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.”
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.
The BDS movement, quite properly arising out of the inhumanities and illegalities of the Occupation, is hurting Israel. Although its foundation and its success have absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism, the Zionist movement, making much of Israel being a Jewish state, have decided to smear the movement with the potent charge of anti-Semitism.
Because they wage these actions with so much power, they sanitise and supress word of these inhumanities. Thus doing Israel and the Jewish cause a great disservice.