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<h1 id="reader-title">BDS and the Eternal Holocaust</h1>
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<p itemprop="description alternativeHeadline"
class="subtitle"><span style="font-size:12px">By:</span> <span
class="itacaput"><a style="width: auto" class="her"
alt="Belén Fernández" title="Belén Fernández">Belén
Fernández June 2, 2016<br>
</a></span></p>
<p itemprop="description alternativeHeadline"
class="subtitle"><span class="itacaput"><a style="width:
auto" class="her" alt="Belén Fernández" title="Belén
Fernández"></a></span>It’s unsettling, to say the
least, that the U.N. should lend its facilities to an
initiative equating BDS with Nazism.</p>
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<p>While innocently attempting to access an article on the
<em>Haaretz</em> website the other day, I was accosted
by a sequence of intrusive advertisements inviting me to
“Fight BDS”—the popular boycott, divestment, and
sanctions movement that aims to force an end to Israel’s
denial of Palestinian rights. </p>
<p>The ads featured a fabricated image of a graffito
consisting of a swastika and the phrase “Jews go home!”
Next to this display appeared the information that “This
is not 1938”; “this is now!” A final incitement to
“Fight against anti-Semitism; Fight against BDS” then
materialized, with a link to “more details” about an
upcoming venue for said fight: the “First International
Summit at the UN against BDS.” </p>
<p>Details on the <a
href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ambassadors-against-bds-international-summit-at-the-un-tickets-24573239220">Eventbrite
website</a> specified that the summit — referred to
here with the title “Ambassadors Against BDS” — would be
held on May 31 at the United Nations headquarters in New
York, sponsored by Israel’s permanent mission to the
U.N. in partnership with the usual suspects: the World
Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel, and
so on. In attendance would be such illustrious
personalities as the Vice President of the Supreme Court
of Israel and the CEO of SodaStream, which was
tragically BDS-pressured into <a
href="https://bdsmovement.net/2014/sodastream-closes-illegal-settlement-factory-in-response-growing-boycott-campaign-12782">shuttering</a>
one of its factories operating in an illegal Israeli
settlement in the West Bank. </p>
<p>The choice of the word “ambassadors” is perhaps
willfully misleading in the context of an anti-BDS
conference at the U.N., as the casual passerby is liable
to infer that international diplomats will be there on
the frontlines. In fact, the term is simply one that
Israel <a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/10/01/how-israel-battles-quot-barbs-of-criticism-quot/">regularly
uses</a> to refer to its propagandists-in-training;
indeed, one of the aims of the gathering as stated on
the Eventbrite site was to “cultivate ambassadors ready
to fight the battle against exclusion and
delegitimization of nations and peoples.” </p>
<p>Never mind that BDS is fighting exactly that battle.
Those “peoples” aren’t meant to be included. </p>
<p>It’s unsettling, to say the least, that the U.N. should
lend its facilities to an initiative equating BDS with
Nazism. It’s like equating symphony orchestras with
terrorism; it just doesn’t add up on any plane of
reality whatsoever. </p>
<p>Of course, Israel’s modus operandi has from the get-go
been to hijack the international discourse with
preposterous logic and a perennial inversion of victim
and victimizer. And the tradition was once again
showcased at the conference this week, which <a
href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-hosts-first-ever-anti-bds-conference-at-un-headquarters/">according
to</a> the <em>Times of Israel</em> was attended by
more than 2,000 people, among them students, legal
professionals, and representatives of Jewish
organizations. </p>
<p>The conference’s opening session, held at the U.N.
General Assembly Hall, featured remarks by Israeli
ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon, who <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/06/israel-commandeers-rally/">denounced</a>
BDS as “the true face of modern anti-Semitism.” </p>
<p>The Associated Press <a
href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6e4e14425fae4df487b82e70c7b7e684/israel-fills-un-hall-anti-bds-conference">quoted</a>
Danon’s view that the singular goal of BDS is “to bring
an end to the Jewish state,” as well as his thoughts on
a recent U.N. Human Rights Council <a
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/un-rights-body-to-create-blacklist-of-companies-in-west-bank">resolution</a>
to create a database of companies operating in Israeli
settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the
Golan Heights: </p>
<p>“With this disgraceful resolution the U.N. crossed a
red line. Can you imagine that seventy years after the
holocaust the U.N. is creating lists to encourage the
boycott of Jewish companies? This is exactly the kind of
hatred that the U.N. was founded to eradicate.” </p>
<p>Now, as Danon & Co. take the U.N. by storm, the
moral of the story — essentially — is that the right of
Jewish businesses to turn a profit in illegally occupied
territory trumps the right of Palestinians to exist free
of a constant danger of being <a
href="http://www.unrwa.org/gaza-emergency">slaughtered</a>
or otherwise deprived of basic dignity. </p>
<p>And if you don’t support the Zionist arrangement,
apparently, it means you’re pro-Holocaust. Repeat after
me: Black equals white. Five equals two. Oppressor
equals victim. </p>
<p>The <em>Times of Israel</em> meanwhile quotes the
president of the World Jewish Congress as decrying the
BDS campaign “to deny the Jewish people their right to
self-determination,” a “basic right” that “every other
people on earth have.” Except for, you know, the people
on whose land Israel has already determined itself. </p>
<p>But hey, cerebral functioning is overrated. </p>
<p>The AP report incidentally makes note of the fact that
the anti-BDS gathering took place “in the same hall
where 40 years ago 72 nations voted to equate Zionism
with racism.” Indeed, in 1975 the General Assembly
passed <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2015/11/resolution-declared-zionism/">Resolution
3379</a> stating that “Zionism is a form of racism and
racial discrimination.” </p>
<p>When the resolution was repealed in 1991, <em>The New
York Times</em> <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/world/un-repeals-its-75-resolution-equating-zionism-with-racism.html">cited</a>
the opinion of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence
S. Eagleburger that the equation of Zionism with racism
“demonstrated like nothing else before or since, to what
extent the cold war had distorted the United Nation’s
vision of reality, marginalized its political utility
and separated it from its original moral purpose.” </p>
<p>We can safely assume that the equation of support for
Palestinian rights with Nazi genocide won’t be eliciting
any such condemnation from the United States and its
moral entourage. </p>
<p>As for current hysterics over the idea that BDS is
intent on delegitimizing Israel, suffice it to say that
the Jewish state doesn’t really require any help in that
regard. </p>
<p><em>Belén Fernández is the author of “</em><a
href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1024-the-imperial-messenger"><em>The
Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work</em></a><em>,”
published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at</em><a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/"> <em>Jacobin</em></a><em>
magazine.</em> </p>
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