[News] The pro-Israel lobby is smearing Black Lives Matter as a ‘terrorist’ movement

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200722-the-pro-israel-lobby-is-smearing-black-lives-matter-as-a-terrorist-movement/ 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200722-the-pro-israel-lobby-is-smearing-black-lives-matter-as-a-terrorist-movement/> 



  The pro-Israel lobby is smearing Black Lives Matter as a ‘terrorist’
  movement

Asa Winstanley- July 22, 2020

The global Black Lives Matter movement has become a major strategic 
threat to Israel. At least, that’s how the pro-Israel lobby increasingly 
views it 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-sees-black-lives-matter-major-strategic-threat>.

One obscure lobby group recently ratcheted up its anti-BLM rhetoric a 
notch. Something calling itself the “Zachor Legal Institute” has started 
to attack BLM online for supposed links to “terrorist organisations”.

I’ve never heard of Zachor before. This “institute” appears 
<https://zachorlegal.org/biographies/> to have only two staff, Marc 
Greendorfer — a right-wing American lawyer who has argued against 
<https://casetext.com/analysis/the-felling-of-federalism> same-sex 
marriage — and Ron Machol, an Israeli 
<https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/ron-machol/> “hi-tech 
professional”. Looking at its sparse website and minimal social media 
presence, Zachor looks to me to be yet another front group for Israel’s 
“Ministry of Strategic Affairs”. Greendorfer’s apparent ties 
<https://twitter.com/ZachorLegal/status/638411587275980800> to Adam 
Milstein 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/censored-film-names-adam-milstein-canary-mission-funder/25356> 
also seem to suggest this. Milstein is a multi-millionaire financier of 
the pro-Israel lobby who is known to coordinate closely with this 
ministry which has, for the past five years, led Israel’s semi-covert 
war on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against 
Israeli apartheid.

Without citing any evidence whatsoever, the “Zachor Legal Institute” 
claimed in a press release 
<https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/521261053/zachor-legal-asks-doj-to-investigate-blm-for-terror-connections-and-other-criminal-activity> 
earlier this month that “BLM is rapidly incorporating the international 
terror playbook for its US insurrection.” To support this outlandish 
claim, the “institute” adduced the BLM movement’s support for 
Palestinian human rights in the form of the BDS campaign.

*READ: Far-right Jewish terror group leads hate campaign against 
pro-Palestine shop 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200713-far-right-jewish-terror-group-leads-hate-campaign-against-pro-palestine-shop/>*

In the statement, Greendorfer called for the US government to look into 
the alleged ties between BLM and Palestinian “terror” groups: “We urge 
the Department of Justice to take action to fully investigate the ties 
among Black Lives Matter, their BDS partners and foreign terror groups 
that are promoting violence and unrest in the United States.”

Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace responded to these 
outrageous smears by saying, “If you weren’t expecting this you weren’t 
paying attention.” This is clearly part of a pattern.

Zachor’s social media accounts have fewer than 500 followers combined. 
It seems unlikely, therefore, that this particular smear has had any 
kind of wide impact. The “institute” is simply one of the breed of 
Israeli operations involved in what is called “lawfare”, a sort of legal 
warfare in which pro-Israel and Israeli lawyers use local courts to push 
and enforce a pro-Israel agenda in countries around the world.

Thanks to a combination of lawfare and political lobbying, more than 30 
states in the US have now passed anti-BDS laws. Moreover, British Prime 
Minister Boris Johnson, in his first Queen’s Speech in December, 
declared that his government intends to pass a new law preventing local 
authorities in Britain from divesting from companies involved in 
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

Lawfare has a history, but such laws are often all bark with little 
bite. For all the state laws that have been passed in the US, the Israel 
lobby has so far failed to get a federal law passed by Congress. And the 
state laws are likely to be overturned for the same reason that the 
federal law was never passed in the first place, because they violate 
First Amendment protections of free speech.

*READ: BLM UK accused of anti-Semitism after airing support for 
Palestinians 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200629-blm-uk-accused-of-anti-semitism-after-airing-support-for-palestinians/>*

Nevertheless, it’s no surprise to see the lawfare strategy being 
extended to the Black Lives Matter movement by right-wing groups. Just 
as the current solidarity between Black and Palestinian liberation 
struggles has a long history 
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200701-the-black-lives-matter-movements-stand-with-palestinians-has-a-history/>, 
so too have the oppressors of these struggles often been linked closely.

Israel, for example, backed and armed the white supremacist regime that 
ruled apartheid South Africa until 1994. And the Anti-Defamation League, 
a high-profile pro-Israel lobby group, rang a spy ring in the US 
<https://psmag.com/news/kings-garbage-76228> which infiltrated activist 
groups working against both Israeli and South African apartheid in the 
1980s and 90s.

It’s an appalling smear to attack Black Lives Matter as “terrorist” 
merely for expressing solidarity with another group of oppressed people. 
However, fidelity to the truth has never been a strong point of Israeli 
propagandists. The fact that the latest disgraceful attack is part of a 
long running pattern makes internationalist solidarity with oppressed 
peoples all the more important.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not 
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

-- 
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