In the April 29 issue, a spokesperson for the Zionist Organization of America stated that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement directed against Israel is not a human rights movement but rather a movement of anti-Semitic discrimination against Jews and others.
The spokesperson cited instances wherein BDS is harmful to students wishing to study in Israel, American-as-apple-pie companies that do business in Israel, Jewish farmers, entertainers, etc. These effects are real. They are the intent of BDS and are measures of the effectiveness of the movement.
A better question to ask might be: Is BDS a human rights movement?
Israel, over any nation, has by the United Nations been cited with the greatest number of human rights violations.
Americans primarily are aware of the continued illegal (contrary to the Oslo Accords) razing of Palestinian homes and entire villages and their replacement with Israeli settlements. These settlements are built to attract east European Jews, increase the Israeli population, and colonize illegally occupied areas.
Palestinians resisting removal from ancestral homes are beaten, imprisoned, and forcefully removed. So much for the Oslo Accords.
The ZOA spokesperson related that Arabs have more human rights in Israel than in any other country in the Middle East.
This is half true as Israel has two standards of rights and justice; one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.
Nowhere is this difference greater than in the occupied territories under military rule. Here Palestinians can be arrested and held up to 90 days without charges. The military conviction rate is close to 100 percent. Should the military wish detainment can be indefinite?
In the occupied territories trial for Israelis as an adult begins at age 18. For Palestinians, the adult age is 16. Should conviction ensue this difference can mean the difference of many years of imprisonment.
Military jurisdiction does not apply to Israeli settlers in the occupied areas. Likewise there is a disparity in the freedom of movement, livelihood, medical care, etc. Children are jailed and targeted assassinations occur.
The ZOA spokesperson, as justification for the Town of North Hempstead to prohibit business with entities engaged in the boycott against Israel, offered a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting recipients of federal funds from using those funds to express free speech with which the government disagreed.
The Rust v. Sullivan, 500 US 173 ruling was a case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion. So much for applicability and veracity.
Boycott is not anti-Semitic; it targets policies, not people. The BDS movement is anchored in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
It is a human right, nonsectarian, inclusive movement that rejects all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. Boycott does not target people based on religion, ethnicity or national origin; it targets injustice and human rights violations.
The Town of North Hempstead ordinance against BDS is dangerous and harmful it that it seeks to penalize opposition to justifiable discrimination.
If anything should justify boycott it is the several so-called wars by Israel against Gaza. The capacity to harm from smuggled rockets is incomparable to the might of the worlds tenth strongest military.
I say so-called wars because Gaza has no military. To be sure killing by both sides has taken place. However, there is no justification for the horrific one-sided preponderance of the death of civilians and utter destruction of infrastructure including schools, mosques, hospitals, etc. These have been wars of ethnic cleansing.
The right to boycott nationwide is supported by over 100 organizations.
The National Council of Churches, representing 38 Christian faith groups, 100,000 congregations and 40 million people, have called for “an end to the current round of legislative efforts to penalize the use of nonviolent economic measures to influence policies in Israel,” which by United Nations resolutions have been condemned as anti-humanitarian.
Does the ZOA wish to condemn all these people as terrorists? Who should be condemned for spreading hate and Islamophobia?
James Ansel
Port Washington
