Tuesday, February 28, 2017

One Needn't Be a Cynic to See Something Odd About Pro-BDSers Crying Croc Tears Over Vandalized Jewish Cemetaries

Gary Weiss writes:
In a statement, the American Studies Association said that it “strongly reproves the recent wave of attacks on synagogues, mosques, and religious community centers in North America and on the Jewish and Islamic people using those institutions.” The ASA, of course, is widely known not for “reproving” anti-Semitism but quite the opposite, a widely condemned resolution boycotting Israeli academics—a singling out of the Jewish state as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has been denounced as anti-Semitic. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist who “makes no secret of her opposition to Israel and support of BDS,” has raised significant money for the St. Louis cemetery—and believe you me, she is not keeping it a secret. 
Yes it’s possible that Sarsour and the ASA are just bubbling over with empathy for the Jewish community that they have never shown for the Jewish state. It’s also possible that they are cynically exploiting the wave of anti-Semitism as political cover for their BDS advocacy. I lean toward the latter theory. It’s a bit like “Jew-washing”—the use of Jewish supporters in anti-Israel agitation—except that in this instance the Jews are safely dead.
It's also a little like Zion-loathers in the EU renting their garments over and throwing up yet another memorial to Holocaust victims, another group of "safely dead" Jews.













Update: Yehuda Kurtzer, head of the Shalom Hartman Institute's North American operation, sees nothing wrong in making common cause with the likes of Linda Sarsour, enemy of Israel though she undoubtedly is, because she is spearheading the chicks' anti-Trump movement. According to Kurtzer, we must eschew applying a "litmus test"--i.e. choosing our allies based on their willingness to accept Israel's right to exist--to those who "share" so many of our other ("progressive") values. As Kurtzer sees it,
The existence of multiple moral frameworks with which to view the world is not a sign of confusion; it is a sign of sophistication and strength. 
Guess that makes me, a litmus test sort of gal, weak and unrefined.

Update: Sarsour appears to exist within a single moral framework--the one commonly known as sharia law. That's what gives her the "moral" authority to say the most appalling things. For instance, this:
Though Sarsour led the feminist event in Washington, D.C., she has attacked Ali and other women who have criticized radical Islam and sharia law.
In 2011, Sarsour wrote in a now-deleted tweet that [Ayaan Hirsi] Ali and Brigitte Gabriel, another critic of radical Islam and sharia law, deserved to be beaten and have “their vaginas” taken away.
Me, I'm so unsophistimacated that I think Sansour's "moral framework" is heinous and poses a threat to all freedom-loving people.

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