The groundbreaking Amnesty International report on Israeli apartheid would not have been possible without Palestinian resistance, including the BDS campaign and the Great March of Return in Gaza. In attacking Amnesty, the ADL makes no attempt to substantively refute any of its arguments. Thus the Amnesty report contributes to an important shift in public mainstream discussion of Palestine that would have been unthinkable not that long ago. A line has been crossed, and moving forward, Israel’s attempt to whitewash itself as a “Jewish and democratic” state will likely be accepted by no one other than its enablers.
The BDS campaign rejects Zionism, a settler-colonial ideology that demands a Jewish-supremacist state in Palestine, not Judaism or Jews. Unable to refute this distinction, Israel supporters are determined to erase it altogether through a sweeping set of laws, resolutions, and related measures that treat criticism of Israel as bigotry.