against Israeli violations of the law.
Take, for example, the new prime minister of the United Kingdom Elizabeth Truss, who has already stated that she is considering moving her country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The very statement is another prize awarded to Israel for the disaster it caused to Palestinian Jerusalem by cutting it off from the rest the rest of the territory captured in 1967, another prize for its consistent policy of land takeover in the city, for impoverishing the majority of is residents while expelling many others out of its borders. (cont’d)
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Excerpts:
In regular UN reports on Israel’s domination over the Palestinians, leaders, aides & foreign journalists can find up to date & historical information refuting Lapid’s deceptive pretenses. To help them & others find their way through the abundance of details, & to clarify their significance, the following comments are written here:
1. “Let’s start with the greenhouses of the Gaza Strip, which seems to be the most bizarre piece of propaganda brought out of the attic for this speech. Other than cheap Palestinian labor, the settlers’ greenhouses on stolen land flourished before Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 for three main reasons: A regular supply of good water from Israel & from within the Gaza Strip, a continuous supply of electricity & access to markets & ports – the three conditions that did not & do not exist for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“Israel imposes an autarchic water regime on the Gaza Strip, as if it were a self-sufficient island geographically cut off from the rest of the country. After all, it would have been only appropriate if Israel supplied large quantities of water to Gaza rather than the tiny quantities it sells the coastal enclave today as compensation for what it pumps & steals from the Palestinians in the West Bank. For over 30 years there has been excess pumping from the Gaza Strip’s section of the aquifer with the result being too high salinity in the best case – so the water is not suitable for many crops – & pollution from the trickling down of sewage & toxins.
“Lay down your weapons.” This was uttered by the head of a country whose economic & diplomatic strength depends on its arms & espionage industries, which have been developed in the world’s most available & effective lab: The occupied Palestinian territory, whose population resists & therefore is repressed by interrogations, weapons & arrests.
The closure policy, or in other words the severe restrictions on movement was imposed on the Strip back in January 1991, before the suicide attacks, Hamas rockets & the establishment of the Palestinian Authority… The closure policy…but the reason behind it was & remains a political rather than military or security decision: To disconnect the population of the Gaza Strip from that of the West Bank to foil the chance for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders..”