The Nazi Roots of the Boycott-Israel Movement

by Steven Plaut

41t

 

The so-called “BDS” movement is nothing less than a poorly-disguised campaign of bigotry and aggression against Jews by anti-Semites and jihadists.

While its roots go back far earlier, ever since the 1930s the first manifestation of Nazi-like anti-Semitism has been to organize economic boycotts against Jews.   On the day Hitler came to power in 1933 he ordered a nationwide campaign of BDS or “boycotts, divestment and sanctions” against Germany’s Jews.   It was of course only the opening round in economic warfare and aggression directed against Jews.  The Germans claimed that they were actually the victims of the Jews, who were occupying German territory.  Sound familiar?

The Arab countries quickly took note of the lessons from Germany.  As soon as Israel’s existence and independence were proclaimed, the Islamofascist world announced a total BDS campaign, including a trade embargo, against Israel.  This boycott was generally also implemented against non-Israeli Jews, removing any doubt as to the real agenda of the boycotters.  That boycott is still by and large in effect, although here and there one can see cracks in it.  Syrian Arabs injured by the Assad junta feel no hesitation to flee to the Israeli border and ask for medical assistance, which they get for free, and Arabs from the Gulf states quietly fly to Israel to get medical treatments.

The latest manifestation of Boycott-the-Jews anti-Semitism is in the campus “BDS” movement.  Like the previous boycotts, the newer “BDS” is nothing more than a campaign of economic warfare and aggression against Jews.  The main aggressors these days are small groups of campus anti-Semites and brownshirts from the Far Left and the Far Right, joined by Islamofascists.   The recent campus Day of Anti-Semitic Hatred at Brooklyn College was just the tip of the swastika, and was thoroughly denounced by Alan Dershowitz and others.   The same university administrators who would order in the state troopers to prevent any “conference” on the genetic inferiority of black folks or on the mental deficiencies of homosexuals are the first to defend academic pogroms against Jews in the name of freedom of speech.  Can campus Holocaust Denial Rallies be far behind?  You can see a leading British BDS advocate posing in front of an Arab swastika, used by the Syrian neo-Nazi group, the SSNP, here.   The resemblance to Judith Butler and her recent appearance at the Brooklyn College Hatefest is, in the immortal words of Yoggi Berra, too coincidental to be a coincidence.

It is more than a bit ironic that the anti-Semites who are running the so-called BDS campaign choose to adopt for themselves a term that has an older meaning of pathological aggression in those suffering from dementia.  In psychiatry, BDS stands for Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale.   But the psychiatrists got only part of the picture right.   Probably a better definition of BDS is Bigots, Dingbats and Scoundrels.  An entire web site that mocks PACBI.org, the main BDS organization, is a must-see at Pacbi.com.  The original anti-Semitic PACBI name stands for the “Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.”  The mock site defines “Pacbi” as Pathetic Assholes Conspiring to Boycott Israel.

Its front page message is worth citing:

BDS-ers come from the goosestepping Neo-Nazi Right, from the bedwetting radical Left, from the “anarchist” anarcho-fascist movements, from the various front groups for the “International Solidarity Movement” or ISM (which stands for “I Support Murderers”).   BDS is the official mantra of the anti-Semitic vermin and their genocidal fellow travelers, who are attempting to get the world to boycott Israel. The BDS scum consist of anti-Jewish racists seeking the annihilation of Israel and strive for a second Holocaust of the Jewish people. They work to achieve this while pretending that they think Israel mistreats Arabs. If they had been alive in the 1930s and 1940s, they would all have been participating in the German movement to boycott and divest from Jews.

Omar Barghouti is the Arab graduate student in Israel who set up the original BDS organization, PACBI.org.   He was a bit foolishly admitted as a MA student (in philosophy) into Israel’s Tel Aviv University and then decided to show his gratitude for that by organizing a one-jihadist pogrom against the existence of the country that was educating him.   (The philosophy department at TAU is itself a den of anti-Israel radical leftist agitprop.)  So the leading advocate of world boycotts of Israeli academic institutions is unwilling to boycott them himself and drop out of his own degree program.  He stayed registered in the “Zionist” institution, collecting his cushy fellowship handouts.

But the irony does not end there.  Barghouti is not a Palestinian at all.  He was born in Qatar and was raised in Egypt, making him a sort of Edward Said “Palestinian,”  meaning a non-Palestinian.

Barghouti not only hates Jews.  He also hates white people and proclaims them to be an inferior race!  Really!  He is quoted thus: “For some peculiar reason Omar Barghouti, BDS’s leading activist makes some biologically determinist remarks. He for instance declares that he won’t take a lecture from a ‘white person’. But Barghouti doesn’t stop there, he clearly makes a connection between ‘skin colour’, political stand and violence. It seems as if Barghouti is also aware of himself making a racist statement when he suggests that ‘the white race is the most violent in history of mankind.’”  So says the Egyptian.

In his exposeé of Barghouti in Frontpage Magazine, writer Daniel Greenfield reveals:  “Omar Barghouti is a distant cousin of Marwan Barghouti and Mustafa Barghouti. Marwan Barghouti is a major terrorist leader serving five life sentences for numerous murders. Mustafa Barghouti was a Soviet-educated Communist leader and a candidate for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority.”  He adds: “Omar Barghouti tried to latch on to Occupy Wall Street by claiming to represent ‘the global 99 percent.’ Considering how much money and power the Barghoutis have, they are the 1 percent, both locally and globally. Anyone who has seen the mansions of the ruling elite in the West Bank can only laugh at Omar’s assertion that Israel is part of the 1 percent exploiting the rest of humanity, while the influential clans like the Barghoutis are the 99 percent.”

Writing on the Huffington Post, the left-of-center French philosopher Bernard Henry Levi called the BDS “movement” a lot of “crap.”   He explains:

Why?   First of all, because one boycotts totalitarian regimes, not democracies. One can boycott Sudan, guilty of the extermination of part of the population of Darfur. One can boycott China, guilty of massive violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere. One can and should boycott the Iran of Sakineh and Jafar Panahi, whose leaders have become deaf to the language of common sense and compromise. One can even imagine, as we once did with regard to the fascist generals’ Argentina or Brezhnev’s USSR, boycotting those Arab regimes whose citizens’ freedom of expression is forbidden and punished, if necessary, in blood. One does not boycott the only society in the Middle East where Arabs read a free press, demonstrate when they wish to do so, send freely elected representatives to parliament, and enjoy their rights as citizens. Regardless of what one thinks of the policies of its government, one does not boycott the only country in the region and, beyond the region, one of the unfortunately limited number of countries in the world where voters have the power to sanction, modify, and reverse the position of said government.

The racism of the boycotters is not even hidden from view.  The BDS gang are not boycotting any Israeli Arabs and not even Israeli leftist Jews, at least not usually.   In fact they do not even boycott Israeli Arabs who own property and assets in the “occupied” West Bank.  After all, if you thought that no Israelis have the right to own property there because it is “occupied” territory, almost like Corsica, how come the Israeli Arabs who do so get a free pass from the BDSholes, the term a growing number of commentators are calling them?

The other irony of course is that BDS aggression and warfare harms Israeli Arabs and other non-Jews, as well as Jews.  To the extent that Israeli exports are harmed, those working in export industries lose out, and there are plenty of Arab workers and entrepreneurs affected.  Not just in Israel but also in the “West Bank.”  The BDSholes recently decided to target “Sodastream,” an Israeli company that makes fashionable environmentally-friendly nifty devices for dispensing carbonated water for mixing drinks.  The boycott of it by the BDS gang is harming Palestinian employees of the company.

But you’ve got to hand it to the boycotters.  They hate Jews so much that they want Jews harmed even if the campaign also harms Arabs.  After all, Arabs are nothing more than an instance in collateral damage in the holy war of aggression and jihad against the Jews.  In the view of the BDSholes, Arabs never are entitled to any human rights protection in Arab countries.  Arabs need protection only when this serves to undermine, endanger, and demonize the Jews.   In all other cases, let them eat stale pita!


Steven Plaut

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/the-nazi-roots-of-the-boycott-israel-movement/

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