I was faced with a choice yesterday.
I could either cancel my AirBNB booking I made for Jerusalem next summer and therefore deprive an Israeli person of my business as well as incurring a service fee.
Or I could keep my booking and tacitly let Airbnb know that the discrimination they unveiled in their new policy towards only the Jews of Judea and Samaria was okay and wouldn’t bother me.
Often times, organisations or people who decide to jump onto the BDS driven bandwagon, a wagon powered by hate and antisemitism and prejudice, don’t always do it because they are driven by hatred of Jews, but more often than not, are intimidated or bullied or threatened to do so.
When South African model Shashi Naidoo correctly attacked Hamas on an Instagram post for being a terrorist group that abuses the foreign aid it receives to build terror tunnels and rockets aimed at children, she was subjected to a torrid campaign of abuse. Who knows the threats that were made against her and against her family and against her friends. It was no surprise then that she backtracked – and suddenly adopted the BDS narrative.
This is the same group that invited Leila Khaled, an Arab terrorist, to South Africa as a special guest. This was a person who was part of a team that in 1969 hijacked TWA Flight 840, which was destined for Israel, diverting it to Damascus where the plane was then blown up. A website for Cape Town Muslims advertised her visit as an opportunity to “dine with the remarkable living legend” alongside a picture of her clutching an AK-47.
In June of 2018, they once again ‘succeeded’ when they prevented Argentina from playing in a friendly football match against Israel. Argentina cancelled their match on reports of threats of violence to the team, their players and their families.
The goal of BDS is and always has been to destroy the one Jewish state on earth through delegitimization, intimidation, threats, boycotts and violence. They do it under the banner of ‘seeking justice’ but in reality it is the complete opposite and even Jews who might be against the so-called ‘settlements’ are not immune to this, because BDS don’t care what borders the State of Israel exists in – they care only that it exists at all.
But the only way to prevent them achieving their goal is to stand up to them. It’s to stand up to their naked antisemitism. It’s to stand up to their intimidation, their hatred, their lies, their hypocrisy. And it’s also to let all those who are sucked into their vortex of vileness know that Jews will not be intimidated.
Antisemitism may have returned to the levels of the 1930s, but this isn’t the 1930s anymore.
Jews are a proud people with a proud country – and we have something that no organisation will ever be able to destroy, no matter how hard they try.
We have truth on our side. And Jews standing together for our homeland, for our people, for our history and for our story will never be destroyed by passing antisemites in the night.
So when faced with a choice about showing any kind of support to Airbnb or not, there was never really one.
I will always stand by my people and I will always stand by the truth and I will always stand by Israel.
I clicked cancel and then promptly deactivated my account.
I’m coming to Jerusalem and nothing will stop that, but I won’t be coming with Airbnb.
