{"id":90078,"date":"2021-10-13T17:05:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T15:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=90078"},"modified":"2021-10-13T08:51:03","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T06:51:03","slug":"22-05-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=90078","title":{"rendered":"The Sally Rooney episode: BDS proves once again that it\u2019s all about the anti-Semitism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Sally Rooney episode: BDS proves once again that it\u2019s all about the anti-Semitism<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
A novelist\u2019s refusal to have her work translated into Hebrew, and Ben & Jerry\u2019s inability to explain why they want to single out Israel for boycotts, tell us all we need to know about how Jew-hatred is justified. Op-ed<\/strong>.
\n.Erik Voake\/Getty Images for Hulu<\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n

(JNS) Irish novelist Sally Rooney thinks that she\u2019s an advocate for human rights, and that prejudice and hate have nothing to do with her work or her various political stands. As far as Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield\u2014the Ben and Jerry who founded the eponymous ice-cream brand\u2014are concerned, they are among the nation\u2019s foremost progressives. The pair believe that they are righteous advocates for\u00a0social justice<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet despite their well-advertised good intentions and enormous self-regard, Rooney, Cohen and Greenfield are promoting hatred against Jews. What makes it so infuriating is that none of them\u2014and others who also support the BDS movement that targets Israel\u2014are honest enough to own up to the consequences of their actions.<\/span><\/p>\n

By refusing to acknowledge that backing a movement that seeks Israel\u2019s destruction is itself inherently anti-Semitic, they are not only in denial about what they are doing but demonstrating the way contemporary intellectual fashions on the left are enabling hatred that singles out Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rooney\u2019s case is pretty straightforward, despite her attempts to cling to the illusion that she has the moral high ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

The novelist, whose third book,\u00a0Beautiful World, Where Are You<\/em>, has just been released, has\u00a0told<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0the Israeli publishing house that handled her two previous works of fiction that she would not allow them to put out the new one. According to the company, Modan Publishing, she told them that she wasn\u2019t interested in having her book\u00a0published<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in Hebrew or in Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Subsequently, she said that prompted by a libelous report put out by Human Rights Watch that falsely labeled Israel as an \u201capartheid state,\u201d she supported the BDS movement, which calls for an end to all commerce and contacts with the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

She told\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0in an email that while she had nothing against having her writing appear in Hebrew, \u201cI simply do not feel it would be right for me under the present circumstances to accept a new contract with an Israeli company that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the U.N.-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a further clarification, she said she was \u201cresponding to the call from Palestinian civil society\u201d and expressing solidarity with \u201ctheir struggle for freedom, justice and equality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Two things about her position need to be understood clearly.<\/span><\/p>\n

One is that the goal of BDS isn\u2019t to adjust Israel\u2019s policies towards the ‘West Bank’ and Hamas terrorist state in Gaza or to advocate for Palestinian Arab independence as part of a two-state solution. Its aim is the eradication of Israel, the one Jewish state on the planet. The talk about apartheid isn\u2019t merely a distortion of the anomalous situation in the territories where Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly rejected peace offers; it\u2019s their false description of life inside the only democracy in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

As\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, Rooney was one of many literary types who signed a\u00a0\u201cletter against apartheid<\/strong><\/span>\u201d<\/a>\u00a0published in May which spoke of 1948 (and not 1967, when Israel came into possession of the ‘West Bank’ as part of a defensive war) as the beginning of \u201cIsraeli settler colonial rule\u201d and referred to Israel\u2019s attempts to defend its citizens\u2014Jew and Arab alike\u2014against more than 4,000 terrorist rockets and missiles fired from Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a \u201cmassacre of Palestinians.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Simply put, the letter is not only a compendium of anti-Israel lies and anti-Semitic stereotypes but incompatible with any notion of peace that doesn\u2019t involve Israel\u2019s destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

That means that in order to comply with Rooney\u2019s definition of an Israeli company that distances itself from \u201capartheid,\u201d they would have to join that call for their nation\u2019s elimination.<\/span><\/p>\n

Somewhat more subtle but no less damning was Cohen and Greenfield\u2019s explanation for the\u00a0partial boycott of Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0that is being carried out by the company they founded but subsequently sold to the Unilever Corporation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview with\u00a0Axios<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0broadcast on HBO, the pair sought to defend the decision of the woke independent board that they insisted on putting in place when they sold their company. They consider the decision to drop their Israeli partner and ban the sale of its products in parts of Jerusalem illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, as well as in the ‘West Bank’, to be a protest against what they claim are Israel\u2019s illegal policies.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when\u00a0Axios<\/em>\u00a0reporter Alexi McCammond asked them why they thought it was right to boycott Israel but not other places whose policies they disagree with, the pair was stumped.<\/span><\/p>\n

McCammond wanted to know why they weren\u2019t halting the sale of ice-cream in Texas, which has passed a law against abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected and which all progressives oppose. She also asked why they weren\u2019t boycotting the state of Georgia, which has an election integrity law that liberals blasted and that motivated Major League Baseball to move its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver.<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer to these queries was stunned silence followed by a nervous laugh. As\u00a0Axio<\/em>s reported: \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Cohen said with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s an interesting question. I don\u2019t know what that would accomplish. We\u2019re working on those issues, of voting rights. \u2026 I think you ask a really good question. And I think I\u2019d have to sit down and think about it for a bit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When he was pressed about Texas and the new abortion laws, he replied \u201cby that reasoning, we should not sell any ice-cream anywhere. I\u2019ve got issues with what\u2019s being done in almost every state and country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Ben & Jerry\u2019s isn\u2019t going to stop selling its products in Texas and Georgia. Virtue-signaling their support for environmentalism and other fashionable leftist causes has proven profitable for their company. They\u2019re not going to endanger their bottom line by pulling out of areas where they make big money.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no accident that Israel is the country that is always singled out by so-called human-rights advocates for its alleged crimes even though other nations, which are actually tyrannies, get ignored. Israel is the only nation in the world that has spawned a worldwide movement that aims at its destruction. Only Jews and Jewish rights are treated in this manner, which is to say that BDS, in whatever form it takes, is, like anti-Zionism itself\u2014inherently anti-Semitic. And the fact that some Jews, like Cohen and Greenfield, or groups with Jewish names like Jewish Voices for Peace, which promotes\u00a0anti-Semitic blood libels<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, support it doesn\u2019t give them a pass for a movement that targets their own people for hate and discrimination.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why laws being pushed in states all around the country to punish those companies that engage in discriminatory commercial conduct against Israel and Jews are not only not a violation of free speech but desperately needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

In much of the mainstream media and polite liberal society, BDS is still treated like a legitimate protest rather than anti-Semitism. The growing acceptance of critical race theory and intersectionality is part of the reason for this since those toxic ideas provide a permission slip to anti-Semitism so long as it is cloaked in the rhetoric of the left.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the actions of people like Rooney and Ben & Jerry\u2019s rip the veil from this subterfuge. Those who think that only Israel\u2019s efforts to defend itself against the Palestinian war on its existence or to assert Jewish rights are the most intolerable acts happening anywhere on the planet mustn\u2019t be allowed to pose as do-gooders. Whether actively or passively, they are complicit in a hate campaign with an anti-Semitic goal that essentially justifies terrorist violence. Those who engage in such despicable behavior deserve the same opprobrium and boycotts that they would use against Israel and the Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan S. Tobin\u00a0<\/strong>is editor in chief of JNS\u2014Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sally Rooney episode: BDS proves once again that it\u2019s all about the anti-Semitism Jonathan S. Tobin A novelist\u2019s refusal to have her work translated into Hebrew, and Ben & Jerry\u2019s inability to explain why they want to single out Israel for boycotts, tell us all we need to know about how Jew-hatred is justified. […]<\/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\/90078"}],"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=90078"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90088,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90078\/revisions\/90088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}