The Great BDS Debate (Uri Avnery)

[azurnoir]

2. you made good on your promise to post this as a thread and interesting to see how you edited it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1134125907#post39

A few days ago an extreme-right Israeli TV commentator announced, only half in jest: "The danger of peace has passed!"

THE SIMPLEST way to exorcise and outlaw the BDS people is to accuse them of anti-Semitism. This puts an end to any sensible discussion, especially in Germany and generally abroad. People who deny the Holocaust are no partners for debate.

There is no evidence whatsoever for the accusation that the majority of BDS sympathizers are indeed anti-Semites. I am convinced that the vast majority of them are devoted idealists, whose heart goes out to the downtrodden Palestinians, as Jews throughout the ages have rushed to the aid of oppressed people, whether American blacks or Russian mujiks.

However, and this must be said, there are some BDS adherents who utter statements with an unmistakable anti-Semitic smell. For an honest-to-goodness anti-Semite of the old school, BDS is nowadays a safe pulpit from which they can preach their odious gospel, under the guise of anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism.

I would like (again) to warn the Palestinians and their true friends that the anti-Semites are in practice their dangerous enemies. It is they who are pushing Jews from all over the world to settle in Israel. These anti-Semites don't give a damn for the Palestinians, they exploit their plight in order to indulge in their own age-old anti-Jewish perversion.

And conversely: Jews who happily join in the new wave of Islamophobia, under the false impression that they are thereby helping Israel, commit a similar grievous mistake. Today's Islam-haters are yesterday's and tomorrow's Jew-haters.

PALESTINIANS NEED peace in order to get rid of the occupation and attain, at long last, freedom, independence and a normal life.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1457710016/