DEMONISATION: distorting Israel’s actions,
which include protecting her citizens above
all else, by making insidious and false comparisons with the Nazis and/or South Africa’s apartheid regime.
DELEGITIMISATION: denying Israel’s fundamental right to exist as the world’s only Jewish
state among all the world’s nations.
The campaign, spanning academia, culture and economics, is profoundly anti-Semitic, destructive and heinous.
Addressing AIPAC in March this year,
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said,
“Most people in the BDS movement don’t
seek a solution of two states for two peoples. On the contrary, they openly admit
that they seek the dissolution of the only
state for the Jewish people… The BDS
movement is not about legitimate criticism. It’s about making Israel illegitimate.
It presents a distorted and twisted picture
of Israel to the naive and to the ignorant.
Attempts to boycott, divest and sanction
Israel, the most threatened democracy on
Earth, are simply the latest chapter in the
long and dark history of anti-Semitism.”
Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) emerged in
the same year as the BDS Campaign. Headed by vitriolic extremists who converge on
campuses around the world, it too is nothing more than an all-out attack on Israel,
inciting hostility, showcasing prejudice, lies
and bigotry of the worst kind, and spitting
antagonism, malice and venom at Jewish
students. In 2008, Alan Baker, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, denounced IAW as
“crude propagandism, pure hypocrisy and
cynical manipulation of the student body”.
When IAW began its campaign in Toronto
in late January 2005, its stated aim was, and
remains, “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to
build boycott, divestment and sanctions
campaigns as part of a growing global BDS
movement”. Like the BDS, it has spread its
tentacles across the world; it has been lauded by Israel’s enemies for raising awareness
of and disseminating information on the
evils of Zionism, the desperate liberation
struggle of the Palestinians and its similarity
to South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement.
This year, the ANC officially endorsed Israel Apartheid Week, confirming that its
participation was part of its commitment
to the international anti-apartheid movement. It remains “unequivocal in its support for the Palestinian people in their
struggle for self-determination, and unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians
are the victims and the oppressed in the
conflict with Israel”; and it supports claims
that Israel is, by nature, a racist, colonial
and oppressive state.
In 2012, the ANC voted to support the
BDS movement against Israel, so it was to be
expected that it would endorse Israel Apartheid Week. Israel has become anathema not
only to the ANC but to various members of
the government, Cosatu, the EEF, and many
other parties and local organisations.
But strong criticism of IAW has not been
muted. Academics across the globe have spoken out against it, wondering why its focus
has been solely on Israel rather than on the
devastating massacres and human rights
abuses that regularly reach intolerable
heights in countries like Iran, Syria, China
and North Korea. Arab journalist Khaled Abu
Toameh questioned how it could possibly
help the cause of the Palestinians: “Isn’t
there already enough anti-Israel incitement
being spewed out by Arab and Islamic media
outlets?” Canadians have condemned it as
“odious, hateful and inappropriate”, a “dangerous cocktail of ignorance and intolerance”,
and of using “the cover of academic freedom
to demonise and delegitimise the State of Israel”. It is deceptive, one-sided propaganda;
it subverts the truth; and it is in direct conflict with the peace process, which is yearned
for by all Israelis but negated and invalidated
by the militant Palestinians, time and again
and still yet again.
The South African response to the BDS
campaign is ongoing, supported by leaders
of the African Christian Democratic Party
and the IDF, and various notable individuals.
Representatives of the SA Zionist Federation
and the SA Jewish Board of Deputies have
challenged government when and wherever
necessary, and have released press statements protesting the government’s attitude.
Those companies in the West Bank which
employ Palestinians endorse the fact that the
latter are delighted to be able to work there
and fiercely oppose the campaign. Yet the
BDS champions pay little attention to the
fact that many if not all of these employees
will be financially compromised and lose
their jobs should it succeed. It is gaining momentum and remains extremely dangerous;
despite support from public figures like Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson. Her recent
decision to forfeit her position as spokesperson for Oxfam, and become the ambassador
for SodaStream (produced in the West Bank)
is indicative of her disdain for the BDS campaign, despite being attacked and abused for
her stance. Both the Canadian and Australian
government have condemned it, as have organisations and individuals around the world.
On a slightly more positive note, SAUJS
this year held anti-IAW protests on the various campuses; and students were bolstered
by the presence of Israeli Ethiopian students
who had been specially trained in the skills
required to counter the hostility. According
to the Jewish Report, Ariela Carno, secondterm chairman of SAUJS, said, “I would be
so bold as to say that our ‘