[mikema63]

Which then makes one wonder, does this mean you consider Tel Aviv to be occupied?

Somebodies got to occupy it.

Also, do you, as a British of Pakistani origin who emigrated to the USA, believe that you have less rights to land in New York than a native American?

Yeah but they are mostly dead and don't have the will or power to get it back.

[wat0n]

Is that a yes, skinster?

I mean, I find it contradictory to say that Tel Aviv is not occupied and at the same time say that the majority of its inhabitants don't really have equal rights to live there relative to the Palestinians.

I also wonder if you'd apply Omar Barghouti's reasoning when it doesn't fit your interests, such as asking whether you have equal rights to American land relative to native Americans.

So yes, please, be my guest and answer the questions. They are quite interesting and relevant, since as I said there is a pattern of hypocrisy and double-standards among BDS advocates, like American anthropologists who advocate boycotting Israeli universities over the fact that they have contracts with the IDF while working for universities which have contracts with the US armed forces and Department of Defense such as those in the OP.

@mike: Yeah, I guess, but I think you know that in this case "occupied" means "foreign belligerent occupation".

[mikema63]

Is that a yes?

It's a joke.

I mean, I find it contradictory to say that Tel Aviv is not occupied and at the same time say that the majority of its inhabitants don't really have equal rights to live there relative to the Palestinians.

Well, it could depending on what your conception of occupied is, but sure I can grant you that. I don't really know enough about where everyone is in the area or what is reasonable in a two state solution. I certainly don't support busing all the jews out of Israel and into florida or something like that.

I also wonder if you'd apply Omar Barghouti's reasoning when it doesn't fit your interests, such as asking whether you have equal rights to American land relative to native Americans.

I'm not big on that conception of rights, it's not particularly useful and I see rights as things you are granted not something you inherently have.

So yes, please, be my guest and answer the questions. They are quite interesting and relevant, since as I said there is a pattern of hypocrisy and double-standards among BDS advocates, like American anthropologists who advocate boycotting Israeli universities over the fact that they have contracts with the IDF while working for universities which have contracts with the US armed forces and Department of Defense.

It's pretty easy to argue that it's not really up to the anthropologists whether or not the administrators or their collegues work with the US defense department. I rather doubt that they themselves actually work on any DOD projects. The only thing they really have a choice about (short of depriving themselves of an income to live on) is refuse to work with Israeli universities.

@mike: Yeah, I guess, but I think you know that in this case "occupied" means "foreign belligerent occupation".

Then I get to the end and find out you weren't talking to me.

[skinster]

BDS invokes international law, which is why it's successful and Israel is not (on a PR level).

I don't see how anything else waton says is relevant or anything else but a diversion tactic / boring conversation, that has nothing to do with the OP.

[mikema63]

I live for boring conversations that have nothing to do with the OP.

[skinster]

And you can stop talking about the two-state delusion as if it is anything but that.

[wat0n]

BDS invokes international law, which is why it's successful and Israel is not (on a PR level).

Oh, it does? So does it mean that, for example, the BDS movement believes only refugees wishing to live in peace with their neighbors should be allowed to return (meaning that Israel can deny return to those who are not believed to be willing to do that)?

Does it mean that the BDS movement believes that compensation is as valid as return as stated in UNGA resolution 394, where both options are left with equal standing?

Does it mean that the BDS movement supports the two-state solution? If so, why doesn't Omar Barghouti support it? It seems odd to me to launch a movement that supports the two-state solution while opposing it.

I don't see how anything else waton says is relevant or anything else but a diversion tactic / boring conversation, that has nothing to do with the OP.

I think I explained why it is relevant quite neatly. Certainly showing BDS advocates have double-standards and apply a standard for Israel that they don't live up to themselves is itself a valid criticism of its merits.

But of course, you'll regard any arguments you cannot provide an answer to as a "diversion tactic" even when it is not illegitimate to expect people who make demands based on ethics to actually live by those principles they claim to be upholding and to apply them consistently. And, as a movement which suppresses free debate in practice (you don't debate those you boycott for sure!), I don't find it surprising that some of its advocates cannot take criticism in a mature way, hence all this baby crying and foot-dragging in what is a political debate forum.

[The Immortal Goon]

In one of my classes we go over the Israel/Palestine thing.

For the first time, a little less than a year ago now, every single one of the students wrote a paper about how Israel was bullying the Palestinians and needed to loosen up.

The majority view was a two-state solution with the UN recognized borders, though some went further.

It took me a bit aback, every single year I had done that class, there had always been a fair mix of students. I took a year off from it, and suddenly everyone had a Palestinian flag.

I also think Bibi didn't do himself any favors by spurning the Democratic Party last year. I don't think it was the sole reason for the shift in my class, but it certainly didn't help to have the Prime Minister come in and help Bohener piss on the leg of the American president and leave with two middle fingers up. This term, there were a lot of students who were openly hostile to Israel for that.

This is a long way of saying that I think Skinster is on the right side of history. At least so far as my observations go.

[mikema63]

And you can stop talking about the two-state delusion as if it is anything but that.

My two state solution could beat up your one state solution!

In one of my classes we go over the Israel/Palestine thing.

For the first time, a little less than a year ago now, every single one of the students wrote a paper about how Israel was bullying the Palestinians and needed to loosen up.

The majority view was a two-state solution with the UN recognized borders, though some went further.

It took me a bit aback, every single year I had done that class, there had always been a fair mix of students. I took a year off from it, and suddenly everyone had a Palestinian flag.

I also think Bibi didn't do himself any favors by spurning the Democratic Party last year. I don't think it was the sole reason for the shift in my class, but it certainly didn't help to have the Prime Minister come in and help Bohener piss on the leg of the American president and leave with two middle fingers up. This term, there were a lot of students who were openly hostile to Israel for that.

This is a long way of saying that I think Skinster is on the right side of history. At least so far as my observations go.

I'd noticed that, Israel would really benefit from tossing him, he isn't doing them any favors.

[skinster]

I think the brutal attacks on Gaza along with the attacks on the ship and the rise of social media have a lot to do with changing minds. Nethanyahu's arrogance in America definitely didn't help things, except with him winning his election in Israel.

[wat0n]

In one of my classes we go over the Israel/Palestine thing.

For the first time, a little less than a year ago now, every single one of the students wrote a paper about how Israel was bullying the Palestinians and needed to loosen up.

The majority view was a two-state solution with the UN recognized borders, though some went further.

It took me a bit aback, every single year I had done that class, there had always been a fair mix of students. I took a year off from it, and suddenly everyone had a Palestinian flag.

I also think Bibi didn't do himself any favors by spurning the Democratic Party last year. I don't think it was the sole reason for the shift in my class, but it certainly didn't help to have the Prime Minister come in and help Bohener piss on the leg of the American president and leave with two middle fingers up. This term, there were a lot of students who were openly hostile to Israel for that.

This is a long way of saying that I think Skinster is on the right side of history. At least so far as my observations go.

I'm not so sure that humanities students are representative of the young American population, though I also believe that people like Netanyahu will eventually be on the wrong side of history with regards to the Palestinian issue.

As time goes by, the settlements - especially ideological ones - will become an ever increasing burden for Israel's internal stability. Not because the BDS movement will succeed and Israel will be boycotted (if anything, I expect the current American campus left-wing movements to crash and burn, and that this will fatally harm the BDS cause with it - the way they are acting right now to advance racial issues is bringing up criticism within the campus and especially outside it, and sooner or later this will translate in a resounding political defeat outside the campus, i.e. where this actually matters), but because the more ideological settlers will start to clash more intensely with the wider society. I mean, when one of the parents of the settlers recently arrested by the Shin Bet says that Israel is almost as antisemitic as the Third Reich, a clash is just waiting to happen.

[The Immortal Goon]

I'm not so sure that humanities students are representative of the young American population, though I also believe that people like Netanyahu will eventually be on the wrong side of history with regards to the Palestinian issue.

That class is a general education one, so I get everyone. But I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so your point is well taken anyway.

[Pongo]

Jeb Bush says he’d order crackdown on BDS as president
Ali Abunimah Activism and BDS Beat 4 December 2015

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/al ... -president


Former Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush has promised that if he is elected president next November he will deploy the full might of the US Department of Justice to crack down on the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.

“On day one I will work with the next attorney general to stop the BDS movement in the United States, to use whatever resources that exist,” the former Florida governor told the Republican Jewish Coalition in a speech on Thursday.

“A Bush administration will forcefully restore America’s leadership in the world in other ways as well,” Bush added.

He lumped together the recent Islamic State attacks in Paris, Tunisia and Beirut with the killing of a US teenager in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank last month.

Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old student from Massachusetts, was killed in a drive-by shooting near the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements while he was en route to do “community service ” in an Israeli settlement.

Two others, 24-year-old Palestinian Shadi Arafa and 51-year-old Israeli settler Yaacov Don, were also killed in the shooting.

Bush said all the incidents were “Islamic terrorism that wants to destroy our way of life.”

“They have declared war on us and we need to declare war on them,” he added, sweeping Palestinians in with Islamic State.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed since 1 October, many of them in what human rights organizations and international monitors have condemned as summary executions by Israel.

Nineteen Israelis, one Palestinian and one American were slain by Palestinians during the same period, according to The New York Times.

Jeb Bush, the brother of former president George W. Bush and son of former president George H. W. Bush, also made what are now standard promises for US presidential candidates to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to increase the already massive US military aid package to Israel.

Those statements do not distinguish him from other Republicans, let alone from President Barack Obama who has declared his determination to conclude a new deal with Israel that could see US military aid rise by more than 50 percent to nearly $5 billion a year.

Trampling free speech
In July, Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton promised billionaire donor and anti-Palestinian activist Haim Saban that she would commit to fighting BDS.

“I know you agree that we need to make countering BDS a priority,” she wrote in a letter to Saban.

Clinton said she wanted Saban’s advice on how they could “reverse this trend with information and advocacy,” but stopped short of explicitly promising government repression.

And federal and state lawmakers have attempted with modest success to advance legislation over the past year to condemn BDS or penalize companies that divest from Israel.

But Bush’s promise to deploy the Department of Justice against the BDS movement shows a new, France-like level of willingness by US politicians to trample basic freedoms for the sake of Israel.

The US Supreme Court found in a landmark 1982 ruling on a case dating from the Civil Rights era that the right to use economic boycotts to pursue political ends is free speech protected by the First Amendment of the US constitution.

[skinster]

^ US candidates sucking up to Zionist-donors with stupid promises.

I don't think it's possible Israel/America can kill a movement like BDS. Maybe ending the military occupation could help though.

[Rich]

I hope Israel is aware of the medium and long term danger that BDSM poses. Israel needs to help an engineer a level of mayhem and chaos in the Middle East that goes beyond anything we've seen so far. Israel needs to facilitate scenarios where radical even unthinkable solutions not only become thinkable, they become doable.

[skinster]

I hope Israel is aware of the medium and long term danger that BDSM poses.

But, of course Israel is aware of the dangers. The govt. is already spending millions of shekels trying to counter the movement. So are a couple of American billionaires.

[Pongo]

The west can reduce the boycott to the rabid dog haters. The boycott is borrowed from the Arab world, where it had already been diffused since the 1950s.


http://www.timesofisrael.com/french-hig ... imination/

French high court: BDS activists guilty of discrimination

October 23, 2015, 11:18 pm


France's Court of Cassation in Paris (CC BY-SA Daniel Vorndran/DXR/Wikimedia Commons)
France’s highest court of appeals confirmed earlier rulings that found promoters of a boycott against Israel guilty of inciting hate or discrimination.

The rulings passed on Tuesday by the Paris-based Court of Cassation confirmed the convictions of 12 individuals by the Colmar Court of Appeals in connection with their 2009 and 2010 actions in supermarkets near the eastern city of Mulhouse.

The individuals arrived at the supermarket wearing shirts emblazoned with the words: “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel.” They also handed out flyers that said that “buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.”

The court in Colmar imposed fines to the collective tune of $14,500 and court expenses on Laila Assakali, Yahya Assakali, Assya Ben Lakbir, Habiba Assakali, Sylviane Mure, Farida Sarr, Aline Parmentier, Mohammad Akbar, Jean-Michel Baldassi, Maxime Roll, Jacques Ballouey and Henry Eichholtzer.

They appealed the ruling citing their freedom to express their opinion.

In confirming the sentences, the Court of Cassation cited the French republic’s law on Freedom of the Press, which prescribes imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000 for parties that “provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.”

In France, several dozen promoters of a boycott against Israel — including through the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement, or BDS —- have been convicted of inciting hate or discrimination. In addition to the law on the press, some activists have been convicted based on the Lellouche law, passed in 2003, which extends anti-racism laws to the targeting of specific nations for discriminatory treatment.

“BDS is illegal in France,” wrote Pascal Makowicz, head of the legal department of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, in a statement he published Tuesday on the group’s website. The actions of the people convicted, he added, “are completely illegal. If they say their freedom of expression has been violated, then now France’s highest legal instance ruled otherwise.”

[skinster]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

[Pongo]

Keeping their western culture and French values, France now is more aware to the hate campaign of the Muslims. Adopting boycott and other Islamic themes is Islamization.

[Conscript]

How do you discriminate against a state?