The Troubling Implications of Hillary's Anti-BDS Letter
The Troubling Implications of Hillary's Anti-BDS Letter
Friday, 17 July 2015 * By Stephen Zunes * TruthOut
On July 2, former secretary of state and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, a strong supporter of the right-wing Netanyahu government, denouncing human rights activists who support boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli occupation.
In the letter, made public a few days later, Clinton made a number of statements which are not only demonstrably false but raise serious concerns regarding what kind of policies she would pursue as president.
She claimed that the BDS movement was working to "malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people." Though some BDS activists target Israel as a whole, most efforts on college campuses and elsewhere focus solely on the Israeli occupation, particularly companies that profit from that occupation and support illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In any case, the BDS campaign does not "malign and undermine" Jews. This cynical effort to depict the movement as anti-Semitic could be an indication of the kind of rhetoric she would use as president to discredit human rights activists who challenge her policies elsewhere.
Clinton claims in the letter that initiatives through the United Nations critical of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law are inherently "anti-Israel," thereby implying that those who raise concerns about a given country's human rights record do so not because of a desire to uphold universally recognized ethical and legal principles, but because of an ideological bias against a particular country. Although some UN agencies have disproportionately targeted Israel for criticism, the vast majority of such reports and resolutions have been consistent with findings and concerns raised by reputable international human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) and Israeli groups (such as the B'tselem human rights group and the veterans' organization Breaking the Silence.)
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31930-the-troubling-implications-of-hillary-s-anti-bds-letter
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