Author: FreeSpeechonIsrael

Associate editor of the Electronic Intifada, David Cronin is one of the authors of a new report, The Israel lobby and the European Union.

He reports in his EI article (below) that the source for the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator’s claim that antisemitic incidents rise after BDS activities on campuses, is the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS). At last month’s ‘Stop BDS’ conference hosted by the Israeli mission to the UN and the World Jewish Congress, EUJS endorsed a call for Zionist students to report their schools and professors, and its president Benny Fischer said that BDS activists are really calling for the destruction of Israel.

.@WorldJewishCong : Will fight BDS differently than before: we want students to report any kind of activity and we will publish it #StopBDS

— (((EUJS))) (@EUJS) May 31, 2016

„[email protected] – if your school or professor is backing #BDS publicly, contact us” – Ronald Lauder #StopBDS

— (((WJC))) (@WorldJewishCong) May 31, 2016

This week, World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder told a Board of Deputies of British Jews meeting in London that BDS is “evil” and even more absurdly that it “has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

David Cronin, Lobby Watch, 20 June 2016

Read the article in full on Electronic Intifada.

Has a senior European Union official been smearing the Palestine solidarity movement based on hearsay?

A few days ago, I learned that Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator, felt that comments she made at a recent pro-Israel conference had been misquoted. So I called von Schnurbein asking precisely what she had said.

Von Schnurbein confirmed that she did not regard an article on the European Jewish Press website as accurate.

The article claimed that she viewed the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as motivated by a hatred of Jews.

After a brief telephone conversation, von Schnurbein emailed me what she described as her “exact words” at the conference, which was organized by the European Coalition for Israel, a Christian Zionist group.

According to the transcript she provided, von Schnurbein told the conference that “anti-Semitism can hide behind anti-Zionism,” before stressing the “EU’s firm rejection of the boycott, divestment and sanctions attempts to isolate Israel.”

“In the context of fighting anti-Semitism here in Europe, we are particularly worried about the discriminatory repercussions activities by the BDS movement might have on Jews and, in particular, Jewish students across Europe,” she added. “Reports show that anti-Semitic incidents rise after BDS activities on campuses.”

Von Schnurbein’s message did not refer to any specific “reports,” so I sent her a follow-up query asking for an example.

She replied: “On the Internet, you will find many reports from across the world. Also, the European Union of Jewish Students regularly report incidents on their website.”

Vibes

Eager to find out about such incidents, I checked the website she mentioned. A search for “BDS” yielded 14 results. None of them detailed a correlation between Palestine solidarity campaigning and anti-Semitism.

Instead of solid information, I found an article in which one student spoke of “anti-Israel vibes” in European universities.

As well as having to feel such “vibes,” students had to deal with seeing posters defending Palestinian rights in the corridors of some colleges, according to that article. In some cases, it added, students had to walk by fruit counters in supermarkets where stickers urging a boycott of the Jaffa brand have been posted or a swastika had been carved into a few oranges.

If that is the kind of “incident” that von Schnurbein is worried about, then I humbly suggest she needs to do a bit more research.

“Vibes” are, by definition, intangible. And this is the first time I have ever heard of anyone complaining about a swastika being engraved in a Jaffa orange. The idea that such a tactic is being widely employed by BDS activists — if at at all — is ludicrous.

I have no objection in principle to having an EU coordinator against anti-Semitism. Every form of religious and racial bigotry should be carefully monitored so that effective strategies for combating that bigotry can be developed.

Yet von Schnurbein does not appear to be interested in careful monitoring. Rather than assessing how widespread hatred of Jews is in Europe today, she spends much of her time hanging out with the pro-Israel lobby.

Continue reading here.

As attacks on the growing Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement become more frenzied – with Israel’s hawks denouncing it as “evil,” fuelled by Jew-hatred and an existential threat – Israel is simultaneously creating a ‘dirty tricks’ unit to smear BDS groups, and turning to liberal Zionist groups to give its campaign a progressive gloss.

Haaretz reports today that Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, Gilad Erdan, has begun talks with the liberal, pro-Israel advocacy group J Street over the possibility of joining forces to counter BDS. An equivalent liberal Zionist group in the UK is Yachad.

‘Erdan, who is in charge of fighting the BDS movement for the Israeli government, revealed that he met with J Street’s top representative in Israel, Yael Patir, last week to examine the possibility of working together against the movement on U.S. campuses.

‘[…] In recent years, the Israeli government has avoided any direct official contact with J Street. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never met with any representative of the group, nor has Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer. Israel’s previous U.S. ambassador, Michael Oren, even boycotted the group during the beginning of his term, but later opened a dialog with its leaders.

‘As of late, the Jewish community in America has increasingly come to understand that J Street is strategically positioned in the struggle against the BDS movement, due to its ability to communicate with progressives and liberals – the target audience of the boycott movement.

‘J Street’s student branches are active on many U.S. campuses and its membership numbers are constantly on the rise. On some campuses, the group’s members have even succeeded in thwarting boycott efforts.’

Writing in Haartez former official at the European Commission, Mose Apelblat concludes that the Israeli government’s response to BDS – well funded though it is – has been “shoddy, uncoordinated and incoherent.”

‘Besides the Foreign Ministry, the lead ministry responsible for the coordination of the state’s efforts in this area, two other ministries – the Strategy Affairs Ministry and the Ministry for the Diaspora and Public Diplomacy – have been charged since 2009 to join Israel’s communication effort. The Foreign Ministry alone has 68 permanent officials, 10 interns, eight external advisers and 30 people at 15 representations abroad all busy dealing with Israel’s image. But all their efforts have failed. Millions of shekels in budgets have either been wasted or left unused. The audit report lists shortcomings in the planning, management and implementation of information activities.’

As Apelblat explains, the Israeli government either ignores public opinion abroad or overreacts,

‘just as it did when the European Union published guidelines on funding projects in the occupied territories (2013) or on labeling of products from the settlements there (2015). Israel’s government often tends to dismiss legitimate criticism abroad as bottom-line fueled by anti-Semitism.

‘Anti-Semitism is hardly a charge which can be raised against Israeli patriots such as the deputy commander in chief and the former minister of defense when they criticized the erosion of the military code of ethics in Israel’s army. Would the same criticism have been aired by non-Jews abroad, they would have been accused of anti-Semitism. Jews abroad would have been accused of “self-hate”. Thus European criticism of Israel can be conveniently categorized as illegitimate, interfering and motivated by hatred.

‘Instead of taking criticism from its friends abroad seriously and reconsidering the actions that might have given rise to the criticism, Israel’s automatic reaction is to act according to the doctrine of “attack as the best defense”, and to initiate new measures whose effect can only make an already bad situation worse. Attributing reservations about Israel’s policy by other countries entirely to anti-Semitism is too easy and absolves Israel from responsibility for its own actions.

‘[…] With a poor international image Israel will suffer greatly, not least from the resulting international isolation, the alienation of Jews in the diaspora and the emigration of Israeli Jews to other countries which can offer them security and a decent living. The BDS threat, contrary to what Pfeffer claims, is real and is already affecting investment decisions, sales abroad and academic cooperation.’

Also in Haaretz this week, Amir Oren reveals that “in the absence of persuasive arguments to counter boycott calls, much less any plan to change its policies,” Israel has issued a tender for a counterdelegitimizer-in-chief. The official tender calls for someone to be the “head of a tarnishing unit, with a 41-43 rank in the social sciences ranking.” This rank is equivalent to a colonel in the army or a department head at the Shin Bet:

‘The demon confronted by the Netanyahu government is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. While the Israel Air Force has precision-guided munitions, the war against BDS calls for new tools. Not, heaven forbid, for changing the policies which so upset many people across the world, who make a distinction between Israel proper and the settlements.

‘Nor does the state comptroller delve into the distinctions among Israel, its government and its policies. He was oblivious to the underlying roots of the world’s reservations regarding the latter, which do not imply a disqualification of the former. The comptroller’s approach is to keep his head down, asking only how much and not why, as if there were a direct causal relationship between action and result, and standards for success. This spring the comptroller published a rather negative report on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance since returning to office seven years ago, with regard to the “diplomatic and media campaign against boycott movements and the expressions of anti-Semitism overseas.” Continue reading “Israel’s shoddy, incoherent and losing battle against BDS”