There was an OpEd in the Hamilton Spectator recently on BDS (the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel). There’s been a campaign attacking Sara Jama, an MPP (member of the Ontario legislature) who is black and wheelchair-bound. She’s a supporter of BDS (the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel), hence the campaign against her. The OpEd came from “Jewish leaders“ in Hamilton, including several rabbis. You can read it here:
I wrote this response below (also online):
BDS is not antisemitic
HARRY SHANNON
It is sad that the Jewish leaders (Opinion, July 31) appear to be so blinded by their support for Israel and scarred by Jewish persecution through history that they cannot see the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for what it is. BDS is fully consistent with universal principles promoting justice and human rights – and with the Jewish ethical values I learned growing up.
BDS is a non-violent way to pressure Israel to end its occupation and savage treatment of Palestinians. These include demolishing homes, imprisoning young children, home invasions in the middle of the night, and Jewish settlers rampaging through Palestinian villages in behaviour akin to pogroms. That’s just a short list and with the current extremist Israeli government, life for Palestinians is getting even worse.
It is often argued that Israel only does what it must for security (which is presumably why the authors do not condemn the behaviour). This excuse is indefensible given the litany of torment visited on Palestinians by Israelis. A specific example was reported by journalist Gideon Levy in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on July 30.
Levy describes how Israeli authorities poured concrete into three water wells to plug them up. The wells were essential to the livelihood of Palestinian farmers. There was absolutely no security need for this. As Levy put it: “The evil of [Israeli] apartheid has many faces; this clogging of wells … is one of the ugliest.”
The great Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides developed a hierarchy of charitable giving. The highest form was to help someone to become independent and have no need of support from others. Plugging farmers’ wells is the exact opposite: destroying their source of income so they have to rely on others.
The writers state that BDS is antisemitic. This is the claim of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in its definition of antisemitism. Yet the IHRA definition is highly controversial. Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted it, has stated that it has been weaponized to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel.
Indeed, a 2020 survey by EKOS found that 48% of Canadian Jews agreed that “accusations of antisemitism are often used to silence justified criticism of Israeli government policies” while only 38% disagreed.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism was endorsed by over 200 senior scholars of Jewish, Holocaust and/or antisemitism studies, most of them Jewish and many Israeli. Part of the Declaration reads: “Boycott, divestment and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic.”
I urge the Jewish leaders to rethink their views, speak out against Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians, and affirm that support for the BDS movement is an expression of the commandment stated several times in the Torah (Pentateuch) to “love thy neighbour as thyself.”
HARRY SHANNON LIVES IN DUNDAS.