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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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Israel Faces Dual Attacks as Houthis and Hamas Target Major Cities, IDF Expands Ground Operations in Gaza
A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Millions of Israelis scrambled for shelter overnight as Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen launched a ballistic missile at Israel, setting off air-raid sirens across the center of the country and the Jerusalem area, and was followed hours later by a Hamas rocket barrage targeting Tel Aviv on Thursday afternoon.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported intercepting the missile from Yemen before it entered Israeli airspace, while the Iron Dome intercepted a further three missiles from Hamas later on, triggering sirens throughout the metropolitan area. While there were no reported casualties, shrapnel from intercepted rockets was found in Rishon Lezion. The rocket fire came as the IDF expanded its ground operations in Gaza, warning Palestinian civilians to avoid the Netzarim Corridor, a strategic seven-kilometer road that bisects the enclave.
The United States has urged Israel not to respond directly to the Houthi missile strike, according to a Hebrew-language Ynet report citing an Israeli official. US forces already carried out airstrikes against the Houthis — who have targeted American and Israeli ships in the Red Sea and disrupted global shipping through the critical trade route — in recent days and told Israel to “allow them to handle the situation,” the report said.
Eitan Shamir, a security expert, noted that, regardless, it would not be wise — and neither within its capabilities — for Israel to secure the Red Sea without help.
“Achieving this objective cannot be accomplished by Israel alone and will require the involvement of the international community,” he told The Algemeiner. “The Israeli Navy lacks the capabilities to secure Israeli shipping in the southern Red Sea independently. Politically, it is also undesirable for Israel to take on the responsibility of addressing a problem that is internationally recognized, particularly since Israel is often accused of causing it due to its attacks on Gaza.”
Nevertheless, Shamir added, Israel’s “goal for ending the conflict is to ensure complete freedom of navigation to and from its waters.”
Shamir, who is the director of Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, also underscored recent US State Department decisions against the Houthis, including reinstating its foreign terrorist designation and its $15 million reward for information on its financing. Still, he said, “the impact of these actions on the Houthis’ blockade in the southern part of the Red Sea is currently unclear.”
Shamir highlighted reports suggesting that China was providing financial protection to the Houthis to ensure its own ships remain unharmed.
The expansion of Iranian activities into the Mediterranean Sea has raised further concerns. Shamir highlighted the likelihood that Israel’s navy will need to increase its operational presence in both the Red Sea and Mediterranean, potentially requiring additional vessels to secure shipping lanes. Cooperation with the US Fifth Fleet and allied naval forces will remain crucial to maintaining stability in these waterways, he said.
Shamir warned against unilateral action, saying, “It is not in Israel’s best interest to act unilaterally to deter the Houthis.” Instead, he urged Israel to let the US take the lead, including pressuring Iran, which “undoubtedly has influence over the Houthis, to stop the attacks on Israel.”
Meanwhile, the IDF targeted key Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives. Among those eliminated was Rashid Jahjouh, head of Hamas’s General Security Apparatus, who was responsible for maintaining internal security and intelligence operations, identifying and targeting “collaborators” and spreading propaganda. Also killed was Ayman Etsilah, a senior Hamas security official in Khan Yunis, and Ismail Abd al-Aal, a high-ranking figure in Islamic Jihad’s weapons smuggling network.
The IDF and Shin Bet confirmed that these operations were part of broader efforts to dismantle the leadership and infrastructure of terrorist groups in the enclave.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, like the Houthis, are both backed by Iran, which provides the Palestinian terrorist groups with weapons and funding.
Several other Hamas leaders have been killed since Israel resumed strikes earlier this week, including Yasser Muhammad Harb Musa, who managed Hamas’s security portfolio, and Ayssam al-Dalis, the head of Hamas’s Gaza government. Mahmoud Marzouk Ahmed Abu Watfa, responsible for Hamas’s internal security, and Ahmed Abdulla Al-hata, the group’s Minister of Justice, were also among those targeted.
The current escalation follows the collapse of a temporary ceasefire and hostage-release deal that lasted 42 days, during which the terror group released 30 living hostages and the remains of eight slain captives, while Israel freed nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners.
The post Israel Faces Dual Attacks as Houthis and Hamas Target Major Cities, IDF Expands Ground Operations in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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BBC Apologizes to Israeli Embassy for Seeking Anti-Netanyahu Guest for News Program
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a memorial ceremony for those murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and those who fell in the “Iron Sword” war, at the Knesset, the Parliament, in Jerusalem, Oct. 28, 2024. Photo: DEBBIE HILL/Pool via REUTERS
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) issued an apology on Thursday after a producer asked the Israeli Embassy to the United Kingdom to help the BBC find a guest who would be critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“This was a serious mistake which we have looked into,” the corporation said in a statement to The Jewish Chronicle. “It clearly falls well below our standards. We apologize unreservedly to the Israeli Embassy.”
Embassy spokeswoman Orly Goldschmidt shared Thursday on X that her team at the Israeli Embassy in London received a WhatsApp message from a BBC World Service producer, who was looking for guest who would appear on the television program “Newshour.” The producer said the show’s presenter would specifically like to interview “an Israeli military voice (can be former)” who would be “critical of Netanyahu” and Israel’s new ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
“We want someone who is going to be critical of Netanyahu and the ground offense (concern about remaining hostages, stretching the IDF capacity, destruction of Gaza or any other reason). Do you think you can help with this?” the producer wrote. Goldschmidt shared a screenshot of the message on X and denounced the comments, claiming that it shows “BBC bias (yet again).”
“Today my team received this remarkable message from a @BBC producer at @bbcworldservice,” she wrote. “They don’t want to interview someone knowledgeable, nor someone relevant, just someone who fits the predetermined narrative. There is nothing balanced or impartial about this.”
BBC BIAS (yet again)
Today my team received this remarkable message from a @BBC producer at @bbcworldservice.
They don’t want to interview someone knowledgeable, nor someone relevant, just someone who fits the predetermined narrative.
There is nothing balanced or impartial… pic.twitter.com/pm0loEeUFG
— Orly Goldschmidt
(@Orlygoldschmidt) March 20, 2025
The British volunteer-led charity Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said the incident is another example “of @BBC putting its thumb on the scale to report its narrative masquerading as news.”
“Another time the BBC is caught out. Another apology. For all the times the BBC is caught out, how many times is it not caught out?” CAA added. “The unrelenting bias on our televisions, from our radios and on the BBC website answers that question. How many more scandals do there need to before there is an independent investigation into the BBC?”
Others who have criticized the BBC’s most recent blunder include politicians in the UK, and international human rights activist and lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky.
The incident followed the BBC late last month pulling a documentary about Palestinian children living in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war and apologizing for making “serious flaws” in the film after it was revealed that it was narrated by a Palestinian boy who is the son of a senior Hamas official. The BBC also acknowledged that licensing fee payments for the film “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” were given to the family of the Hamas official. The controversy sparked protests outside of the BBC headquarters in London, and an organization of pro-Israel lawyers in the United Kingdom reported the BBC to counter-terrorism police for possible terrorism offenses, which include allegedly funding a terrorist group.
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Germany Reopens Embassy in Damascus, Establishing Official Diplomatic Ties With Syria’s New Regime
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speaks during a press conference in Damascus, Syria, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Germany reopened its embassy in Damascus on Thursday, 13 years since its closure during the early days of Syria’s civil war, as both countries work to strengthen their bilateral relations.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Damascus — her second trip since the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December — to mark Berlin’s establishment of official diplomatic relations with the new Syrian government.
“I am here in Syria for the second time in around 10 weeks because the country and its future are on a knife edge,” Baerbock said at a news conference. “We can’t predict what will happen in a few months or perhaps a few weeks’ time.”
As a show of support for Syria’s nascent regime, Berlin reopened its embassy in the country in an effort to improve diplomatic relations, while pledging economic assistance and sanctions relief to aid the new government and the country’s reconstruction efforts.
Of the European Union’s 27 member states, only Italy reopened its embassy last year before Assad’s fall, while Spain did so after his ouster.
In a statement, Baerbock said her trip was intended to convey the message that “a political new beginning between Europe and Syria, between Germany and Syria, is possible.”
She also said there are “clear expectations that there is freedom, security, and opportunity in Syria for all people — for women and men, for people belonging to all ethnic groups and religions.”
Earlier this month, clashes between fighters loyal to Assad and forces aligned with Syria’s new rulers sparked the worst violence since the new government seized power, leaving over 1,000 people dead. In a series of confrontations, fighters supporting the new Syrian government carried out mass executions of Alawite Muslim civilians.
According to Syria’s interior ministry, the pro-government fighters conducted “sweeping operations” to dismantle the last “remnants” of Assad’s regime, targeting primarily adult men.
However, the ensuing mass killing of Alawites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, has raised concern among the international community about the safety of minority groups in the country.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa decried the massacres, claiming they undermined his efforts to unite the country and vowing to seek retribution for the violence.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” Sharaa told Reuters. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or go without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”
In late January, Sharaa became Damascus’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
During her visit on Thursday, Baerbock said the recent clashes had “massively cost confidence” among the international community. Germany’s top diplomat emphasized that the new Syrian government “must have control over the actions of the groups in its own ranks and bring those responsible to account.”
After the recent clashes, Syria’s new Islamist-led government — backed by Turkey — and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group reached a ceasefire agreement.
Under the new deal between the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian government, the SDF will be integrated into Damascus’s institutions. In exchange, the agreement gives the Syrian government control over SDF-held civilian and military sites in the northeast region of the country.
Baerbock praised the “historic” agreement and emphasized the importance of including other groups to ensure they feel like they are “part of a new Syria.”
Since Assad’s fall, the new Syrian government has sought to strengthen ties with Arab and Western leaders. Damascus’s new diplomatic relationships reflect a distancing from its previous allies, Iran and Russia.
The new Syrian government appears focused on reassuring the West and working to get sanctions lifted, which date back to 1979 when the US labeled Syria a state sponsor of terrorism and were significantly increased following Assad’s violent response to the anti-government protests.
The Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests in 2011 sparked the Syrian civil war, during which Syria was suspended from the Arab League for more than a decade.
Earlier this week, European Union countries pledged to continue supporting Syria’s new leadership through both financial aid and sanctions relief, despite an outbreak of sectarian violence threatening the country’s stability.
Germany committed to providing €300 million in support for food, health, and other essential services for the Syrian population.
“As Europeans, we stand together for the people of Syria, for a free and peaceful Syria,” Baerbock said during the annual donor conference for Syria in Brussels.
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