BDS is a war Israel can’t win

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://mondoweiss.net/2016/07/israel-cant-win/


Israeli think-tank fellow Yossi Klein Halevi, writing recently in the Los Angeles Times [“Why the anti-Israel boycott movement is an immoral threat to peace”] would have American readers believe that the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement is “immoral” and threatens the peace of “the region’s only intact society”, while simultaneously boasting it can’t touch Israel’s health and global economic integration.

Yet his reasoning from “morals” rings hollow, and amounts to little more than the shilling of the professional apologist industry deployed on Israel’s behalf throughout the Western media, in the never-ending defence of the oppressive status quo in Palestine.

Halevi excoriates BDS, disingenuously, for making the Jewish state “the world’s most pressing problem” today, while extolling Israel’s freedoms and national righteousness. Of course, his complaint manages to engage in both self-pitying and craven boosterism at the same time – a kind of perverse humble-brag.

No, Mr Halevi, Israel is not the world’s greatest problem – rather, Israel is Palestine’s great, existential, enduring problem for a people who have lived their whole lives under the constant, brutal and de-humanising occupation of this enlightened state.

[FBaggins]

1. Palestine’s great, existential, enduring problem is not Israel

It's Hamas and those who shill for them.

BDS is little more than an annoying thorn in Israel's side. As one near-unanimous vote opposing those bigots after another makes crystal clear.

[aranthus]

9. Unfortunately, that is how the Palestinians have defined the conflict.

Palestinian identity is built on the foundation of denying Israel's legitimacy. By definition, Israel is an existential problem for Palestinians because that is how the Palestinians have defined themselves. Of course, Israel isn't a problem for the physical existence of Palestinians. But if they accept Israel's legitimacy, then they have to give up on a primary founding idea of their nation. They wouldn't be Palestinians anymore.

[Larkspur]

2. Israel is doing to the Palestinians what America did to the Native Americans in the 19th century

Steal their lands, commit genocide and put the remnants on reservations, which was mostly comprised of poor quality land.

[6chars]

3. You like to throw out that word genocide when you are totally wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States

It is difficult to estimate the number of pre-Columbian Native Americans who were living in what is today the United States of America. Estimates range from a low of 2.1 million to a high of 18 million (Dobyns 1983). By 1800, the Native population of the present-day United States had declined to approximately 600,000, and only 250,000 Native Americans remained in the 1890s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Palestinian_territories

West Bank and Gaza total population
1970: 1.03 million, 2014: 4.55 million (projecting to 2016 ~ 4.86 million).

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

4. Thank you for the astute analysis.

As you may find out there is a certain segment of Likudnicks on the internets that are in denial over every human rights abuse Israel visits on the Palestinians and Bedouin.

They are remarkably similar to those that deny human rights abuses of despotic regimes in the present and past.

[shira]

5. Hamas' charter calls for the genocide of all Jews, so you have it backwards.

Israelis have been under constant assault since before 1948. They have a right to defend their civilians.

If the Palestinians want their own land, they could've had it long ago. Ask yourself why a desperate, downtrodden people keep rejecting an offer for their own state (free of occupation, settlements) over and over again.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. One of several footnotes.

It is comically tragic that the desperate racists conflate hamas with all Palestinians and the movement to divest from apartheid Israel.

[shira]

8. Stanley Cohen, author of this piece for BDS, is a top defender & attorney for Hamas....

Last edited Wed Jul 13, 2016, 11:15 PM - Edit history (1)

About Stanley Cohen
Stanley Cohen is an attorney with an extensive international and criminal law practice, working on Palestinian rights issues, who has represented, among others, Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouq.

It is comically tragic that the desperate racists conflate hamas with all Palestinians and the movement to divest from apartheid Israel.

No need to conflate when you make it so easy by posting Hamas cheerleaders like Stanley Cohen shilling for BDS.

[Little Tich]

10. Stanley Cohen seems to be an interesting character.

Do you have more dirt on him?

[shira]

11. Cohen is perfect for the racists at the Mondoweiss toilet. Supports murdering Jews...

What more is needed to know?
He's typical of the BDS movement, right?
Perfect for Mondoweiss, ElectronicIntifada, FreeGaza, ISM, PSC, SJP, JVP.....basically the entire BDS movement.

“Hamas represents the kind of commitment and integrity that is so important to me — the leadership in particular, is comprised largely of physicians, engineers, academics, and political scientists,” Cohen said. “So they’re a people that not only do I share a common bond with in terms of their struggle, but they’re folks who I just love hanging out with.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/terror-suspects-lawyer-stanley-cohen-rants-prison-sentence-n228656

A cheerleader for a movement committed to the genocide of Jews and brutal oppression of women gays.

Mondoweiss fucking loves him!

[Little Tich]

14. I was hoping you had something really juicy on Stanley Cohen - but apparently not,

so I had to do a bit of digging myself:

How Stanley Cohen Went From Orthodox to Defending bin Laden's Son-In-Law
Source: The Forward, March 25, 2014

Leaflets handed out near the Manhattan courthouse, where Stanley L. Cohen is defending a relative of Osama bin Laden, describe the Jewish attorney as a “traitor” and an “enemy of Jews, Israel and America.” Similar fliers were distributed around his Lower East Side loft. But for Cohen, who has spent much of his career representing terror suspects, threats and abuses are merely an occupational hazard. “These things happen,” he said.

And they happen to Cohen more than others.

The trial in New York’s Southern District court involves Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden and a spokesman for al Qaeda; he is charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and with providing material support to terrorists. Both sides concluded their arguments yesterday and the jury begins deliberations today.

At the head of the defense team stands Cohen, who after years of defending Muslim terror suspects, feels just as much at home in Beirut and Gaza as he does in New York and who is as comfortable with leaders of Hamas as with the Jewish friends and neighbors he grew up with.

Cohen, 62, with a full graying beard and ruffled hair, is a veteran of courtroom battles for defendants too controversial for others to take on. He won his fame, and some say notoriety, when defending Hamas activist Mousa Abu Marzook and later becoming a close ally of the Palestinian resistance group classified in the United States as a terror organization.

But for Cohen, who has never shied away from controversial cases or from the limelight that follows them, Abu Ghaith’s case is a first. Cohen proudly hosts a section devoted to “haters” on his personal website. He admits to feeling less at ease with defending an Al Qaeda activist even though he believes his client is no more than a “deer in the headlights,” who happened to be “in the wrong place in the wrong time.”

Read more: http://forward.com/news/195134/how-stanley-cohen-went-from-orthodox-to-defending

I'm still undecided about what to think about him, but the OP is well written and I agree with at least some parts of it. Your accusations are too general and more like simple name-calling, and they don't help me at all.

[shira]

15. Being a Hamas supporter of terrorism isn't enough? For real?

Last edited Thu Jul 14, 2016, 02:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Supporting the murder of innocent Jews makes someone a Jew hater; basically neo-nazi.

Mondoweiss supports Hamas terror as well and they're followed by practically everyone supportive of BDS.

So much for the ridiculous claim that BDS is all about human rights. It's a hate movement and needs to be exposed as such. It's no better than supporting the KKK, and arguably worse since the KKK (to my knowledge) isn't going around murdering innocents, inciting others to do so, rewarding it, etc...

[shira]

13. In line with Stanley Cohen's support for terror, here's Mondoweiss Oct 2015....

Solidarity with the Palestinian popular resistance! Boycott Israel now!
Activism Palestinian BDS National Committee on October 13, 2015 68 Comments

Whether the current phase of Israel’s intensified repression and Palestinian popular resistance will evolve into a full-fledged intifada or not, one thing is already evident—a new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up en masse against Israel’s brutal, decades-old regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/solidarity-palestinian-resistance/

That's clear support for the car rammings and knifing of pregnant women, mothers, and elderly people which started last fall.

Support for terror is part and parcel of BDS, correct?

Also, are you in agreement with Mondoweiss' support of terror against innocents? And if not, why not? I'm curious.

[FBaggins]

12. It's deceptive to refer to him as Hamas' attorney

His license was suspended when he went to jail.

He's only been out for a few weeks... has he already gotten it back?

[aranthus]

7. At least he's honest about one thing.

"In the view of Palestinians, the state of Israel has never possessed legitimacy". Of course he goes on to pile on the usual BS that the Left and Palestinians use to support that position. But no one can escape the import of that statement. It's what the entire I/P conflict is about. The last 70 years war has been a war against the existence of the Jewish state. BDS is just the latest tactic in that war.

[King_David]

16. More Mondoweiss crap , first they support Trump then Anne Coulter and now Cornell West

As Dems vote against Palestine, Cornel West warns it is the ‘Vietnam War’ of our time - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/07/democratic-palestine-cornel/#sthash.q1ir9Wgk.dpuf



The same "Cornel West, member of DNC platform committee, comes out in support of Jill Stein"


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028011443


They trash Hillary there constantly,



This vanity site Mondoweiss crap really should be dropped from DU