Let’s not kid ourselves: the BDS movement is anti-Semitism.
Many of its adherents might protest otherwise, some of them no doubt actually believe it, a small number are surely well-intentioned, but the fact remains: BDS is anti-Semitic.
Its founders are outspoken in their hatred of Jews. Its aim is to eliminate the Jewish state. Its followers repeatedly deal in well-worn anti-Jewish propaganda that wouldn’t be out of place in the pages of Der Stürmer. The German government is under no illusions: the Bundestag ruled in 2019 that BDS was an anti-Semitic organisation; the US House passed a similar resolution shortly after. Even the leftist journal The New York Times conceded that, wherever BDS goes, anti-Semitism surges.
With all that in mind, it’s astonishing and alarming just how de rigeur BDS has become for the mainstream political left. Widely condemned as an anti-Semite, Jeremy Corbyn nonetheless became leader of the UK’s mainstream left political party; his headkickers, the Momentum group, were involved in physical attacks on Jewish members, and the party itself concluded that anti-Semitism had become “endemic” in its ranks.
In the US, despite the House resolution, BDS is mainstream on the Democrat left. Its megastars, the “Squad”, have all repeatedly praised BDS, while also promoting anti-Semitic slurs.
In Australia and New Zealand, the campus left are solidly BDS. Sydney University’s student paper praised a Jew-hating terrorist on its cover; an academic was sacked for promoting anti-Semitic material in lectures; another was filmed waving money and screaming abuse at Jewish women. Prominent members of the New Zealand government are active members of anti-Semitic social media groups.
So, it’s some small relief to see just one Western student group finally pushing back against this poisonous anti-Semitic movement.
The student union at Quebec’s largest English-speaking university has formally abandoned its support for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, B’nai Brith Canada reported this week.
The Concordia Student Union (CSU) is yet more proof that BDS and anti-Semitism are ineluctably entwined.
Even before its 2014 adoption of BDS, the CSU had long been known as a hotbed of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel radicalism. In 2002, it opposed the appearance of then-Israeli Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu on campus, precipitating an infamous riot in which a Holocaust survivor was kicked in the groin and a rabbi and his wife were spat upon by anti-Israel protestors.
In January of this year, a 28-year-old man was arrested after defacing a Montreal synagogue with swastikas and attempting to set it on fire. He was found to have signed a pro-BDS petition while a student at Concordia, but was declared not criminally responsible for his attack on the synagogue following a psychiatric examination.
In a rare example of sanity on campus, the student union didn’t just drop BDS, it openly apologised for embracing anti-Semitism.
[CSU] posted a lengthy apology to the Jewish community over anti-Semitism, making reference to anti-Semitic graffiti that had been spray-painted on campus and promising corrective measures, mandatory anti-Semitism training for club executives, and “the inclusion of a Jewish perspective in CSU operations.”
However, the statement made no reference to the CSU’s 2014 adoption of support for BDS, which has fueled hostility toward Jewish students on the Concordia campus.
B’nai Brith said it reached out to CSU representatives to commend their “bold apology” and urged them to fully implement it by abandoning BDS.
The CSU replied to the organization saying that it had done just that, removing all mention of the BDS Movement from its website.
I must confess to being a little uncomfortable at the idea of “mandatory anti-Semitism training” and “the inclusion of a Jewish perspective”. This all smacks too much of the sort of Critical Race Theory indoctrination that’s all-too-common on university campuses. Students shouldn’t be forced into mandatory anything: it’s enough that the student union lead by example just by shunning BDS and anti-Semitism.
Still, in this respect at least, the Canadians seem to have shown a lot more common sense than most of the Western left.
The CSU had been the only Canadian student union outside of Ontario to adopt BDS. It had also been the only one known to have actually divested itself of holdings in Israeli companies […]
In 2019 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned BDS, calling it a form of anti-Semitism that intimidated Jewish students on Canadian campuses.
United With Israel
It’s not often that I find positive things to say about Trudeau, but that’s undoubtedly one of them.
Let’s see if his wonder-twin sidekick, Jacinda Ardern, will have the guts to make the same call.
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