This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case of President Trump’s alleged Muslim Ban. While listening to attorney Neal Katyal argue against the ban, I had a thought that had not occurred to me before.
Katyal listed numerous statements Trump had made in the past, arguing that any neutral observer, after hearing those comments, would recognize the President’s true intent when issuing his executive order barring nationals from 6 Muslim-majority nations. He lays out a pattern of statements and actions by Trump showing that his intent was to have a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and that the current executive order is merely the closest he could get “legally.” This is the same reasoning that former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates gave when she refused to defend the first executive order before she was fired.
It remains to be seen how the courts will rule on this issue, but one thing is very clear: the Left, including the pro-BDS radical Left, fully supports this argument and is championing it in every forum. There’s only one problem (for them): this is the exact argument that proves BDS is not pro-peace or even just anti-Israel, but merely the latest in a long string of antisemitic boycotts targeting the Jewish community in Israel!
While the case against Trump’s executive order hinges on just a number of statements and tweets the President made over the past year and a half, the case against BDS goes back nearly 100 years and spans multiple boycotts that had nothing to do with the “occupation” and often pre-date it by decades.
The first boycott was all the way back in 1922 (24 years before Israel was reestablished and 45 years before the “occupation”), when Arab leaders promoted a boycott of all Jewish businesses in Mandatory Palestine.
Then there was the Syrian-Palestinian Congress’s anti-Jewish boycott of 1933 (15 years pre-Israel and 34 years pre-“occupation) that “just happened” to coincide with the launch of same boycott by Nazi Germany.
Three years later, the Arab Higher Committee, led by Nazi War Criminal and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, launched yet another failed boycott of Jewish businesses.
Then in 1945, the year the Nazis were finally defeated, the Arab League issued Resolution 16, stating:
“Products of Palestinian Jews are to be considered undesirable in Arab countries. They should be prohibited and refused as long as their production in Palestine might lead to the realization of Zionist political aims.”
Thus began the ongoing Arab League Boycott of Israel… except Israel did not yet exist and neither did any occupation. It was merely a boycott of all Jewish businesses in the indigenous Jewish homeland and was aimed at preventing the establishment of a Jewish State within any borders. The boycott was reaffirmed in subsequent annual meetings of the League, with each member state establishing a branch of the Central Boycott Office to oversee its implementation (with mixed results). However as the years dragged on and Israel got stronger and signed peace treaties with some of its neighbors, Arab most governments resigned themselves to mere symbolic implementation.
Which led directly to the introduction of the BDS Movement in 2005. Since the Arab governments could no longer be relied on to implement the boycott of the Jewish State, individuals decided pick up the torch of hatred on their own. They made their goals clear from the beginning:
- Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; (JPF: meaning all of Israel)
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; (JPF: meaning they deny Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jews already, at least on paper)
- Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194. (JPF: meaning they want to destroy the Jewish State demographically)
Not one of these guiding principles discusses the establishment of a Palestinian State next to Israel because its goal is to destroy and replace Israel. And just as Donald Trump made many statements laying out his true intent, the leaders of the BDS movement have said over and over and over again that their intention is the destruction of the Jewish State. Most notably the co-founder of the BDS Movement, Omar Bargouti who said:
“Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
So the next time you hear a BDS supporter condemning the executive order because it is clearly designed to be a Muslim Ban, throw it back in their faces by pointing out their hypocrisy.
