Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, discussing the Holocaust from the Senate floor, said that there “are still glimpses of that same hate” in a secular and peaceful movement protesting Israel’s occupation of Palestine at academic institutions throughout the US and around the world.
Reid said Wednesday morning that “in the midst of campus debates about boycotts of Israel, Jewish students have felt increasingly intimidated,” citing a controversial New York Times report published Sunday.
He brought up the genocide against Jews in Europe in a speech that recognized last week’s passing of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on the continent.
“At several colleges, Swastikas have been painted on the doors of facilities, and in some cases on the doors of Jews, on their rooms,” he said immediately after alluding to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS).
Some students feel the need to hide their heritage, and support for Israel is getting intense backlash,” the top Senate Democrat added. “That’s sad.”
“Let’s stand against anti-Semitism, let’s stand with Israel and the Jews throughout the world,” he concluded.
Both Reid’s remarks and The Times story did not, however, recognize the significant number of politically diverse Jews who participate in BDS, in the United States and throughout the world—a tacit equation of Jewishness to Israel’s decades long history of violence against Palestinians. Jewish Voices for Peace, a group that claims to organize 100,000 members in “online activism” supports BDS tactics, “and believe[s] that they can and must, in the end, be achieved in mutually-agreed ways that uphold the well-being of Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
Further belying the claims of Reid and the New York Times about BDS are the results of a poll, published in May 2014 by the virulently anti-Palestinian Anti Defamation League, which found that the United States is one of the least anti-Semitic countries in the world, with less than 1 in 10 Americans holding anti-Semitic views.
Nonetheless, Reid’s colleagues in the Senate Finance Committee unanimously advanced legislation that would seek to undermine the non-violent Palestinian solidarity movement—one advancing a cause that detractors often ironically slander as being wholly backed by militants. In last month’s mark-up of the trade promotion authority bill, the committee voted 26-0 to order US negotiators discussing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with EU negotiators to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel.”
A global campaign launched by wide swaths of Palestinian civil society in 2005, BDS was designed to replicate the successful worldwide boycott of Apartheid South Africa—an initiative that was similarly started in response to a call made by black South Africans.
The comparison between Israel and Apartheid South Africa, while decried by supporters of the former, has long been deemed apt by activists who struggled under the latter. Bishop Desmond Tutu said last year that he sees “a mirror image of the sort of things I experienced under Apartheid” when he visited Israel and Palestine. Nelson Mandela also once described Yasser Arafat as a “comrade in arms.” The two men had met days after Mandela was released from jail. The iconic South African leader then said that the Palestine Liberation Organization head “is fighting against a unique form of colonialism, and we wish him success in his struggle.”
