Jews on Campus!!!

A few years back I read an article on Israel and the UAE. Quickly after they announced diplomatic relations for the first time, they disclosed they would cooperate on space projects (satellite launches, etc). I remember texting a Jewish friend of mine and saying, "I got this mind worm stuck in my head!"

Her answer, "OMG, I saw the article this morning and this has been in my head all day!"

Now the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement of the last decade or so has targeted the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. For some reason they have not wanted to target very oppressive regimes like China or Iran, just the Jewish homeland. Dare I saw, anti-semitism.

I'm not about to call the Israeli's saints. If you want a good reason why, read something like Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman. But understandable seeing it was founded by people just out of the Holocaust, with two words driving the founding: Never Again!

Well, the Israeli's have been going after their enemies from 1948. First, the NAZIs who carried out the mass murder of millions for Hitler. Then, after the terrorist who carried out attacks like the 1972 Olympic massacre. More recently, they are targeting the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, and a major threat to peace period, Iran. They are assassinating the scientists working on their nuclear program. They kill one scientist, and the next day his co-workers get a picture of his mutilated body on their email. The message is simple, "You're next." Talk about a downer. 

Israeli, thank you for doing the dirty work that's needed. 

Foreign Policy magazine has an interesting article on ho the BDS movement had failed. The magazine may not like the fact it's failed, but it's not catching traction.

The BDS Movement Has Already Lost

Where it counts—in the halls of government and boardrooms—the effort to boycott Israel doesn’t even register.

...The BDS movement is an agglomeration of activists, professors, artists, academic associations, and affinity groups who say they seek to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the blockade of Gaza by bringing the kind of global political and economic pressure on Israel that was brought to bear on apartheid South Africa.

The Israeli government, pro-Israel groups, and many American Jews have raised the alarm over BDS. They charge that it is antisemitic and a strategy aimed at delegitimizing Israel by identifying it as a “settler colonial state” and denying any legitimate Jewish connection to the land. They point to statements such as that by one BDS co-founder, the Tel Aviv University educated Omar Barghouti, that: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.”

I find the claim of "Palestinians" to the Israeli capital rather curious. If that city was founded/possessed by Muslims, why did they name it "Jerusalem?" Some of the same American professors who claim the "West Bank" of the Jordan River has the historical homeland of the "Palestinians," claim Israel stole the land. No, they won it in the 1967 Arab Israel War. To the victors go the spoils. Not to mention Jews lived in the modern Middle East for over 2,500 years. Islam was founded in the 7th Century AD.

BDS supporters counter that those who accuse them of antisemitism are purposefully conflating their anti-Zionism—that is, their opposition to the state of Israel—with hatred of Jews in order to intimidate them and delegitimize their movement. That some Jews are involved in BDS would seem to give this argument some cover.

BDS has succeeded in creating significant furor, including within U.S. politics and academia. Yet the reality is that those who seek to bring Israel to its knees by rendering it an international pariah have already failed.

If one only paid attention to what is being reported from U.S. college campuses, one might believe BDS is thriving. In late April, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, Harvard University’s student newspaper, published an editorial titled “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions and a Free Palestine”—a ringing and (self-)righteous paean to oversimplification. The editorial specifically rejected the complexity of a centurieslong struggle between competing nationalisms, identities, and historical memories interwoven with the highly sensitive issue of religion and instead declared a “categorical imperative [for the editorial board] to side with and empower the vulnerable and oppressed”—i.e., Palestinians.

That editorial was met with an equally self-righteous and indignant rejoinder by an associate news editor at the Crimson that neatly followed the standard argument of various and sundry pro-Israel and establishment American Jewish organizations. One former Crimson journalist relays that the paper, which is self-supporting, is now under financial strain, as some university alumni have decided to boycott the publication over the editorial. Irony is dead.

Well children, remember the adults who support you get annoyed at your blatant anti-semitism cloaked as  self rightest outrage (actually leftist propaganda). Ironic, American Jews have supported this college for ages, even knowing how anti semitic it is. In another discussion I had with my Jewish friend I mentioned earlier, I asked her how is it American Jews vote 70% for the Democrats when that party is the worst enemy Israeli has? Her answer was very enlightening. "Mike, American Jews are progressives first, Jews second. And Israeli means a lot less to them than you think." 

Well, hopefully this anti-sematic movement leads to another BDS movement. The supporters of these universities need to stop sending money to their alma maters. These children need a serious experience of Reality Therapy.