{"id":56008,"date":"2020-07-20T01:20:56","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T07:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=56008"},"modified":"2020-07-20T01:21:18","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T07:21:18","slug":"op-ed-the-bds-blm-alignment-implications-for-israel-and-diaspora-jewry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/op-ed-the-bds-blm-alignment-implications-for-israel-and-diaspora-jewry\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-ED: The BDS-BLM alignment: Implications for Israel and Diaspora Jewry"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"block cols3\">\n<div class=\"fixed-sidebar\">\n<div class=\"mobile sala-sidebar\">\n<div class=\"sidebar-content\">\n<div class=\"wrap-orgering\">\n<div class=\"ordering-header-wrap\">\n<div class=\"ordering-header\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"block cols4 ss\">\n<div class=\"item template3 feature \">\n<div class=\"item-content\">\n<div class=\"avatar\">By DAN DIKER<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<div class=\"article-infinite-scroll block cols6\">\n<article id=\"article_118885\" class=\"block cols6 article article-opinion featured-opinion\" data-next_article_id=\"118875\" data-article_id=\"118885\" data-article_url_http=\"http:\/\/www.jns.org\/opinion\/the-bds-blm-alignment-implications-for-israel-and-diaspora-jewry\/\" data-article_url=\"https:\/\/www.jns.org\/opinion\/the-bds-blm-alignment-implications-for-israel-and-diaspora-jewry\/\" data-article_title_full=\"The BDS-BLM alignment: Implications for Israel and Diaspora Jewry | JNS.org\" data-article_title=\"The BDS-BLM alignment: Implications for Israel and Diaspora Jewry\" data-article_description=\"The increasingly mainstreamed BDS-BLM narrative poses a grave danger to the U.S. and European progressive and liberal Jewish communities.\" data-image_url=\"https:\/\/cdn.jns.org\/uploads\/2020\/07\/F200608WH06.jpg\" data-image_width=\"724\" data-image_height=\"483\" data-author_name=\"Dan Diker\" data-article_can_be_download=\"yes\">\n<div class=\"block cols6 article-body\">\n<div class=\"block cols4\">\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p><span class=\"dateline\">(JCPA via <em>JNS.org<\/em>)<\/span> \u2013 The murder of George Floyd, a black American who was killed on May 25 while in police custody in Minneapolis triggered the most widespread racially charged protests in the United States and Europe since the 1960s. International protests over Floyd\u2019s death, led by the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), have generated expressions of sympathy and support from Western prime ministers, legislators, law-enforcement officials and local government. Prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives \u201ctook a knee\u201d in a historically unprecedented public display of solidarity for any civil- or human-rights protest movement.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_56010\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56010\" class=\"wp-image-56010 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah-300x185.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"185\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah.png 470w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/185;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56010\" class=\"wp-image-56010 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah-300x185.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Floyd_ketifah.png 470w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-56010\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An image from a tweet showing a mural of George Floyd wearing a keffiyeh drawn by Palestinian artist Walid Ayoub on the West Bank separation wall. (Twitter via Haaretz)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Jewish leaders have similarly demonstrated solidarity. In the spirit of the 1960s black-Jewish unity in the civil-rights movement, American Jewish leaders unequivocally condemned the Floyd killing. World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder denounced it as a \u201chorrific racist act.\u201d The Union for Reform Judaism issued a statement that read, \u201cBlack Lives Matter is a Jewish Value.\u201d The Orthodox Jewish Union (OU) declared, \u201cRacism is not a thing of the past or simply a political issue. It is a real and present danger that must be met head-on.\u201d Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt, declared, \u201cWe stand in solidarity with the Black community as they yet again are subject to pain and suffering at the hands of a racist and unjust system.\u201d<ins class=\"adsbygoogle JNS_InArticle_1\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8573325940152694\" data-ad-slot=\"JNS\/JNS_InArticle_1\" data-adsbygoogle-status=\"done\"><ins id=\"aswift_1_expand\"><ins id=\"aswift_1_anchor\"><\/ins><\/ins><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>Despite universal Jewish support for BLM, it failed to prevent a surge of anti-Semitic violence across the United States in the aftermath of the Floyd murder. Jewish storeowners were assaulted; Jewish-owned stores and restaurants were defaced and looted. Social media has been rife with anti-Semitic libel denouncing the Jewish state and delegitimizing Jews. In the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles, demonstrators were heard screaming, \u201cKill the Jews.\u201d Synagogues were defaced with graffiti reading, \u201cF**ck Israel,\u201d and \u201cFree Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>BDS organizations have exploited simmering racial tensions by accusing Israel of complicity in the Floyd murder. The BDS strategy is not new. The Jewish state has, for some years, been recast as an illegitimate \u201cwhite oppressor.\u201d BLM leader Patrisse Cullors drew parallels between her view of the oppression of American blacks and Palestinians in \u201cPalestine,\u201d referring to pre-1967 Israel, Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. Cullors referred to Palestine as \u201cthe new South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018Israel as accomplice\u2019 and the new \u2018collective anti-Semitism\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Demonstrations across the United States and Europe have reflected a more profound, more worrying phenomenon that Steven Windmueller has called \u201ccollective anti-Semitism,\u201d in which the Jewish people as a whole and their nation-state have been targeted. These BDS-led accusations have moved from the margins to occupy the mainstream U.S. discourse. For example, social media has been flooded with claims that Jews ran the slave trade.<\/p>\n<p>Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam and an avowed anti-Semite who has regularly traded in Nazi propaganda, has taken a lead role in disseminating these mendacious theories. His ideas have influenced BLM leaders and BDS activists. For example, BLM Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah, a Farrakhan acolyte, accused&nbsp;<em>CNN<\/em>&nbsp;of \u201cStanding with a Zionist Israel that murders and terrorizes the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Farrakhan is not an exception. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist, has regularly incited against Israel\u2019s existence as a Jewish and democratic state in her work as a leader of the Women\u2019s March. Sarsour has also drawn a direct parallel between the United States\u2019 treatment of its black citizens to Israel\u2019s \u201cracist\u201d treatment of Palestinians. She has also publicly condemned Israel for American police brutality, claiming that U.S. police were trained by their Israeli counterparts. BLM activists have also worked to export their campaign to Israel, pointing to tensions between the Ethiopian community and police as proof of \u201cinstitutional racism\u201d in Israel.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_56009\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56009\" class=\"wp-image-56009 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon-300x186.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"186\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon-300x186.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon.png 636w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/186;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56009\" class=\"wp-image-56009 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon-300x186.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"186\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon-300x186.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/BDS_BLM_cartoon.png 636w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-56009\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cartoon accusation of U.S.-Israeli policy cooperation in use of brutality<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Ongoing demonstrations across the United States have reenergized the intersectional solidarity between those protesting anti-black racism in America and BDS organizations\u2019 demands to \u201cFree Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea\u201d\u2014a clarion call to dismantle the State of Israel. The BDS-BLM narrative rebrands Israel as it has the United States: as a paradigm for white supremacy. The BDS-BLM convergence, then, as it relates to the Palestinian issue, has removed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from its territorial framework and has recast the Jewish nation-state as a racial issue\u2014\u201capartheid\u201d and illegitimate by definition.<\/p>\n<p>BLM and BDS\u2019s participation in the July 1 \u201cDay of Rage\u201d demonstrations against Israel\u2019s proposed application of civilian law in areas of the West Bank as part of the U.S. peace plan illustrate the point. \u201cDay of Rage\u201d protesters in Brooklyn declared, \u201cJaffa, Haifa, and Tel Aviv\u2014were stolen.\u201d Nerdeen Kiswani, the Palestinian-American leader of \u201cWithin Our Lifetime,\u201d a BDS organization, declared, \u201cWe don\u2019t wanna go just back to our homes in Gaza and the West Bank. We want all of it!\u201d The implication is far-reaching. It renders the Palestinian Israeli conflict unsolvable and irrelevant, rejecting both liberal and progressive approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian political impasse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The BDS-BLM call to dismantle \u2018white supremacist\u2019 Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>BDS-BLM solidarity first took root in 2014 and quickly spread. The BLM-aligned group \u201cDream Defenders\u201d traveled to Israel on a Palestinian solidarity mission in 2015, triggering broad condemnation by liberal and progressive Jewish groups. BLM leader Patrisse Cullors and Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill led the mission together with Carmen Perez, a Women\u2019s March co-chair. While in Israel, the group visited Israeli Arab cities such as Nazareth, where they underscored support for BDS calling for the \u201cliberation\u201d of pre-1967 Israel, the West Bank and the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Groups acting under the BLM umbrella, such as \u201cthe Movement for Black Lives\u201d (M4BL), championed by activists like Hill, accused Israel of genocide and apartheid in its 2016 policy briefs. These charges were subsequently shelved in its 2020 mission statement. Instead, M4BL watered down its current policy brief, noting that Israel contributes to the \u201cshackling of our community.\u201d In the same brief, M4BL lists the BDS movement as one of its partners. M4BL leaders have not disguised their neo-Marxist ideological positions that prescribe the necessary dismantling of American institutions and the dissolution of the State of Israel. Cullors has openly admitted that she and BLM\u2019s co-founder Alicia Garza are \u201ctrained Marxists.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_56011\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56011\" class=\"wp-image-56011 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers-300x180.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers.png 550w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/180;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-56011\" class=\"wp-image-56011 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers-300x180.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Dreamers.png 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-56011\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dream Defenders demonstrate in Nazareth in Israel\u2019s north, January 2015. Marc Lamont Hill, left, declared, \u201cWe stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupation, people continue to dream and fight for freedom, from Ferguson to Palestine the struggle for freedom continues.\u201d (Screen grab, Dream Defenders)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Hill, a professor at Temple University, has defined both the United States and Israel as examples of international \u201csettler colonialism \u2026 requiring a violent response.\u201d Hill said during a June 2020 webinar on South African Youth Day:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m listening to the radical calls from Palestine and the radical calls from the United States, and I\u2019m super-energized by that. A friend of mine from Umm el-Fahm [an Arab city in northern Israel] texted me and said, \u2018I love that you all are tearing shit down.\u2019 And I\u2019m all like, yes, this is exciting. And that kind of reenergized solidarity \u2026 So now we\u2019re talking about an international fight against settler-colonialism and imperialism and authoritarianism, and I couldn\u2019t be prouder and happier to be part of this moment because there\u2019s so much possibility in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hill also referred to Israel as \u201c\u201948\u201d\u2014to delegitimize Israel\u2019s founding in 1948\u2014and described the Jewish state in neo-Marxist terms as engaging in \u201cstate violence,\u201d labeling Israel as \u201cauthoritarian, totalitarian, imperialist and colonialist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hill and his fellow BLM and BDS activists\u2019 dedication to identity politics\u2019 universalist view of oppression thrusts Israel into the middle of the domestic U.S. debate. Online petitions by various American organizations, including the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, that accused Israel of training U.S. law enforcement forces to abuse black Americans, have gone viral.<\/p>\n<p>Several prominent BDS groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, also penned a petition directly linking accusations of racism in the United States to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The \u201cJustice for Black Lives\u201d petition reads, \u201cthe knee-to-neck choke-hold that [Derek] Chauvin used to murder George Floyd has been used and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.trtworld.com\/magazine\/the-knee-on-neck-long-a-staple-of-israel-s-occupation-of-palestine-36787\">perfected<\/a>&nbsp;to<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ALQadiPAL\/status\/1266675209676959745\">&nbsp;torture Palestinians<\/a>&nbsp;by Israeli occupation forces through 72 years of ethnic&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/blogs\/3809-the-nakba-and-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine\">cleansing<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.middleeastmonitor.com\/20200318-rashid-khalidi-on-the-past-and-future-of-palestine\/\">dispossession<\/a>.\u201d These accusations by BDS groups, though easily refutable by a review of Israeli counter-terrorism and policing policies and methods, have nonetheless become part of the mainstream American media discourse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Palestinian BDS groups exploit U.S. racial tensions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Leaders and activists from both U.S.-based Palestinian and other pro-Palestinian BDS groups have leveraged spiking tensions in the wake of the Floyd murder. Organizations including the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine, Al-Awda, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and Within Our Lifetime organization have exploited frustration and anger characterizing the national mood across the United States and Western Europe by accusing the Jewish state of being complicit in Floyd\u2019s murder. This network launched the \u201cWe Can\u2019t Breathe\u201d campaign to demonstrate support for BLM, fusing black and Palestinian \u201cresistance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>U.S.-based Palestinian BDS organizations have also exploited the protest momentum. Samidoun held a \u201cDay of Rage\u201d recently opposite what their event publicity poster called the \u201cZionist\u201d consulate in Los Angeles to protest the Trump plan and \u201cIsrael\u2019s Land Theft.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The BDS movement has long used intersectionality arguments to cement black-Palestinian solidarity in recasting Israel as the world\u2019s meta-civil rights violator. It has equated George Floyd\u2019s murder with the accidental death of Eyad Hallaq, an autistic Palestinian teenager who was mistaken for an armed terrorist and tragically killed by Israeli police on May 30. U.S.-based anti-Israel groups have also co-opted the Arabic term&nbsp;<em>intifada<\/em>, connoting armed uprising, and injected it into BLM protests.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Palestinian terror groups back the BDS-BLM campaign<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>BDS\u2019s appropriation of BLM protests has also revealed the backing of Palestinian Marxist-Leninist terror organizations. For example, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a member organization of the PLO and a terror group so designated by the United States and the European Union, issued a public statement of support. This tactic is not new. It also occurred in 2014 when the Ferguson violence in Missouri following the police killing of Michael Brown coincided with the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>At that time, Khaled Barakat, a member of the PFLP, wrote in the&nbsp;<em>San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper<\/em>, \u201cWhen we see the images today in Ferguson, we see another emerging intifada in the long line of intifada and struggle that has been carried out by Black people in the U.S. and internationally.\u201d BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, a resident of Israel, noted that he was \u201cproud\u201d that the PFLP sits as a full member of the BDS National Committee in Ramallah.<\/p>\n<p>The current wave of anti-Semitism and Israelophobia in the United States in the shadow of the Floyd murder continues in this vein. In recent years, Sarsour and Hill have been prominent advocates of the \u201cIsrael apartheid\u201d libel, casting the Jewish state as complicit in violating the civil and human rights of black Americans and blaming U.S. military support of Israel for diverting government funds away from black communities.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Palestinian Israeli territorial conflict recast as a race war<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Hill, Sarsour and their intersectional neo-Marxist fellow travelers\u2019 goal is to build a broader political base for the America-Israel racist-colonialist narrative. Hill has called for \u201crebellion,\u201d \u201crevolution\u201d and \u201cresistance\u201d against the American government and its institutions in the wake of Floyd\u2019s death. Similarly, BDS leader professor Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley, founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has called for an intifada in America.<\/p>\n<p>Hill\u2019s infamous \u201cfrom the river to the sea\u201d speech at the United Nations on Nov. 28, 2018, underscored his goal of international solidarity for the radical and racial \u201cFerguson-to-Palestine\u201d linkage. Hill has employed classic Marxist nomenclature against Israel: \u201ccolonialist,\u201d \u201cimperialist,\u201d \u201cfascist\u201d and \u201cracist,\u201d forming the basis for the apartheid libel against Israel, most recently in a webinar after the Floyd murder, along with Palestinian and South African anti-Israel activists. Similarly, IfNotNow, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization, recently tweeted an article encouraging solidarity between the BDS and BLM movements, in the shadow of the Floyd killing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Implications for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>BDS-BLM intersectionality, as the face of the current deepening identity-politics phenomenon in the United States, mobilizes racial minorities against what they see as a white-supremacist established order they seek to replace. In parallel, the BDS and BLM movements share a vision for the replacement of Israel, which they see as an extension of the white United States\u2014inherently unjust, racist and illegal. In this view, Israel is the result of a historical sin\u2014an error that can be corrected only by Israel\u2019s replacement by Palestine.<\/p>\n<p>This deepens the challenge to Israel and American Jewry posed by BDS, BLM and Antifa, who demand the dismantling of the United States and Israel and their rebuilding from the ground up. The rebranding of Israel as a white supremacist entity also categorizes Diaspora Jews as \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d by extension, unless they disavow Israel as a centerpiece of their American Jewish identity.<\/p>\n<p>This new radicalized discourse demands that American Jews sacrifice their liberal and progressive worldviews. Traditional Jewish affiliations accept the existence of the Jewish state, yet they are deemed unacceptable by this more extreme, unforgiving American dialogue. The refusal of the 2018 intersectional Women\u2019s March to allow Jewish progressive Zionist women to march despite their unequivocal support for women\u2019s rights serves as a case in point.<\/p>\n<p>These attitudes have begun to penetrate some progressive Jewish circles. In July 2020, Peter Beinart, former editor of the liberal&nbsp;<em>New Republic<\/em>, authored an opinion piece titled, \u201cI No Longer Believe in a Jewish State,\u201d which appeared on the first page of the international edition of&nbsp;<em>The<\/em>&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>. This was a truncated version of an 8,000-word treatise that appeared in&nbsp;<em>Jewish Currents<\/em>, where Beinart today serves as a senior editor. Beinart\u2019s denunciation of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people places him in the same ideological orbit as Hill, Sarsour and the BLM-BDS movements. Israel adversary Sarsour applauded Beinart\u2019s recent disavowal of Israel. She praised Beinart for legitimizing Palestinian rejectionism of Jewish sovereignty, saying, \u201cMaybe Zionists will listen to one of their own. Peter has evolved over the years, and I welcome his evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This Israel \u201ccancellation\u201d discourse is a dangerous development for Diaspora Jews because it positions Israel, not as a solution to anti-Semitism, but rather as a primary cause of anti-Semitism. The BDS-BLM alignment also erases Jewish indigeneity in the Middle East and Israel\u2019s 3,000-year-old Jewish history in the Holy Land. In short, it spawns a political replacement theology that Palestinian activists have been propagating for years, claiming to be the descendants of the original Canaanites, charging the Jews stole \u201cAl-Quds\u201d (Jerusalem) from them, and denying that the Al-Aqsa mosque was built on the remains of the Jewish Temple.<\/p>\n<p>This inversion of history is a necessary reconstruction to anchor the allegations against Israel of \u201cwhite supremacism, imperialism and settler-colonialism.\u201d This assault against the historical and international legal legitimacy of the nation-state of the Jewish people also delegitimizes, criminalizes and dehumanizes Diaspora Jews by extension. According to the BDS-BLM narrative, any Jew who supports Israel\u2019s existence is automatically branded a \u201cracist robber of Palestinian land.\u201d If left unchallenged and uncorrected, this increasingly mainstreamed and radicalized narrative poses one of the gravest dangers to the American and European progressive and liberal Jewish communities since the end of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Dan Diker is a foreign-policy fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at IDC Herzliya. <\/em><em>The author thanks JCPA researcher Tirza Shorr for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of this article.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This article was&nbsp;<\/em><em>first published by the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/jcpa.org\/\">Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"OP-ED%3A%20The%20BDS-BLM%20alignment%3A%20Implications%20for%20Israel%20and%20Diaspora%20Jewry\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[496,8083,10785,497,2522,8781,8790,8795,8788,2794,1050],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56013,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56008\/revisions\/56013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}