Nov 11, 2015
Beating BDS: a plan for Jewish integrity
a guest post by Dr. Harold Goldmeier
Beating BDS: a plan for
Jewish integrity
The new semester is underway for university students. We can expect more anti-Israel propaganda
spewed commensurate with more Palestinian stone throwers and shooters injured
and killed by IDF forces, and retaliation from Israel for Hamas rockets.
Today’s headline from BBC and CNN is how Israel killed a pregnant woman and her
2 years old daughter in a Gaza airstrike on Hamas targets.
The attention of organized Jewry and university students is once
again directed at threats from the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS)
worldwide movement now that the nuclear/economic development agreement with
Iran is a done deal. Diaspora Jews and the State of Israel are emotionally charged
about BDS for three reasons, and are vowing to do something about it. I have some
suggestions for them.
First, only Israel is boycotted when many other nations have
populations wanting their independence from oppressors (Catalonia, Cyprus wants
Turkey’s occupation troops out, Tibet, Kurds, etc.). Jews passionately believe the single-directed
BDS Movement and its supporters are blatant anti-Semites and anti-Zionism is a
cover. They only boycott Jewish Israeli
professors, universities, goods and businesses. They never call for an end to
Arab states that by law and domestic repressive measures kill and brutalize
Palestinians and Muslims.
Second, pro-Israel university students feel the weight of
anti-Israel professors on their transcripts and are singularly challenged in
classes. They bear the responsibility of defending Israel when they are in
classes expecting a balanced curriculum teaching them the politics of the
Middle East.
Third, Jewish proponents of Israel feel physically threatened by
organized anti-Israel student groups regularly demonstrating against the
existence of Israel. They are verbally and physically threatening Jewish
students. The Jewish students feel alone on campus unprotected by school
administrations the way Black and LGBT are protected. One of my students studying
in Israel for a year reports transferring out from UCLA for fear of retribution
by Middle East studies professors and threats from other leftist and Muslim
students.
Pro-Israel advocates decry and bemoan BDS, which celebrated its
ten years anniversary in July 2015. BDS is more about psychological terror than
impacting Israel’s economy. Annihilate BDS not with volumes of logic, but
changing perceptions by exacerbating their flaws with psychological
manipulation, focus, passion, and ardor for plunder.
Jewish integrity is on the line, and if Israel’s supporters do not
stand up to BDS and their minions then young Jews feel they and the Jewish
People are impotent and unsafe. Never again.
Counter BDS activities are heating up on four fronts. First,
Israel advocates are compiling a $50m war chest to “take on” campus-based BDS.
Knesset members under guidance from leadership on the Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committees are targeting BDS using counter-intelligence tactics to stop
what ministers label a form of terrorism.
Third, independents like Stand With Us are using social media in
proactive ways. Last, Gilad Erdan is PM Netanyahu’s sobriquet Minister of BDS.
His charge is to strategize against BDS under the rubrique “public
safety, strategic affairs and public diplomacy.”
My decades in community organizing work including the U. S. Civil
Rights Movement taught me nothing short of a mission to destroy BDS is
acceptable. Concerted, threatening, rigorous and resolute actions brought down
Jim Crow and freed Soviet Jews.
The most effective tactics are political theatre, the willingness
to appear to respond to violence with violence, and initiating retaliations
against anti-Israel professors and corporate decision makers. The medium is
the message, Marshall McLuhan taught us.
Build on a reputation of Jews as powerful, manipulative, tough
(thanks to the IDF), and cunning, rather than take offense and shirk away. It
is the right reputation to have in a bloody fight. It’s the appearance of power
that is critical. The BDS fight needs be personal at every turn, in every
location, at every level, everyday.
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and The 48
Laws of POWER (Robert Greene and Joost Elffers) are valuable
reads that offer many more martinet strategies for annihilating BDS. Here are
some other tips.
Pro-Israel groupthink must be mean and tough.
Change the language, tone and tenor. Battling BDS is a political/psychological
war against terror. Roundtable discussions, dinner circuit speeches, and
Jews’ penchant for kumbaya shackle Israel advocates to defensive
instead of proactive actions.
Think like Tony Soprano and God’s Chinese son, Hong
Xiuquan. He said our enemies “ought to come kneeling” and show “the principles
of true submission…conspicuous filial piety to us.” No less, PM Netanyahu said
before Congress, “The days when the Jewish people are passive in the face of
threats to annihilating us, those days are over. Today we have a voice.”
Finance legal actions as a tactic. Tie up the
local chapters and collaborators in court for threats to the peace, violations of
university anti-race baiting rules, free speech infringements. Challenge their
non-profit tax status in court. Make BDS and supporters feel pain. Jews
pressured the Canadian government to de-fund The Canadian Arab Federation.
Kudos to the students arrested a year ago September filibustering
an Ohio University student senate meeting protesting the president’s blood
bucket challenge in support of BDS. Kudos to the law firm representing them pro
bono. The students ought to have been given an honor seat at Netanyahu’s
speech to Congress. How sensational for him to have welcomed them. Instead, the
PM and pro-Israel groups ignore these heroes.
It
is unacceptable when a University of California committee established recently
to specifically evaluate and recommend antidotes for campus anti-Semitism and
the delegitimizing of Israel simply issues a list of Principles Against
Intolerance.
Thirty
Jewish legacy communal organizations utterly failed in their efforts to get the
U of C governing body and regent to take them seriously. Their walk away exacerbates
the appearance of impotence and disregard for young Jews’ agenda. The aging
memberships of these organizations are a telltale sign of disillusionment among
young people.
The
evidence presented was extensive including complaints Jewish students face like
“Zionists should be sent to the gas chambers,” swastikas on walls, and a
climate of harassment, intimidation, violence, and Jewish events disrupted and
shut down.
The
administration issued a tepid and mealy response to years of unchecked campus
anti-Semitism about general intolerance on campus. Here is a perfect
opportunity for the thirty groups to physically enter the administration
offices demanding a specific action plan to combat anti-Semitism on U of C campuses
and the firing of hateful professors. One group proposes Congress withhold
federal funds from schools that do nothing. Direct action like students took in
the ‘60s is more effective.
If a movement is not controversial it’s not worth the fight. Teach
the art of political theatre to thousands of Israel advocacy
students and professional demonstrators. Deploy them as ready-to-roll commando
units flooding campuses, administration buildings, and TV news stations,
students or not, on critical days like anti-Israel Apartheid Week.
Cactus is a Luxembourg based food store chain caving to months of
picketing by pro-Palestinian protestors. Cactus and their Swedish counterparts
boycott Israeli products. Here is where a coordinating committee can dispatch a
tactical team to picket stores and the homes of corporate executives. The
message, to warn women away from shopping here, especially with children in
tow, because Muslims are allegedly responsible for the 300% increase in rapes
of Swedish women and the skyrocketing rate of rapes of children according to
studies reported on BBC.
Manipulate perceptions and exacerbate their flaws.
Occupy washrooms; block the exits and refreshment bars in theatres
performing plays with themes like The Death of Klinghoffer. Nobody
cares about pickets in the streets at these events unless the faces of patrons
crossing picket lines are plastered all over the media.
BDS supporters physically assaulting Jews at UC Irvine and
Berkeley, U of C, and Maryland, and other universities must be
punished and prosecuted. Jews must be willing to defend themselves. Demand
investigations, expulsions, and firings; occupy administration offices at
schools.
Demand zero tolerance where social media carry attacks like the
one from someone at the University of Chicago: “Gas them, burn them and
dismantle their power structure. Humanity cannot progress with the parasitic
Jew.” Always make the counterattack to BDS public in language that stirs the
soul.
Play loud music when BDS Muslim students are trying to pray.
Put on street theatre performances portraying the beheadings and
rapes of gays and non-Muslims.
Replicate Muslim slave markets by pulling cages with girls and
boys.
Train videographers to capture these actions, and share them on
You Tube.
It hurts Jews to talk like this and an anathema to our way of
thinking. A rabbi to whom I sent a draft of this piece came back at me calling
me a Muslim thug. We’re not like them. Well, we better learn from the best
thugs how to win hearts and minds and make institutional changes or our
children will not have safe campuses or a sense of their own integrity.
Change tactics often. Be as vile as the law allows if the object
is to annihilate BDS. In the words of King David, “Let all my foes be
shamed and utterly confounded….”
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Acting like a thug will just get a lot of Jews, especially Jewish students, arrested. That's not going to do them, nor Israel, any favors. Legal action, both criminal and civil, is the way to go. Pursue claims of assault, sue the colleges and their trustees. Sue the students under anti-incitement laws. I am sure there are many advocacy groups that can provide pro bono services.
ReplyDeleteOn the social media front, record the beatings. Record the angry anti-semitic chants. Plaster the videos everywhere. Invade pro-Islam and pro-Arab fora and spam links to Youtube. Get the message out.