Saturday, February 9, 2013

Racist anti-Israel BDS movement holds Brooklyn College conference despite protests

(WJD) Despite numerous protests from prominent Jews and pro-Israel figures, the Israel-hating BDS movement succeeded in holding a conference at Brooklyn College, sponsored controversially by the college itself.

BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. The movement seeks to isolate and delegitimize Israel, as well as use economic pressure to force it to give into Arab demands.

Pro-Israel intellectuals, activists, and politicians vehemently opposed the conference, mainly because it was sponsored by the college and therefore made use of city funds. The JPost reports Assemblyman Dov Hikind saying,
It's the college coming out in support of a vicious, hateful group, plain and simple. This isn't about free speech. The issue is very simple: the sponsorship is inappropriate.
One protester outside the conference said, I come here as an Israeli, as a Jew and as a local concerned. These sorts of things just stir up a lot of hate. And they become dangerous when met with silence."

Conference attendees naturally hid their hatreds behind a facade of political criticism.

"We're not against Jews, at all," one attendee stated. "One of our speakers is Jewish. Jewish students helped organize this event tonight. This is about government policies, not the people they claim to represent."

But the BDS movement is, in fact, blatantly racist; it rejects Israel's existence solely because it is a Jewish state, and demands its replacement with an Arab-dominated polity. That some Jews submit to its moral and intellectual blackmail should not be surprising.

It's Jewish speaker, moreover, is Judith Butler, an acolyte of Israel-hating academic Edward Said, who once referred to New York, with its large Jewish population, as "the citadel of Zionist power" and was a longtime apologist for the mass murder of Jews by Palestinian terrorists.

The attendees were, indeed, condemned by their own actions. As pro-Palestinian activists outside the conference chanted slogans advocating Israel's destruction, those standing in line to attend the conference applauded.