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The Washington Post Outright Lies About BDS and Anti-Israel Boycott Movements

Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris, France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions effort — known as BDS — singles out Israel for opprobrium. BDS portrays the Jewish State as both uniquely evil and solely responsible for the lack of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. BDS has been endorsed by Hamas and other US-designated terrorist groups, and prominent BDS supporters have called for Israel’s destruction.

These are well-established facts. And they’re entirely missing in a recent Washington Post report.

Post correspondent John Hudson’s Aug. 12, 2024, dispatch is about Coca-Cola’s efforts to fend off a boycott based on the company’s links to Israel (“How Coca-Cola Tried and Failed to Suppress a Boycott Over Gaza”). Yet the article is littered with misleading omissions and, in some cases, outright falsehoods.

Hudson writes that “sales of Coca-Coa began to plummet in parts of the Middle East and Asia this summer in response to boycotts of corporations with alleged ties to Israel.” This led to the soda company’s franchise in Bangladesh launching an advertising campaign to blunt boycott efforts. The campaign starred actor Sharaf Ahmed Jibon, known for roles in South Asian soap operas, as a shopkeeper who assured viewers that Coca-Cola was not an Israeli product, and said that “even Palestine has a coke factor.”

But “there was a problem,” Hudson tells readers. “The so-called Palestinian factory is an Israeli-owned bottling company that operates on an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem considered illegal under international law.”

Hudson adds that there’s “widespread anger over Washington’s military and political support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza,” resulting in backlash against American companies like Coca-Cola. Hudson argues that that anger has fueled the BDS movement, which he calls merely a “nonviolent activist movement opposed to Israel’s occupation.”

For good measure, the Post reporter even uncritically quotes Omar Barghouti, a self-described “co-founder” of BDS.

But the Post’s description of BDS is completely — and verifiably — false. BDS isn’t nonviolent. And it is not simply opposed to an “occupation.” Indeed, what exactly is being “occupied” is left unsaid by Hudson. Rather, BDS is opposed to Israel’s very existence — and its founders, including Barghouti, have admitted as much.

As CAMERA has noted, terrorist organizations like Hamas, whose charter calls for the genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel, have stated, “We salute and support the influential BDS movement.” And according to sworn US Congressional testimony, some BDS groups have links to terror groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Indeed, CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander painstakingly documented the true motivations, and disturbing terror ties, of the BDS movement in her 2022 backgrounder “The Intrinsic Bigotry of BDS.”

In 2022, BDS groups in Boston even launched the so-called “mapping project,” a target map of Jewish cultural, educational, and religious institutions and organizations that included high schools, teen and college groups, the Jewish Arts Collaborative, the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts, groups dedicated to helping disabled Jewish individuals, and others. All were singled out by the BDS group at a time of rising antisemitism and attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions.

The “mapping project” was so dangerous that it prompted condemnation from Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), among others, who warned that such lists “can incite violence” and “inflame the deranged among us to take the next step from contemplating to acting upon violence.” But, for a movement that is wholesale endorsed by Hamas, that is perhaps the point.

In fact, BDS activists have, on numerous occasions, openly called for violence, from chanting “shoot the Jew” at Israeli jazz musician Daniel Zamir’s performance at Johannesburg’s Wit University to threatening Justin Bieber’s Jewish manager after the pop star played in Tel Aviv, warning that “the Jew manager will die.” There are dozens of other examples. But again: this isn’t surprising for a movement that, per sworn Congressional testimony, has links to terror groups that call for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its citizens.

The Post’s decision to parrot Barghouti’s claims that BDS is peaceful fall further apart upon closer examination of Barghouti’s own statements. As CAMERA has documented, at a BDS conference in Chicago in 2011, Barghouti declared: “The media focuses only on one form of resistance, which we’re proud of.” He added: “We’re not ashamed to have armed resistance in addition to peaceful resistance throughout our existence.”

But as Hollander has observed, Barghouti’s pride in terrorism is not at all surprising, given that members of designated terrorist organizations are part of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) leadership. Heading the list of the 29 Palestinian NGO members that comprise the leadership committee is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, which includes Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), PFLP-General Command, Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among other designated foreign terror organizations. The US BDS wing, which calls itself the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, does not merely advocate “to stop US support for Israel” as it claims, but facilitates US donations to the terrorist-member BDS National Committee.

A Tablet investigation even documents how this branch, registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization, enables tax-exempt fundraising in the US for the foreign terrorist-member entity.

An Israeli government report on the BDS movement’s terrorist links names some of the terror group leaders who have taken prominent roles in the the BDS movement abroad, while downplaying or concealing their affiliation with the illegal groups. Among them are senior Hamas operative Muhammad Sawalha, who heads Muslim Brotherhood front organizations and promotes BDS in the UK; PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled, notorious for her role in the hijackings of international airlines, who has worked on behalf of the South Africa BDS chapter to raise funds and advocate for BDS; and Khalida Jarrar, a senior PFLP member who has been indicted for inciting attacks on Israelis.

All of this is open-source information and is well documented, including in Congressional testimony; it is widely available for the Post’s perusal. But the newspaper is seemingly uninterested.

Indeed, singling out the Jewish State for opprobrium and economic punishment is, in and of itself, antisemitic.

Boycotts have been used against Jews for centuries. Indeed, as CAMERA has documented, boycotts were used to pressure Jews against living in their ancestral homeland as early as 1909 — nearly 40 years before Israel was recreated and more than half a century before Israel took control of  the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. This begs the question: what is the “occupation” that BDS activists oppose? The answer: Jewish political and social equality in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland.

These facts about BDS are well-established. BDS, like its terrorist supporters, wants the destruction of the Jewish State. They believe that all of Israel is an “occupation.” Barghouti, and his interlocutors at the Post, failed to mention all these relevant details. It is unsurprising then, that Hudson parrots terrorist talking points elsewhere in his report.

Hudson writes that “since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants killed more than 1200 people in Israel and took more than 240 hostage, the Israeli military has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and the country’s restrictions on access to humanitarian aid have created a famine in parts of Gaza.”

There is an impressive number of falsehoods in this one sentence.

Hamas are not “militants.” Rather, they are terrorists. Precision matters, both in journalism and good writing. And Hamas did not “kill” more than “1200 people in Israel.” Rather, as part of a complicated operation, they invaded the Jewish State and murdered them — many in the most barbaric ways imaginable. Women were raped en masse, before having their genitals mutilated and then executed. The elderly were set on fire in their own homes. Parents were tortured in front of their children, and vice versa. Babies were murdered in their rooms. Per capita the death toll from Oct. 7 was multitudes larger than the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that led to the Global War on Terror and the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, as barbaric as 9/11 was, it did not include Islamists proudly filming their atrocities, including dismembering parents in front of children, or using the phones of the slain to call their family members and brag that they had been murdered. Oct. 7 was the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust—yet Hudson seeks to equate it with Israel’s righteous response. Worse still, he misleads Post readers.

Those “local health officials” that Hudson cites are, in fact, Hamas. The Gaza Health Ministry that puts out casualty counts is controlled by Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group. And it has a clear incentive to exaggerate casualty counts, as well as a long and documented history of doing precisely that — including during this recent war. CAMERA has highlighted the Post’s penchant for regurgitating unverified claims made by a genocidal terror organization — a penchant that has led to the newspaper receiving both considerable criticism and a loss in subscribers. Hudson’s report is emblematic of that failure.

Further, the claim about an impending famine, as well as the assertion that the so-called “settlements” are illegal under international law are also incorrect. As CAMERA has documented, there is a strong basis in international law for Israel to lay claim to Judea and Samaria, or, as it has been popularly known in more recent decades, the West Bank. David Adesnik, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, thoroughly debunked the myth of a famine in Gaza in a July 7, 2024, Washington Examiner op-ed. Indeed, as Adesnik documents, Israel actually helped prevent a famine and has been providing key humanitarian assistance. Hamas, by contrast, has been hijacking and hoarding aid and food stuffs.

“Writing is easy,” Mark Twain allegedly said. “All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” If so, the Post’s report on BDS would be a blank page –and readers would be better off for it.

The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

The post The Washington Post Outright Lies About BDS and Anti-Israel Boycott Movements first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Rising Antisemitism on European Campuses: Italian Professor Assaulted, French Students Excluded From Online Groups

Youths take part in the occupation of a street in front of the building of the Sciences Po University in support of Palestinians in Gaza, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Paris, France, April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

Violence and intimidation against Jewish and Israeli students as well as faculty are on the rise across European campuses, as an Italian professor was assaulted at the University of Pisa and students in France were excluded from online groups over their Jewish identities.

On Tuesday, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed a classroom at the University of Pisa in Tuscany, Italy, and assaulted an Italian professor who has opposed cutting ties with Israeli universities.

According to local reports, protesters burst into the classroom waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slurs, targeting the professor over his opposition to the university’s recent decision to sever ties with two Israeli universities.

A student who tried to intervene was attacked by protesters. When the professor stepped in to protect him, he too was assaulted and later hospitalized with injuries to his head and arms.

On the same day, anti-Israel protesters disrupted a lecture by a visiting Israeli speaker at the Polytechnic University of Turin in northern Italy, shouting antisemitic slogans as they stormed the classroom.

Shortly after the incident, the university announced it was cutting ties with the speaker because he had defended the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the confrontation with the protesters.

Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Israel activity on campuses has intensified, with Jewish and Israeli students facing frequent targeting and isolation in an increasingly hostile environment.

On Monday, a group of first-year economics students at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris created a group chat on Instagram that excluded several students, accusing them of being Zionists based on their Jewish-sounding names or surnames, French media reported.

“If there are any other Zionists in this group besides those I’ve already kicked out, leave now — we don’t want you here,” wrote one of the students who created the group, placing a Palestinian flag in the middle.

This latest antisemitic incident follows a similar episode last month, when a student created a poll in a WhatsApp group chat titled, “For or Against Jews?”

Yossef Murciano, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), denounced the rising wave of anti-Jewish incidents, noting that the group had posted notices across multiple campuses to highlight the latest antisemitic episodes.

“We reported the incident to the university, but so far nothing has been done. We were told that measures would be taken, but we don’t know when or how,” Murciano said.

In a press release, the university strongly condemned such “unacceptable behavior,” expressing its full support for those students affected by the recent antisemitic incidents.

The university also announced that it had submitted “all available evidence to the public prosecutor” regarding these two incidents and plans to initiate “disciplinary proceedings” against each of the perpetrators.

“These two acts, whose antisemitic nature seems clear, deserve a punishment commensurate with their severity,” the statement read.

French Minister of Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste strongly condemned the latest incidents, demanding a zero-tolerance approach.

“I stand with these young people, victims of antisemitism that must be opposed everywhere, including, sadly, in our universities. There is only one possible response: zero tolerance!” Baptiste wrote in a post on X.

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), also spoke out against the incident, calling it a disturbing example of rising antisemitism on campuses.

“This is not a pro-Palestinian campaign, it is a campaign of antisemitic intimidation,” Arfi said in a post on X.

The incidents occurred weeks after two international Jewish groups and a German watchdog published a report showing that antisemitism on European university campuses following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has fostered a “climate of fear” for Jewish students.

Then earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) released their own report which found that the vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism.

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Radio-Canada Suspends Journalist After Antisemitic Comments Spark Outrage

Radio-Canada reporter Élisa Serret. Photo: Screenshot

A journalist at Canada’s national public broadcaster, Radio-Canada, has been suspended after using antisemitic language during a Monday television broadcast, prompting an official apology from the network.

On the news program “Sur le terrain,” correspondent Élisa Serret, reporting from Washington on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Israel, was asked why the US continues to support Jerusalem despite its recent military offensive in Gaza.

Serret responded, saying in French, “The Israelis, in fact the Jews, finance a lot of American politics” and control a “big machine.”

The journalist then went on to claim that the largest US cities and Hollywood are “run by Jews,” echoing long-standing antisemitic stereotypes and hateful rhetoric about supposedly outsized and nefarious Jewish power.

After Serret’s comments went viral, sparking outrage from political leaders and the local Jewish community, Radio-Canada issued an apology, describing her remarks as “”stereotypical, antisemitic, erroneous, and prejudicial allegations against Jewish communities.”

“These unacceptable comments violate Radio-Canada’s Journalistic Standards and Practices and do not reflect the views of the public broadcaster,” the statement read.

“As a result, the news department has decided to relieve the journalist of her duties until further notice,” it continued. “We are aware that these comments have offended many viewers. We sincerely apologize and regret this.”

The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), a Canadian Jewish advocacy group, strongly condemned Serret’s comments, accusing Radio-Canada of spreading “antisemitic lies.”

Eta Yudin, CIJA’s vice-president for Quebec, called on the public broadcaster to take concrete measures to keep antisemitic content out of Canadian homes.

“This incident cannot be allowed to pass without serious internal reflection on the damage such hateful rhetoric inflicts on our democratic values,” Yudin said in a statement. “Antisemitism is corroding the fabric of our society.”

Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault, who is responsible for overseeing the public broadcaster, also condemned the incident, saying that “antisemitism has no place in Canada” and describing Serret’s remarks as “pernicious antisemitic tropes.”

“When antisemitic language is used by journalists, or anyone in a position of trust, it risks normalizing hatred in deeply dangerous ways,” Guilbeault said.

Anthony Housefather, the government’s special adviser on Jewish community relations and antisemitism, denounced the incident, saying Serret’s remarks echoed “textbook tropes that are antisemitic under the IHRA definition,” referring to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which was adopted by the government in 2020.

Melissa Lantsman, a member of the opposition Conservative Party, criticized the public broadcaster for failing to “uphold the values of this country” by airing what she described as an “antisemitic rant.”

“Overt antisemitism on TV is part of the deep systemic rot corroding our society, and it flourishes when tax-funded institutions provide it with a platform,” Lantsman said in a statement.

“Canadians deserve better than excuses and carefully worded apologies,” she continued.

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Israeli Culture Minister Cuts Funding for Film Awards After Palestinian Drama Wins Top Prize, Chosen for Oscars Submission

A scene from “The Sea.” Photo: The Israeli Academy of Film and Television

Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar said his ministry will pull state funding for Israel’s Ophir Awards, which is the Israeli equivalent to the Oscars, after it awarded a top honor to a film that “defames” Israel’s “heroic soldiers,” he announced on Wednesday.

At this year’s Ophir Awards ceremony on Tuesday night, “The Sea” won best picture, which automatically makes the film Israel’s submission for the 2026 Oscars in the category of best international feature film. The drama, directed and written by Shai Carmeli-Pollak and produced by Baher Agbariya, also won best screenplay, best actor for the 13-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Gazawi, best supporting actor for Khalifa Natour, and best original score. The movie, filmed in Arabic and Hebrew, marks Gazawi’s first acting role.

The Ophir Awards are voted on by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, a nonprofit organization that is the Israeli version of the US-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. It has more than 1,000 members, including filmmakers, producers, content creators, and actors.

“The Sea” follows a 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Khaled, from a village near Ramallah, who gets the opportunity to go the beach for the first time in his life on a class trip to Tel Aviv. When he is forced to return home at a military checkpoint, while his classmates continue on to the beach, Khaled decides to risk his life and dodge Israeli authorities on his solo journey to reach the ocean. “The Sea” premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival this summer and received support from the Israeli Film Fund.

In a statement on X, Zohar said that after the “pro-Palestinian” film, “which defames our heroic soldiers while they fight to protect us,” won the award for best film at the “shameful” Ophir Awards on Tuesday night, he decided to discontinue funding for the ceremony.

“During my tenure – the citizens of Israel will not pay out of their pockets for a disgraceful ceremony that spits on the heroic IDF soldiers,” he added. “This great absurdity, that Israeli citizens are still paying out of their pockets for the disgraceful Ophir Awards ceremony, which represents less than one percent of the Israeli people – is over. Starting from the 2026 budget, this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money. The citizens of Israel deserve for their tax money to go to more important and valuable places.”

Several winners on stage at the Ophir Awards ceremony, including Carmeli-Pollak and Agbariya, sported a black T-shirt with a message that called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and said in Hebrew and Arabic “a child is a child.” Others wore shirts that called for the return of the hostages abducted by Hamas-led terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and talked about the devastation taking place in Gaza during the ongoing war. Acclaimed Israeli director Uri Barbash received a lifetime achievement award at the ceremony, and in his acceptance speech, he condemned actions of the Israeli government and Zohar, pleaded for an end to the war, and called for solidarity between Jews and Arabs.

“It is our sacred duty to bring all the hostages back to their families immediately,” he said. “To end the accursed war and replace the ‘divide and rule’ regime that has declared war on Israeli society!”

Other movies that competed alongside “The Sea” for best film at this year’s Ophir Awards included Nadav Lapid’s “Yes,” “Dead Language – which made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is an expanded version of the Oscar-nominated short film “Aya” – and Natali Braun’s “Oxygen,” which is about a single mother fighting to pull her son out of military service and his deployment to Lebanon.

Israel has had 10 nominations in the category of best international feature film at the Oscars but has yet to win. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences will announce on Dec. 16 a shortlist of 15 contenders for the 2026 Oscar for best international feature film. The final list of nominations will be announced on Jan. 22, 2026, and the 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 15, 2026.

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