User:Engelo/sandbox/BDS antiSemitism

Allegations of antisemitism

Several prominent individuals, organizations, Israeli representatives, and scholars, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, categorize the BDS movement as antisemitic. Abraham Foxman penned an advertisement that ran in The New York Times that criticized Brooklyn College's political science department for sponsoring a conference promoting BDS. In the ad, Foxman referred to the BDS movement as antisemitic "at its very core." Jay Michaelson, however, wrote an editorial in The Jewish Daily Forward critical of Foxman's rhetoric. His editorial mentioned that several leaders of the BDS movement are themselves Jewish and state that the ADL, "with every pro-censorship stance it takes ... loses more and more credibility and cheapens the meaning of the term 'anti-Semitism' itself."

Allegations of antisemitism are based on the following arguments:

• The "double-standards" argument claims that the BDS campaign singles-out Israel, or that it judges the Jewish state with moral standards, different than those used to judge other political situations. For example, Charles Krauthammer asks his readers: "[D]on't tell me this is merely about Zionism. The ruse is transparent. Israel is the world's only Jewish state. To apply to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other, to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one people for condemnation and isolation – is to engage in a gross act of discrimination."

• The claim that BDS objectives are detrimental to Jewish people, either because its call to uphold UN Resolution 194 would "mean eradicating Israel," hence leading "to the coming of a second Holocaust" or because it encourages terrorism and impedes peace.

• The accusation that supporters of the campaign make anti-Semitic statements or engage in anti-Semitic activity. For example, some supporters compare Israel's contemporary treatment of Arabs to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews during the Holocaust and deny Israel's right to self-determination. The Australian attributes BDS supporters with anti-Semitic activity including the publication of material on the internet that denies the Holocaust and promotes attacks against "Jews and Jew lovers." In another example, retired Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz compared arguments supporting BDS to justifications used by Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell in the early twentieth century to introduce quotas to limit the University's Jewish student population.

• Drawing similarities between BDS and historical acts of discrimination against Jewish minorities, such as historic antisemitic boycotts.

Replies to allegations

Several replies have been made to the allegations presented above:

• The "double-standards" argument has seen two types of rejoinders.
  • One approach rejects the "double-standards" allegation, claiming that the situation in Israel is unique in some sense, different to other situations in which human rights violations are committed, and this uniqueness justifies boycotting Israel but not other countries. For example, some argue that Israel is one of the most highly subsidized American allies and that thanks to their [[Israel–United_States_relations|unique political and historical relationships] with Israel, Americans have a special responsibility to the status of human rights in that country. Another reason for treating the Israeli case differently is that the call for boycott is the result of a unified effort by numerous civil societies whose members see themselves as the victims of Israeli human rights violations, and that such a unified effort is not paralleled in otherwise comparable political contexts today.
  • The second line of argument holds that eventually, all countries must be held accountable to human rights standards, but there is no requirement on the question which should be held accountable first. This logic is reflected an article published in the Chicago Tribune, Professor of Law George Bisharat criticized the argument that it is antisemitic to boycott Israel before other human rights abusers, writing "There has never been a "worst first" rule for boycotts. Activists urging divestment from apartheid South Africa were not racist because they failed to simultaneously condemn the demonstrably worse Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Nor were U.S. civil rights protesters required to inventory the world and only protest if our nation exceeded the abuses of others. Boycotts are justified whenever they are necessary and promise results."
• The Ad hominem argument claims that personal attacks of BDS supporters are logically irrelevant, because they focus on individuals' character, acts and/or motivation, rather than on the arguments for or against the BDS initiative in and of themselves. This line of argumentation chimes with the words of University of California, Berkeley Professor of Sociology Claude S. Fischer, when he writes, "It is certainly true that anti-Semitism fuels the BDS movement. But most of the fuel — and the greatest problem for Western defenders of Israel — is the occupation, its settlements and the ugliness it often brings. That is why, for example, one of the powerful voices at the Berkeley BDS meeting for the proposal was that of an Israeli graduate student who had fought with the IDF in Lebanon. Fischer suggests that the right-wing Israeli "hard-core may stop up their ears, shut their eyes and yell 'anti-Semite' as loud as they can, but" they ought to listen to people who have legitimate criticisms of Israel and allow them into the mainstream conversation.
• The human rights argument was made by Philosopher Judith Butler, who rejects the allegation that BDS is inherently associated with antisemitism, arguing that BDS' demands are fully compatible with, and derived from, international standards for human rights. From this she draws the conclusion that equating BDS with antisemitism amounts to the assertion, that those standards are antisemitic.
• Critique of an implied "Jewishness=Israel supporting" assumption. Butler also argues that the allegation of anti-Semitism springs necessarily from the assumption that the state of Israel is the "exclusive and legitimate representative of the Jewish people", an assumption that rests on false "generalizations about all Jews", presuming that "they all share the same political commitments" while ignoring the fact that throughout the history of the Zionist movement there was always a substantial number of Jews who were "exceedingly critical" of the state.

"Double Standards" argument

See also: American_Studies_Association § 2013_boycott_of_Israeli_academic_institutions

In December 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) decided to join the boycott of all Israeli academic institutions; a move that yielded multiple accusations of antisemitism. The New York Times reported that ASA's president Curtis Marez argued that America has "a particular responsibility to answer the call for boycott because it is the largest supplier of military aid to the state of Israel." Marez acknowledged that other nations that receive U.S. military aid have comparable or worse human rights records, but stated that civil society groups in those nations had not asked the ASA to consider a boycott, as the Palestinians had done regarding Israel, and that, "One has to start somewhere".

The Simon Wiesenthal Center listed Marez's statement as among the "Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs" of 2013, using the "double-standards" argument. Following the ASA's announcement, 134 members of Congress signed a letter which accused the ASA of engaging in a "morally dishonest double standard." The letter stated that: "Like all democracies, Israel is not perfect. But to single out Israel, while leaving relationships with universities in autocratic and repressive countries intact, suggests thinly-veiled bigotry and bias." Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, argued that "The ASA has not gone on record against universities in any other country: not against those that enforce laws against homosexuality, not against those that have rejected freedom of speech, not against those that systematically restrict access to higher education by race, religion or gender. No, the ASA listens to civil society only when it speaks against Israel. As its scholarly president declared, "One has to start somewhere." Not in North Korea, not in Russia or Zimbabwe or China — one has to start with Israel. Really?"