The anti-BDS Movement in America just changed

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement is a ‘Palestinian Cause’-based movement that aims to destroy Israel (Dan Diker, “Unmasking BDS: Radical Roots, Extremist Ends”, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, no date). It does this by seeking a perverted ‘justice’ for ‘Palestinians’--a ‘people’ which never existed.

‘Palestinian’ ‘justice’ is perverted because it isn’t based on fairness. It isn’t based of equality. It isn’t based on ‘the absence of prejudice’. It’s based upon Jew-hate. It demands that the sovereign Jewish Israel be erased in order to create in its stead an Islamic ‘Palestine’.

BDS isn’t justice. It’s part of the war to destroy Israel.

One BDS supporter, Ahmed Moor, is a Palestinian-American author and campaigner. He’s written: “I view the BDS movement as a long-term project with radically transformative potential. I believe that the ultimate success of the BDS movement will be coincident with the ultimate success of the Palestinian enfranchisement and equal rights movement. In other words, BDS is not another step on the way to the final showdown; BDS is The Final Showdown….This belief grows directly from the conviction that nothing resembling the ‘two-state solution’ will ever come into being. Ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish state itself” (ibid).

If you don’t believe that BDS seeks to ‘upend’ Israel itself, read through the website, Palestinian Media Watch. There, you’ll see how the Palestinian Authority (the rulers of the ‘Palestinian people’) uses its media, clergy, social programs, Facebook page and education system to promote this goal.

BDS is about destruction, not justice or equality. It’s an evil cloaked in ‘justice’ wrapped in hate.

It’s active on college campuses all across America. It poisons the minds of your children—and then attacks them for being Jewish. Its protests promote the hatred of Israel. Its advocates provoke anti-Semitic incidents against Jews.

One example of BDS hate in action got reported recently by a ‘Palestinian’, Bassam Eid, who had travelled to South Africa to talk about ‘peace’. In a speech at the University of Johannesburg, he criticized BDS. He has written that as soon as he had criticized BDS, “my talk was disrupted by students wearing BDS and other radical T-shirts. They interrupted me and did not allow me to continue speaking, and in the end the event had to be abandoned. As a campaigner for peace and human rights activist, I am used to hostile reactions from those who disagree with my standpoint. However, even in my own country, I have never witnessed the kind of raw hatred and sheer unreasoning aggression that confronted me on this occasion (Bassam Eid, “The Palestinian case against BDS,” The Third Narrative, June 25, 2015).

BDS advocates marinate in a hateful stew of twisted emotion—and there aren’t a lot of anti-BDS players to fight that twisted emotion. At least, that’s what a google-search suggests.

But those who would resist BDS are beginning to stand up. They’re beginning to make a difference. For example, we know that both state governments and Congress have begun to act against BDS. Anti-BDS activists in four states and the US Congress have succeeded in having legislatures pass anti-BDS Resolutions. Anti-BDS activists in a total of 34 states and 6 counties in the US have also begun to push for more anti-BDS Resolutions (“pjtn congratulates New York State Assembly and Pennsylvania House of Representatives on passing anti-BDS Resolutions”, ptjn .org, June 29, 2015).

This is a major advancement in the anti-BDS fight. Of course, you should note that a ‘Resolution’ passed by a legislative body is a non-binding vote. It simply promotes a ‘state-of-the-legislature’ opinion about an issue. It doesn’t actually do anything.

What would make a more effective anti-BDS statement would be laws passed by legislative bodies. But so far, no legislative body has done that—until now.

On July 23, 2015, the 99^th General Assembly of the State of Illinois passed Public Act 99-0128. This Public Act amends the Illinois State Pension Code. According to this amendment,  the Illinois State Pension is henceforth prohibited from doing any transactions with companies that boycott Israel. As defined by this amendment, ‘Boycott Israel’ refers to companies that are “engaging in actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with the State of Israel or companies based in the State of Israel or in territories controlled by the State of Israel” (ibid).

This anti-BDS prohibition applies to publicly traded securities, mutual funds and ‘private market funds’ that are not publicly traded (ibid).  

Beginning January 1, 2016, the Illinois Investment Policy board must actively seek to identify companies that boycott Israel. That board must retain “an independent research firm to identify” companies that boycott Israel (ibid). If, after proper notification to the companies affected, those companies continue to boycott Israel, the Investment Policy board will divest those companies from the Illinois Pension account (ibid).

Illinois is the first state to pass a law to boycott companies that boycott Israel. Will the passage of the Illinois anti-BDS law be the game-changer that destroys BDS in America?

Stay tuned.