For those not intimately familiar with the BDS movement, here is an excellent short video, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, that provides a basic introduction:
Recent reports indicate that the European Union is considering a regulation requiring warning labels to be placed on Israeli imports, cautioning buyers that the products may be made in Israeli “settlements” or “colonies.”
It must be noted, however, that like the United Nations, which obsessively focuses on demonizing Israel while ignoring the worst human-rights abusers in the world, the European Union is not going to implement warning labels that advise its citizens that:
• China is occupying Tibet and Hong Kong.
• Russia is occupying Crimea and east Ukraine.
• Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s worst human-rights violators. (Yet European colleges and professors gladly take its money. Similarly Qatar, which funds the anti-Western, anti-Semitic, pro-Islamist extremism propaganda throughout the world, has poured $340 million into Northwestern University.)
• Iran is occupying large swaths of Iraq, is the world’s largest sponsor of Islamist terrorism and hangs gays in the streets for the “crime” of being gay (it’s worth noting that Israel is the only nation in the entire Middle East in which the LGBT community can live free, protected by law.)
• In Indonesia, the law dictates that teenagers be publicly whipped for cuddling, and that gays be whipped.
• Libyan Islamists routinely capture, terrorize and auction off black African slaves, some for as little as $400 (females and young girls are priced much higher).
• The groups advocating BDS against Israel are often affiliated with, or fronts for Islamist terror organizations
Not one of the anti-Israel BDS organizations has mounted a campaign against any of the above human-rights violators or terror-sponsoring nations, yet they claim they are not anti-Semitic.
This potential E.U. labeling policy is reminiscent of the Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses during the late 1930s, during which stores owned by Jews were defaced by government thugs with “Jude” signs and warnings not to buy from Jews:
This 7:29 video by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum documents the Nazi-led boycotts of Jewish businesses:
So why is the European Union behaving in a racist, anti-Semitic way, by threatening to institute a boycott against Jewish products?
Didn’t Europe learn anything from World War II?
Ken Abramowitz is chairman of Citizens for National Security.
