As Jews and decent people of all backgrounds around the world mourn Hamas’ brutal massacre of more than 1,000 Israelis, some groups, most notably within the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, have psychotically defended the unimaginable carnage, suffering, and brutality inflicted upon women, fathers, children and the elderly.
But even at this darkest hour of grief, supporters of Israel should wipe away the tears, if only for a moment, and see two encouraging things very clearly: First, Israel, as it always has before, will prevail unequivocally in this battle. Second is that supporters of this evil have overplayed their hand this time and we may have seen the final end to the BDS movement.
The bipartisan mainstream has long recognized BDS as an antisemitic endeavor. It operates as a coordinated and sophisticated effort to disrupt the financial stability of the state of Israel, and to directly harm not only Israel, but also Zionist Jews and Israeli Jews. The BDS movement disparately impacts Jewish people and has led to discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and nationality, most especially in academia.
The nonprofit and non-partisan education organization, StandWithUs (SWU) explains that “[t]he true aim of BDS is not to protest Israeli policies…but to isolate and pressure Israel until it collapses as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Mounting global sympathy for the BDS movement is unquestionably a major reason that the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust came about.
But BDS’ mask was torn away during these horrors. For years, BDS activists craftily claimed that their grievances lay solely with the policies of the Israeli government. “Criticizing the state of Israel is not antisemitic,” we have heard over and over again. BDS activists insisted that their movement was never meant to harm the innocent civilian peoples of Israel.
In fact, many BDS activists proudly boasted of the small percentage of Jews, including some Israelis, who actually sympathized with the BDS movement. Certainly, these BDSers took no issue with these particular folks, and wished them no harm. They were allies! “We are not antisemitic!” claimed the BDSers. “We have no problem with Jews — our problem is only with the apartheid policies of the Israeli government”
But these days of infamy showed a very different side to the BDS belief system.
All across social media BDSers defended the unimaginable massacres of civilian Israeli Jewish mothers, fathers, children, and elderly people. Defended the rapes of civilian women who were dragged through the streets like animals by Hamas terrorists, blood streaming between their legs.
BDSers defended the kidnappings of young children who were tormented and babies who were locked into tiny metal cages, like raccoons with rabies. Defended a mass shooting at a music festival where civilian teens and young adults were simply being teens and young adults.
The vile defenses were remarkably consistent across the board. “We stand in unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people in their righteous and determined struggle against murderous settler colonialism and apartheid!” one BDS activist group at CUNY School of Law said. “What do you expect when you have someone forcing you to live under apartheid?” said another on X. Nearly every BDSer on social media followed the script.
In justifying the barbaric torture, rape, and murder of Jewish civilians, the BDS movement finally drew back the curtains and revealed who they are. They are not interested in government policy; their problem is that Jews are around and they want them out. This is evident because the phony human rights “policy” platform used to justify BDS directly conflicts with defending the monstrous actions taken by Hamas against Jewish civilians.
Most telling of all, while BDSers defended Hamas’ brutality against random Jewish civilians, they never implored Hamas not to commit these atrocities against Israeli civilians who were sympathetic to or actually supported BDS. No, BDSers defended what happened Saturday across the board — against all Jewish Israelis regardless of their belief system, regardless even if they despised the policies of their own government. Regardless even if they hated their own government.
The BDSers took this position for one reason: they hate Jews, not what Jews do and not what Jews believe. One protester and a Times Square BDS-filled rally Sunday held up a swastika. Indeed, the similarities between BDS and Nazi propaganda are chilling.
That hate and the pretext of the entire BDS movement is now becoming clear to the world and will continue to reveal itself further over the coming days, weeks and months.
The BDS movement is dead.
Lax is a CUNY professor and founder of Students and Faculty for Equality at CUNY (S.A.F.E. CUNY), a non-partisan group that advocates for Jews discriminated against at CUNY.
Jeffrey Lax
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