Canadian BS Group Falls Apart

The Canadian group "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" has disbanded in response to the Canadian government's crackdown on BS activities, the Toronto Star reports.  The group shut down after seven years of futile effort to spread ideas such as "pinkwashing", the conspiracy theory that Israel's global championing of gay rights over the past decades is in fact a sophisticated ruse (not unlike Israel's "democracywashing", its "freedomofpresswashing", or its "freedomofspeechwashing").

Avi Benlolo, chief executive of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, explained what happened:

“It’s quite obvious that they would lose momentum,” Benlolo said.” With extremist massacres in Syria, ISIS going around cutting people’s heads off, Iran executing gays ... why would anybody be going after Israel with its pride parades in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?”

Another Campus Bans BS Nonsense

Virgina's Liberty University is the latest academic institution to join the anti-BS bloc. The student government in the university passed an amendment declaring that no anti-Israel BS legislation will be permitted. See this algemeiner report:

The student government at Virginia’s Liberty University on Tuesday passed an amendment to its constitution that forbids legislation supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The amendment to the constitution declared that Liberty’s student government “will not entertain BDS legislation targeted at the Israeli state, or its people, or legislation of similar intent.”
Liberty University senior Chelsea Andrews—a pro-Israel student activist with CUFI on Campus, the school’s division of the Christian Zionist organization Christians United for Israel—led the effort to pass the anti-BDS amendment.

“At Liberty University we stand with Israel, because as Christians, as Americans, and as individuals focused on freedom and human rights, there is no alternative,” Andrews said after the amendment passed. “I hope that other students will see what LU has done and follow suit. Across the country we’ve seen BDS repeatedly rear its ugly head. That stops now.”

Israel and Jordan Initiate $250 Million Cooperative Project

While the BSemite dream of isolating Israel from the world is falling apart, Israel's Muslim neighbors continue to strengthen their ties with Israel.  As was the case with Egypt and Turkey, technology is  the motivator for this agreement with Jordan as well.

The water-swapping agreement between Israel and Jordan involves the joint construction and overseeing of a desalination plant in Aqaba, Jordan, as well as a 200-kilometer pipeline linking the plant to the Dead Sea.  The plant will desalinate 65- to 80-million cubic metes of sea water from the Red Sea.  Israel will receive about 35 cubic meter of this output, to water the Negev, and in return will provide Jordan with water from Lake Kinneret, to water northern Jordan.  

The total costs of these projects, $250 million, is expected to receive funding from the European Union and the World Bank.  It will be managed by a joint Jordanian-Israeli directorate.

Energy, and Water Minister Silvan Shalom (left) and his Jordanian counterpart, Water and Irrigation Minister Hazim el-Naser, display the agreement.  Photo by the Jerusalem Post.

The mutual benefits do not end here:  the bi-product of desalination, a salty brine, will pour into the Dead Sea via the pipeline, which will revitalize this natural wonder and tourist attraction shared by both Israel and Jordan.  Industrial evaporation of the Dead Sea in recent decades, in order to extract its famous minerals, has shrunken the lake to half of its size.  This agreement will provide both Jordan and Israel with much-needed water in their driest regions and bring the Dead Sea back to its former beauty.

BS Funder Claims ISIS is a Zionist-American Conspiracy

We have already paid attention to Leila Khaled, an international terrorist notoriously known for hijacking planes during the 70's. As you recall, Khaled was recruited to tour a fundraiser for the BSemites in South Africa, who conveniently disregarded her violent past. Now Khaled continues the sham, and was recorded saying in a speech in Soweto, that the "Islamic State" is in fact a joint Zionist-American conspiracy. See this report from Commentary Magazine's Johnathan Marks:

The not-at-all crazy Leila Khaled,
ladies and gentlemen

So far, the trip is going quite well. Khaled has been welcomed by the ruling African National Congress, scoring a seat at President Zuma’s State of the Nation Address. People seem to be responding to her pitch. For example, as I wrote last week, the student government of the Durban University of Technology, a day after a visit from Khaled, called for the expulsion of Jews (the student government has since apologized: “oops, by ‘Jews’ we meant ‘people funded by the Israeli government.’”). BDS South Africa has proudly reported on the tour, including its finale in Soweto. Rebecca Hodes, who was on the scene in Soweto, gives this remarkable description of Khaled’s remarks. 

According to Hodes, toward the end of her speech, Khaled said: “ISIS, I tell you, is a Zionist, American organization. Boko Haram is another Netanyahu. [Its leaders] are more Zionist than the Zionists… Beware the imperialists. They are vicious and they are collaborating with the Zionists to control the whole world….” 

You may think that BDS-South Africa, just for the sake of damage control, would distance itself from Khaled’s remarks, or at least avoid mentioning them. Instead, they repeated them on Twitter. After the speech, Khaled “was presented with a gift as dozens of audience members vied for a decent angle for a cell phone snap.” But not before the crowd sang “one more revolutionary song” for, as BDS-South Africa put it, the “freedom fighter.”

UC Davis Divestment Resolution Overturned

Another blow for BSemite campus parade. This time, a resolution calling for divestment from Israel was that was accepted in UC Davis Student Senate, was overturned by the Student Judicial Council. The judicial council determined that the resolution was clearly political, and thus was not in the jurisdiction of the senate.  See this report from legalinsurrection.com:

Palestinian Flag at
UC Davis 'non-political' senate

Anti-Israel divestment resolutions have had success in the U. California system this semester, including the bizarre and seriously mocked decision of the university-wide student council to divest not only from some companies doing business in Israel, but also from the U.S. government. 

None of these resolutions are binding, but they are an important part of the War on Israel on campuses, in which anti-Israel groups seek to hijack every possible forum and to make everything about hating Israel. 

One of the most controversial resolution sessions took place at the UC-Davis Student Senate, which passed a divestment resolution. 

In a stunning development, on Thursday morning, the student Court issued its decision that the divestment resolution violated the UC-Davis student government’s Constitution, since was primarily a policital document, and did not involve student welfare.

British Artists' Boycott Letter Receives Widespread Criticism

A letter, signed by some dozen British artists and calling for cultural boycott of Israel, was published in the Guardian on February 14. The timing could not have been more ironic, as only hours after its publication a Jihadist Danish shot and killed a Jewish volunteer guard in Copenhagen, while he was securing a seminar discussing the freedom of speech. As the Times of Israel reports, a variety of public figures have cried out against the letter, depicting it as "offensive" and "racist". See, for example, these bold words from Laura Marks:

Copenhagen Shootings

Laura Marks, senior vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, alluded to the timing of the boycott letter, calling it “offensive” in an interview with The Times of Israel. 

“There is something ironic in the demand for a cultural boycott and the demand not to engage when the attacks in Copenhagen and Paris were made on people who wanted to express themselves,” Marks said.

Marks claimed a cultural boycott of this sort is also “racist.” “As the APPG report makes clear, negative language towards Jews becomes the norm if you don’t challenge it,” she said. 

“How do we change attitudes if people want to close down communications? Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and [these artists are effectively] saying that they will continue to work with all sorts of awful regimes and that Israel is the only one they aren’t going to deal with.” 

On Monday, an editorial in The Times weighed in, saying, “The egregious campaigns for a cultural boycott of Israel are stoking ugly, atavistic movements in Europe. These need to be confronted by civilized opinion. Israeli governments are fallible but the Jewish state is a force for democracy in a region that is short of it."

We recommend artists focus, for now, on some other countries to pursue in the realm of cultural boycott. For instance: Syria, Iran, Yemen, maybe even North Korea. Isn't that an idea, huh? 

Durban University BSemites Call to Expel All Jews

Ah, BSemites, give it a rest, will you? You're just making this too easy. I mean, you can't really expect anyone to take you seriously when you call all Jews on campus to immediately deregister. You got that right everyone, they actually said that! BSemites, A-Semites, what's the difference? See this full report from the Times of Israel:

The student representative council at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa urged the institution’s management to expel its Jewish students, especially those who don’t support the Palestinian cause, the Daily News newspaper reported Wednesday. 

The demand was also extended to any students sponsored by the Israeli government.
“We had a meeting and analyzed international politics,” the student body’s secretary, Mqondisi Duma, was quoted in the report as saying. 

“We took the decision that Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle, should deregister.” 

Durban University of Technology vice chancellor Ahmed Bawa called the suggestion to kick out Jewish students “totally unacceptable.

BS Fails at Stanford for the Third Time in Five Years

The Associated Students of Stanford University Undergraduate Senate defeated yet another BS proposal, following a failed effort at Stanford in 2013 and another failed effort in 2010.  Though BSemites tried to salvage the bill by cutting the number of targeted companies from 8 to 2, the bill did not pass, again. 

The Stanford Israel Alliance led the opposition to the vote and organized a petition signed by 1,600 students, faculty and alumni.  The pro-Israel students were backed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Congressman Charles Rangel, and several Nobel Prize winners, including Stanford professors Roger Kornberg and Al Roth.

The repeated failure of BS efforts at Stanford are particularly painful to the BS movement because Stanford has a rich history of divestment.  For example,  last year, the  university made headlines when it divested from coal-mining companies, a move that both students, faculty and administration supported enthusiastically.  It is precisely this record that explains why the BS movement has failed  again, and again, and again on this campus:  Stanford students have enough experience to recognize when they are being manipulated for hateful (and futile) ends.

The third defeat for BS on this campus in recent years stands in contrast with the University of California system, which went over the deep end earlier this week.  UC became the laughing stock among U.S. campuses when it was manipulated by pro-Israel students into divesting from the United States of America, thus discrediting itself and the entire BS circus.

California BSemites Lose Their Minds, Divest from... America?!

BS opponents often ask why Israel should be singled out for boycott, given the abysmal record of just about any other country in the world.  At a recent BS coven in California, a student posed this hypocrisy question and pointed out that one cannot divest from one of the world's most liberal democracies without divesting from actual human rights abusers.  The Daily Bruin reports:

...She proposed the resolution because she thinks human rights violations are evident in many countries and she views the resolution as a compromise for some pro-Israel students who said they think the first resolution holds Israel to an unfair standard.

Forced into a corner, the BSemites in the room played the only card they had left:  They divested from everything, including the United States of America.

The second resolution calls for the UC to divest from foreign governments such as Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Mexico, and the U.S., who some say have violated the right to “life, liberty, security of person, to education, to privacy, family (and) home, to own property and (not to) be arbitrarily deprived of property."

The extent of insanity needs to be emphasized:  These are students in the University of California system, a public eduction system funded by the State of California.  And, perhaps unbeknownst to the students present, the State of California is one of 50 member states of the United States of America.  Simply put, California BSemites proposed to divest from themselves and have become the laughing stock of American media.

If you've ever wondered about how seriously one should take student divestment, now you know.

Turkey-Israel Trade Boom

Despite what some would consider problematic diplomatic relations, Turkish news agency Cihan reveals that the economic ties between the two countries reached a new peak. Economic isolation and boycott of Israel - once more we can see that this is no more than a myth. Read this Cihan report:

Turkey's mutual trade volume with Israel reached over $5.6 billion in 2014, representing a nearly 50 percent rise over 2009 despite lingering diplomatic tension between the two, official figures show.

Data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) shows that mutual trade volume reached $2.6 billion in 2009. Turkish exports to Israel jumped to $2.92 billion in 2014 from $1.5 billion in 2009, while imports from Israel increased to $2.7 billion from $1.1 billion in the same period.

James Blunt Performs in Israel

As usual, international artists are paying very little attention to that annoying BS background noise; instead, socres of performances are swarming to Israel. Yesterday, a special concert was played out by British singer James Blunt, who visited Israel for the first (but not last) time. See this Jpost report:

British Crooner James Blunt had his thousands of adoring fans alternately crying, laughing and dancing at Tel Aviv's Nokia Arena Saturday night. 

In his first-ever concert in Israel, the 40-year-old tousled-hair singer played his best hits and some lesser-known works to a cheerful crowd.

"Shalom Tel Aviv!" he shouted out to the appreciative throngs, following it up with "ma nishma?" 

"It's a thrill to be in such a special country that I've heard so much about from so many friends," he said.

Dale Hurd Exposes BSemite for What they Really are - Anti-Semites

In a bold commentary on CBN News, titled "Israel's Boycott Resembles Nazi's 'Judenfrei'", the veteran news reporter Dale Hurd expresses dashing criticism against the BS movement, claiming thst they are no more than a smokescreen for good old Anti-Semitism. this is a must-read, and you will surely enjoy (or be appalled by) it. Here's some highlights from the report:

The Nazis sought to rid Germany of any trace of the Jews. They called it "Judenfrei" or "Jew-free." 

Some warn this same anti-Semitic spirit has returned today in a new form. It's a drive to erase any sign of Israel. 

Across Europe, more and more campuses, cities and regions are trying to become "Israel-free zones," free of the taint of what Israel critics would call an "apartheid state."
The anti-Israel boycott movement says it's not anti-Semitic, but they don't boycott any other nations. 

Israel is a democracy. There are plenty of cruel dictatorships around the world they could boycott, but they don't. 

"No other country. Just Israel. You won't see this against any other country in the world that they don't agree with," Richard Millet, who tracks the BDS movement through his website, said. 

"They won't be calling for a boycott of America, which they don't agree with, or the British government, which they don't agree with, before we get into China, Russia, Syria, or Saudi Arabia," he continued. "You name it. All the other countries, there is no boycott. So you answer why?"

UC Davis 'Boycott' Fiasco Continues

It is quite amusing to see BSemites so ridiculously open-hearted about their true intentions. For example, read this Front Page Magazine report on how an alleged boycott proponent actually propagates support for Hamas terrorist organization seeking to implement Sharia law and executing Jewish genocide. This is BS, have we mentioned?

Cute BSemites in action

In a morally coherent world, the chilling statement “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis” would not have been spoken publicly, and certainly not by an elected student leader at an American public university. 

But in California, the veritable epicenter of academic anti-Israelism and its attendant stealth jihad, this statement, spoken last week by student leader Azka Fayyaz during a divestment resolution debate at the University of California, Davis, is par for the course, and indicative of how debased the conversation about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has actually become. 

Thus, while members of the UC Davis chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and others who supported this noxious vote purport to care solely about the malevolence of Israel and punishing the Jewish state for its political misbehavior and human rights abuses, at least some part of that campaign is clearly to embrace terrorism, as well as the rigid, oppressive precepts of a seventh-century theology comprising the tenets of Islam. 

The fact that so many activists feel comfortable with openly supporting a terrorist group with the single purpose of murdering Jews, that they publicly wish for and proclaim, as Ms. Fayyaz just did, that “Israel shall fallinsha’Allah,” indicates quite dramatically how acceptable genocidal Jew-hatred has become, both in the streets and on campuses in America and Europe. This is clearly not, as it is frequently and disinegenuously asserted, merely “criticism” of the Israeli government’s policies; this is what many define as a new permutation of anti-Semitism—an irrational, seething animus against the Jew of nations, Israel, the wish for Jews to be murdered as part of “resistance,” and for Israel itself to be destroyed, all muddled in a disingenuous brew of human rights rhetoric and Western self-hatred.

Canada and Israel Fight BS Together

Bad news, BSemites, the world is not as stupid as you would believe. Canada, for example, has just signed a joint memorandum with Israel, its intent being correspondence in fighting BS boycott attempts. The joint memo specifically equates BS with anti-semitism. Read this report from the Alternative Information Center:

Canada and Israel have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly fight the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. The memorandum equates BDS with anti Semitism and claims to reflect joint dedication to “freedom of expression and assembly, democracy and the rule of law”. 

The memorandum, signed on 18 January, commits Canada and Israel to develop “a coordinated, public diplomacy initiative both bilaterally and in international and multilateral fora to oppose boycotts of Israel, its institutions, and its people within three to six months”. 

Canada also becomes a promoter for Israel, as the two countries will engage “in annual consultations to identity opportunities to advocate in favour of the State of Israel's full participation in the global economy”.

Israeli - Egyptian Energy Ties Strengthen

Israel's alleged 'isolation' is once more refuted, as the leading commercial body in Egypt, the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI), has hailed the latest decision to begin import of natural gas from Israeli sources. See this commentary from Algemeiner:

Egypt’s leading business organization has praised Cairo’s plans to import natural gas from Israel, saying that doing so will “yield many benefits.”

In another sign of the burgeoning security and commercial ties between the two countries since Abdel Fattah el Sisi became president of Egypt in 2014, the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) said that that the deal with Israel would reduce import costs by relying on pipelines already installed by East Mediterranean Gas (EMG), the company that had supervised Egyptian gas exports to Israel before they were halted following the 2011 uprising that led to a Muslim Brotherhood government.

The government’s decision to take “serious steps in considering natural gas imports from foreign companies that won exploration rights in Israeli fields will yield many benefits,” said Tamer Abu Bakr, head of the FEI’s energy committee.

Swastikas Sprayed at Jewish Center following BS Resolution

Those cute BSemites just can't seem to stop expressing their passion to the lovely Germans of the 1940's. After a resolution was passed by the student association in the University of California, Davis, in favor of divestment from corporations operating in Judea and Samaria (which was immediately opposed by U.C. Davis Chancellor), two swastikas were sprayed at a Jewish frat house. Read this report from JTA:

Two swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish fraternity’s house at the University of California, Davis, two days after the student senate passed a divestment resolution targeting Israel. 

The swastikas were painted on the off-campus house of Alpha Epsilon Pi sometime early Saturday morning. 

“I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that this happened right after divestment,” AEPi vice president Nathaniel Bernhard told the California Aggie student newspaper.

In separate statements, U.C. Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said the university opposed divestment and condemned the anti-Semitic graffiti.