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This Canadian-Jewish Activist Wants to Boycott Israel; Here’s What She Gets Wrong
In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Canadian-Jewish public personality Naomi Klein advocates for the strengthening of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
According to Klein, Israel’s current war against Hamas in Gaza is further evidence of the Jewish state’s acting with “impunity,” and it is only by widening the influence of the BDS movement that the international community can rein in what she perceives to be Israel’s wrongdoings.
However, to make her case, Klein relies on a whitewashing of the BDS movement, misrepresentations of Israel’s military activities, and false allegations of Israeli apartheid.
Naomi Klein presents BDS as a Palestinian-led movement that seeks to isolate Israel until it “complies with international law and universal principle of human rights.”
For Klein and other proponents of BDS, the movement’s damaging boycotts of the Jewish state and international corporations that do business with it will ultimately force foreign governments to sanction Israel, similar to the campaign against Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.
However, while Klein seeks to present BDS as this virtuous movement seeking only to bring Israel into lockstep with the international community, the reality is much more sinister.
Several BDS leaders have been unabashedly quoted as stating the ultimate end goal of the movement is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the BDS movement, who is presented in Klein’s piece as a moral voice against injustice, has been recorded in the past saying, “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine” and even going so far as to claim that Palestinians have a right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance.”
Thus, it’s clear that it’s not trumped-up charges of Israeli violations of international law that BDS opposes. It’s Israel’s existence as a Jewish state that drives BDS’s international campaigns.
Klein also makes several misleading statements that serve to glorify the boycott movement.
For example, in touting the movement’s righteousness, she claims that BDS is “very clear that it is not calling for individual Israelis to be boycotted because they are Israeli…,” creating the impression that BDS is only focused on boycotting Israeli institutions.
However, a closer look at the movement’s boycott guidelines shows that the BDS National Committee allows for “common sense” boycotts of Israeli individuals that go beyond the scope of its boycott criteria. According to these guidelines, more or less any Israeli individual who has not actively denounced the Jewish state can be rightfully boycotted.
Similarly, Klein seeks to raise the image of the BDS movement by highlighting some of its latest “wins,” pointing to the termination of Puma sportswear’s sponsorship of the Israeli national soccer team, an “exodus of artists” from an Italian comics festival that was co-sponsored by the Israeli embassy, and the impact of a boycott against McDonald’s on the fast food giant’s revenue.
However, the fly in the ointment for these “wins” is that Puma announced its decision had nothing to do with BDS; the “exodus” from the Lucca comics festival was limited to eight artists and organizations (including Amnesty International); and the McDonald’s boycott mostly affected countries which have no relations with Israel.
For Naomi Klein, the BDS movement is necessary to stop Israel’s “reign of impunity,” which allows it to act without restraint against the Palestinian people.
However, Klein’s skewed portrait of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is only made possible by her complete revision of history, which finds Israel guilty of all sins while removing all agency from the Palestinians and absolving them of all misconduct.
Klein writes that her support for BDS began after Operation Cast Lead in late 2008, when “Israel had unleashed a shocking new stage of mass killing in the Gaza Strip … It killed 1,400 Palestinians in 22 days; the number of casualties on the Israeli side was 13.”
What’s missing from this account is the fact that the operation began when Hamas unleashed rocket salvos aimed at the Jewish state and refused to heed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s call for a cessation of this escalation in hostilities.
As opposed to Klein’s characterization, Operation Cast Lead was not a “shocking new stage of mass killing,” but was rather a defensive war launched against a genocidal terror organization that had embedded itself within civilian areas.
Similarly, Naomi Klein describes Israel’s military strategy following 2008 as a “murderous new policy that Israeli military officials casually referred to as ‘mowing the grass’: every couple of years brought a fresh bombing campaign, killing hundreds of Palestinians or, in the case of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, more than 2,000, including 526 children.”
Once again, this characterization can only be made by completely ignoring Hamas’ activities during that time.
“Mowing the grass” does not refer to the casual indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians, but rather an Israeli strategy of periodically reducing Hamas’ potential to harm Israelis while not engaging in an extended war to uproot the terror organization entirely.
Like Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge was a defensive war in response to Hamas’ murder of three Israeli teens and an increase in rocket fire directed at Israeli civilians.
The only time that Naomi Klein gives any agency to Hamas in her piece is in reference to its atrocities on October 7.
However, this is only mentioned so she can make her real point: Israel is exploiting Hamas’ attack in order to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Despite Israel’s being forced into this war by Hamas’ unprecedented atrocities, despite the IDF’s continued attempts to lessen Palestinian civilian casualties, and despite Hamas’ cynical exploitation of Gazans’ civilian infrastructure, the only things that Naomi Klein sees are Israeli “transgressions” of international law.
It is these transgressions that must be punished by international sanctions driven by the BDS movement.
Along with Israel’s military activities, another crime that Naomi Klein accuses the Jewish state of is “apartheid.”
Klein points to studies conducted in the last few years by B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, all of which accuse Israel of implementing an apartheid regime in the West Bank.
However, as pointed out by NGO Monitor, these claims are based on a re-definition of the term “apartheid,” on zero appreciation for the complexities of the Israeli security context, and on a misrepresentation of Israeli policies.
Klein even goes so far as to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid in its pre-1967 borders, basing itself on the controversial Palestinian NGO Al-Haq.
Perhaps no rebuttal of this ludicrous claim is better made than by Mansour Abbas, an Arab-Israeli politician who, in 2022, while sitting in the previous Israeli government coalition, vocally opposed the use of the “apartheid” moniker in relation to Israel.
In 2010, roughly a year after Naomi Klein first came out in support of BDS, Eran Shayshon coined the term “Kleinism” in a column for the Israel newspaper Haaretz.
According to Shayshon, “Kleinism” is:
a simplistic, artificial view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has led many who consider themselves human-rights activists to focus their criticism nearly exclusively on Israel. It brands Israel as the new apartheid state, so it can do no right and its adversaries no wrong. It frames Israel as uninterested in peace or in ending the occupation. It ignores any structural obstacles to peace unrelated to Israel, the most obvious being the sharp divisions among the Palestinians.
Thus, “Kleinists” seem to have concluded that one-sided criticism of Israel is the best way to promote peace, and that pressurizing the state with all available means, including BDS, is both legitimate and effective.
In the almost 14 years since the term was first coined, it appears that the overly simplistic and, quite frankly, dangerous “Kleinist” point of view still has an audience in certain Western circles, including The Guardian.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post This Canadian-Jewish Activist Wants to Boycott Israel; Here’s What She Gets Wrong first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust
Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June, 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Right-wing American political commentator and YouTube content creator Candace Owens has been denied a visa to enter New Zealand because she was banned from the nearby country Australia, immigration officials reportedly said on Thursday.
Owens was scheduled to embark on her first speaking tour across Australia and New Zealand in February and March of next year. The tour includes a stop in Auckland, New Zealand, on Feb. 28 and tickets remain on sale online.
Australia rejected her request for a visa last month. Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke said the decision was made because of Owens’s past remarks, including her apparent denial that Nazis forcibly did medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about [Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef] Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” Burke said at the time. “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.
Jock Gilray, a spokesperson for New Zealand’s immigration agency, said on Thursday that Owens was refused an entertainer’s work permit for New Zealand because visas legally cannot be granted to someone who have been banned from another country, The Associated Press reported on Thursday. New Zealand officials did not refer to Owens’s past comments when announcing the denial of her visa.
Owens and the Australia-based promoter behind her speaking tour, Rocksman, have yet to comment on news regarding the ban from New Zealand but said in October that they will file a legal appeal to a federal judge in response to the ban from Australia. Owens commented on Burke’s decision to deny her a visa for Australia and blamed it partially on the alleged influence of the global “Zionist media empire.”
Owens, who has over 3 million subscribers on YouTube and hosts the podcast titled “Candace,” has promoted conspiracy theories and made numerous antisemitic comments about Israel, Jews, Zionists, and the Holocaust. She has also made controversial comments against Black Lives Matter, feminism, vaccines, and immigration.
The post Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Bus Attacked in West Bank, At Least Eight Injured
Israeli police officer works at the scene of a shooting attack near the Jewish settlement of Ariel, in the West Bank, Nov. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
A Palestinian opened fire on a Tel Aviv-bound Israeli bus near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank on Friday, wounding at least eight people before he was killed by Israeli troops, the Israeli military said.
Israel‘s MDA medical service said four people suffered gunshot wounds, with three in a serious condition, and four others were hurt by flying glass.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the shooter as a 46-year-old local man. Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said he belonged to the terrorist group.
Violence has surged across the West Bank since the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza in October last year.
In the first six months of 2024, the West Bank experienced more than 500 Arab terrorist attacks each month on average, according to data made public by Hatzalah Judea and Samaria (Rescuers Without Borders).
Dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian street attacks, Israeli authorities say, while hundreds of Palestinians — including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths, and civilian bystanders — have died in clashes with Israeli security forces.
The post Israeli Bus Attacked in West Bank, At Least Eight Injured first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Winds Are Blowing Agains the Jewish People; But the Response to Chaos and Violent Protests Could Lead to a Reversal
A Torah scroll is seen on display at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, Israel, April 16, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen.
People are asking why we are now experiencing such a tsunami of hatred — a kind of Ma Nishtana moment. There are very different factors that have come together to create a perfect storm of conflicting world and ethical values. Old certainties have died, and new ones are flourishing, and not always for the best. One can look at this from different perspectives — the historical, the social, the religious, and the long-term instability of societies and governments.
For thousands of years, the fate and role of societies have been determined by the people who exercised power and what religion or gods they adhered to. Power rose or fell violently and unpredictably. Authorities cared little for human life. Religions were supposed to take care of morality. Winners determined the fate of humans — who was accepted and who was not, or merely tolerated. Every country was guilty at some stage of abuse, and benefited from servitude. This does not mean one cannot try to make things better.
Throughout history, rival religions competed for supremacy and Jews were always caught in the middle. Judaism found itself attacked both by religions and by secular ideologies. And many Jews themselves abandoned their religion and culture ,and joined the different and conflicting ideologies and fought for recognition and rights for everyone. We expected to be hated by the European devils of Stalin and Hitler. But we never believed we would be hated by so many Americans. By Harvards and Columbias.
The First and the Second Great Wars were watersheds. They created new global rivalries and exacerbated cultural opposites. The dream that a United Nations could bring peace has been shattered by its politics. The dove of peace is crippled, and the lion will not lie down with the lamb. As many societies have advanced technologically, and billions were raised out of poverty and servitude, people began to talk about rights instead of obligations. And different groups who felt poorly treated, began to demand respect and amelioration.
Unfortunately, like all such movements, they developed into orthodoxies that allowed for no dissent or criticism. The current curse in the West is wokeism. And in the east, it is the curse of totalitarianism.
Another important factor in a changing world is migration. In the past, people fled prejudice, wars, and oppression. Many wanted a freer life and opportunities. And they integrated into the host societies. Ease of travel and access have now meant that larger numbers are fleeing, bringing with them values directly in conflict with host societies. The Western world is being and will continue to be challenged by massive immigration because it needs more workers to fill the gaps left by declining birthrates. In itself this is not a problem. But by refusing to deal with the issue of integration, by burying heads in sands, and now by fearing to act to remove those inciting hatred, it is only stoking up more chaos for the future. In many places, the character of nations has already begun to change.
Multiculturalism, once seen as an ideal, is now becoming a problem. It has led to a choice, between cultural capitulation and an alliance of false brothers, religious fundamentalists allied with left-wing progressives to gain power despite opposing values. One day, they may overturn states from within.
Some will argue that Israel is the cause of world dysfunction. Strange that such a small people are thought to have such influence. Others argue that Israel was a mistake, and all other states that emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire are legitimate. And they argue that Israel has no right to defend itself. All these are both nonsensical and evidence of prejudice. And they simply reiterate what the Bible foretold, that we are people who are alone, not appreciated by other nations (Numbers 23:9).
If the world is bent on tearing itself apart, we can only look on in despair for them. And do our best to ensure that we are well protected.
All is not lost. There are signs of a reaction. The winds that bring storms can also revive and refresh.
Florence, Italy, in the 15th century was the pinnacle of wealth, culture, and influence. Its banking families controlled the Western world. The Franciscan monk Savonarola (1452-1498) attacked the power and the wealth of the wealthy rulers. But he went too far in destroying great art, music, and what he saw as luxury. Instead, he enforced dull pious conformity. For a while, he was successful. But people soon tired of it, and in the end, he was burnt as a heretic. After the French Revolution came the Reign of Terror. Let us hope it won’t happen now.
The author is a writer and rabbi, based in New York.
The post The Winds Are Blowing Agains the Jewish People; But the Response to Chaos and Violent Protests Could Lead to a Reversal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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