Since 2005, the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign has worked diligently to end the very existence of the Jewish state, calling for the economic and academic boycott of anything related to Israel and its citizens, as well as discouraging “normalization” efforts with Israel, which the BDS website defines as “events/projects that are designed to bring together Palestinians/Arabs and Israelis so they can work toward reconciliation.”
It should come as no surprise that this hatred for the Jewish state is accompanied by farcical hypocrisy.
“If you use medical equipment from Israel — it’s not a problem. Cooperating with Israel against the virus — to begin with, we do not consider it normalization,” declared BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti in an Arabic-language Facebook broadcast.
He added, “If Israel finds a cure for cancer, for example, or any other disease, then there is no problem in cooperating with Israel to save millions of lives.”
The magnitude of hypocrisy of this statement redefines the word. Barghouti is not a supporter of coexistence or a two-state solution. Indeed, his mission is to wipe Israel off the map by any means necessary.
“Most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” Barghouti has stated. “Palestinians and Arabs in general have never and will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”
To hear him describe Zionism as a myth and still believe that the goal of the BDS movement is peaceful coexistence with Israel is a case study in denial.
Barghouti’s duplicity is nothing new.
Described by the New York Daily News in a 2013 editorial as a skilled “propagandist,” Barghouti was born in Qatar, moved to Israel in 1993, and holds Israeli permanent residence status. For someone who has been calling for the boycott of the Jewish state for three decades, he has gamed the system by obtaining a master’s degree in philosophy from Tel Aviv University and was known to be pursuing a doctorate from the Israeli school in recent years.
According to the same Daily News editorial, Barghouti “piles falsehood upon falsehood to present Israel as relentlessly oppressing the Palestinians in violation of human decency, and to hold Israel exclusively responsible for the ills afflicting them.”
Barghouti’s Facebook broadcast description is rife with such falsehoods, including accusations that Israel is abusing Palestinian workers by not offering them protection against the coronavirus and “intensifying the looting of the land and arrests, oppression and killing, while normalization continues with the Arab official system.”
If it’s kosher to accept lifesaving help from Israel in the form of medicine and medical equipment, doesn’t that require normalization with the Jewish state?
Advocating Israel’s demise, countries such as Iran and its terrorist proxies share Barghouti’s commitment to refusing normalization, even as they refuse Israel’s help during natural disasters and deadly pandemics— except for the history of their leaders themselves or family members having sought and received medical treatment from the Jewish state. Hypocrisy much?
Can’t expect anything different from terrorists who send children out to blow themselves up in crowded markets, while they give orders from afar, living in luxury. Or from a movement leader who enjoys the benefits of Israeli citizenship while exhorting the rest of the world to boycott anything related to a Star of David – unless Israel cures cancer or coronavirus.
Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public-policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on Twitter at @pauliespoint.