Israel’s $72m war chest to fight BDS comes to Brussels
In its ongoing battle against the international Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) campaign Israel is pushing for European political
parties to declare the movement “fundamentally anti-Semitic”. The latest
drive saw Israel’s Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Ze’ev Elkin,
attending a conference in Brussels backed by the Israeli government
which proposed a text for prospective MEPs and political parties to sign
up to before European elections in May next year.
The text, the Guardian reported, urges European parties to adopt the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) “working
definition of anti-Semitism” and exclude from government any politicians
or parties that breach it.
Most controversially, one of the red lines – based on a resolution
adopted by Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in Germany in 2016
– calls on “all political parties to pass a binding resolution
rejecting BDS activities as fundamentally anti-Semitic”.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the founder of the European Jewish Association,
an umbrella group of organisations that is co-organising the conference
with the Europe Israel Public Affairs (EIPA) group was reported by the
Guardian saying: “These ‘red lines’ when passed will represent not our
line in the sand but our line in the concrete, and serve as a wake-up
call to politicians that the very future of Jewish Europe is on the line
here.”
The Brussels conference marks another escalation in Israel’s war against
BDS. Having ignored the campaign in the past, Israel is reported to
have set aside a war chest of $72 million to counter the global BDS
campaign, which has shown no sign of tiring as Israel continues with its
occupation of Palestine.
Draconian laws, described by Israel’s critics as an attack on democracy
and free speech, have been adopted by the Israeli Knesset to slow the
rise of BDS. Last year it passed a law barring supporters of the
campaign into the country.
The move has been condemned by Israel’s critics. “I reject the unceasing
attempts to amalgamate this Palestinian-led movement with
antisemitism,” said Margrete Auken, the vice-chair of the European
parliament’s delegation for relations with Palestine who admitted that
she did not support the BDS campaign but she opposed the attempt to
silence peaceful objection to Israel.
“There is an evident wish to silence BDS advocates in order to protect
the illegal policies of annexation and dispossession of the Netanyahu
government. Criminalising and repressing the legitimate expression of
free speech cannot be accepted in our societies,” added Auken.
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