{"id":64749,"date":"2018-10-31T17:05:18","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T15:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=64749"},"modified":"2018-10-25T15:57:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T13:57:38","slug":"28-05-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=64749","title":{"rendered":"The Washington Post Soft-Pedals the BDS Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Washington Post Soft-Pedals the BDS Movement<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ean Durns \/ JNS.org<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The former Washington Post building. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

JNS.org<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0coverage of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement is, with growing frequency, violating the newspaper\u2019s own policies and standards. US-designated terrorist groups support BDS and its supporters openly call for the end of the Jewish state. Yet, these facts cannot be found in\u00a0The Post<\/em>\u2019s pages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, the paper has decided to whitewash BDS.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take, for example, a recent\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0op-ed<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by Stanford University Professor David Palumbo-Liu, a BDS advocate. Palumbo-Liu defended the decision of a University of Michigan professor and fellow BDS supporter, John Cheney-Lippold, to refuse to write a letter of recommendation for a student\u2019s study-abroad program in Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

On October 3, the University of Michigan sent Cheney-Lippold a disciplinary letter, characterizing his actions as falling \u201cfar short of the University\u2019s and College\u2019s expectations,\u201d and noting that the professor had \u201cused the student\u2019s request as a platform to express your own personal views.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA student\u2019s academic merit should be the primary guide for determining whether to write a letter,\u201d the university explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

Palumbo-Liu defended Cheney-Lippold, but omitted key components of the university\u2019s decision. In fact, as the university explained in its\u00a0letter<\/strong><\/a>, Cheney-Lippold had previously written letters of recommendation for study in Israel for two other students, admitting that at the time, \u201cI wrote letters for them because I did not have tenure.\u201d Additionally, the professor used \u201cclass time for both courses\u201d he teaches to discuss his \u201cviews on the BDS movement.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Worse still, Palumbo-Liu defended BDS as merely seeking \u201cthe end of Israeli occupation of Arab territory, the full equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.\u201d Its supporters, he declared, \u201cinclude Bishop Desmond Tutu and 2018 Nobel laureate George P. Smith.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But that is an inaccurate and misleading description of BDS, which seeks to unfairly malign the world\u2019s sole Jewish state, singling it out for opprobrium. And its advocates also include US-designated terrorist groups like Hamas, whose\u00a0charter<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>calls for the genocide of Jews and Israel\u2019s destruction. Bishop Desmond Tutu, meanwhile, has supported\u00a0recognizing<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Hamas as a legitimate political entity and compared its leaders \u2014 who target civilians, use human shields, and run a kleptocratic Islamist theocracy in Gaza \u2014 to Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid leader.<\/span><\/p>\n

BDS activists and leaders are clear on their true objectives, even while\u00a0The Post<\/em>\u00a0and Palumbo-Liu obfuscate. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has openly\u00a0called<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for the end of the Jewish state of Israel. According to US Congressional testimony by a former US Treasury Department terror analyst named Jonathan Schanzer, some BDS groups have\u00a0links<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to terrorist organizations like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.<\/span><\/p>\n

No other country in the world faces a systematic campaign to boycott it \u2014 only the world\u2019s sole Jewish state. But in Israel, Arabs sit on the Supreme Court, hold elected offices, and enjoy a higher standard of living and greater political freedoms than anywhere else in the Middle East. By contrast, Palestinians living under the rule of Fatah in the West Bank or Hamas in the Gaza Strip do not have free and fair elections, and those who practice religions other than Islam face punishment or death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, two days before Palumbo-Liu\u2019s October 13 op-ed in the\u00a0Post<\/em>, the Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh\u00a0noted<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that a Palestinian man in Jericho was sentenced by a Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) court to \u201cone year in prison for \u2018insulting\u2019 the prophets.\u201d BDS supporters, however, were silent \u2014 just as they were when the PA\u2019s prime minister, Rami Hamdallah,\u00a0admitted<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on March 16, 2016 that torture \u201chappens\u201d in PA-run prisons. Their concern for Palestinians is feigned. But their obsession with and hatred of Israel is very real.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0perennially misleads about the nature of BDS. An October 8\u00a0report<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0described BDS activities as merely ranging from \u201cdiscouraging the purchase of goods produced in Israeli settlements to pressuring international companies not to conduct business in Israel and urging celebrities not to visit or perform in the Jewish state.\u201d Two other recent\u00a0Post<\/em>articles, both on the University of Michigan controversy, also omitted key details about BDS.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has\u00a0detailed<\/strong><\/a>, one October 9 dispatch falsely claimed that BDS supporters \u201cdistinguish\u201d between the Israeli government and Jews. However, a mere five days before that article was published, BDS\u00a0activists<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u201cdisrupted the presentation of an Israeli Holocaust film in Berlin,\u201d noted\u00a0The Jerusalem Post<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

CAMERA has, on several occasions, sent\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0staff Congressional testimony highlighting the BDS movement\u2019s ties to terrorist-linked entities, as well as\u00a0statements<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by BDS activists like Anna Waltzer, who exhorted: \u201cWe need to wipe out Israel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Post<\/em>, it seems, has its narrative. And the paper isn\u2019t going to let facts get in its way.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s own\u00a0policies and standards<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> listed on its website, state that the \u201cfirst mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.\u201d Further, \u201cthe newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The English philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley purportedly said: \u201cFacts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.\u201d Nor do they cease to exist because\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>, which fancies itself a purveyor of truth, refuses to print them.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sean Durns<\/strong> is a senior research analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Washington Post Soft-Pedals the BDS Movement ean Durns \/ JNS.org The former Washington Post building. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. JNS.org\u00a0\u2013 Washington Post\u00a0coverage of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement is, with growing frequency, violating the newspaper\u2019s own policies and standards. US-designated terrorist groups support BDS and its supporters openly call for the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64749"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64775,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64749\/revisions\/64775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}