Aug 21st, 2019
Every now and then Bill Maher hits a left-wing dogma squarely on the head and it’s particularly persuasive coming from someone who is on the left. We’ve covered several such occasions, even if most of the time we disagree with Maher.
Maher just did it again with regard to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, setting off a fury of recrimination from Rep. Rashida Tlaib and other anti-Israel activists.
As we have documented, BDS is a direct continuation of the anti-Jewish Arab boycotts of the 1920s and 1930s which took place decades before there was an Israel, and the Arab League boycott of Jews that started in 1945, three years before Israel’s independence. BDS is an anti-Jewish boycott repackaged for the social justice movement that was launched at the anti-Semitic Durban Conference in 2001 (not a spontaneous call from Palestinian civil society in 2005, as claimed). See my lecture, The REAL history of the BDS movement.
Maher brought that truth to his show in talking about the controversy over Tlaib and Ilhan Omar being barred from Israel over their promotion of BDS on a planned tour of “Palestine” which including likely incitement on the Temple Mount. Tlaib was granted a humanitarian waiver and visa to visit her grandmother who lives in a village under the control of the Palestinian Authority, but Tlaib refused.
Maher addressed BDS in his comments (transcript via Newsbusters)(emphasis added):
It’s a bulls*** purity test. BDS is a bulls*** purity test by people who want to appear woke but actually slept through history class. It’s predicated on this notion, I think, that the Jews in Israel are mostly white, the Palestinians are browner, so they must be innocent and correct, and the Jews must be wrong. As if the occupation came right out of the blue, that this completely peaceful people found themselves occupied. Forget about the infitadas [sic] and the suicide bombings and the rockets and how many wars.
Let me read Omar Barghouti, is one of the co-founders of the movement. His quote. “No rational Palestinian … would ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” So that’s where that comes from, this movement, someone who doesn’t even want a Jewish state at all. Somehow this side never gets presented in the American media. I think it’s very odd.
Maher actually was too kind.
Israeli Jews are not mostly white (European). Approximately half the Jewish population are refugees from or the descendants of refugees from Arab countries. Israel also has rescued sizable Jewish communities from Ethiopia, India, and elsewhere in the third world. So Maher unknowingly was buying into the propaganda about Israel being “white.” He also mispronounced the name of the bloody Intifada (not Infidata) that killed 1000 Israeli civilians and led to construction of the security barrier (a wall in built-up areas to prevent sniper fire, and a fence for most of its length).
But despite being too kind, Maher nailed it.
BDS is a bullshit purity test. It’s been that way on campuses for over a decade, and now it has invaded the Democratic Party. And despite deliberate ambiguity, BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti and other leaders are clear that their goal is the elimination of any Jewish state in any borders.
BDS leaders consider all of Israel occupied, not just the territories recaptured from Jordan in 1967 after Jordan attacked Israel. That’s right, most people don’t know that Israel asked Jordan not to join the war effort by Egypt and Syria, but Jordan attacked anyway, and lost control of territories (including Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem) it illegally seized in 1948. Jordan cleansed those territories of Jews, and destroyed Jewish synagogues and cemeteries. Before Israel recaptured those territories in 1967, there was no Palestinian movement for independence from Jordan.
The reaction from BDS supporters was predictable, accusations of bigotry, racism, Islamophobia, and so on. This is what truth-tellers about BDS face.