In 2009 Israel\u2019s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered all foreign missions to distribute a 1941 photograph of the then Palestinian leader in exile, Haj Amin Al Husseini, meeting Hitler.\u00a0\u00a0 The motivation behind Lieberman\u2019s order lay in international criticism of Israel\u2019s decision to further expand its illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem; the not too subtle subtext being that as Palestinians are Nazis any policy implemented against them is justified.<\/p>\n
This week the David Horowitz\u2019s Freedom Center perpetrated the same historical distortion in its advertisement comparing college professors who advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel to the Nazi government\u2019s persecution of Jews.\u00a0 Ignoring the political and human rights context in which the call for BDS has been made, and its ultimate aim of securing compliance with international human rights standards, its proponents are instead vilified as Jew haters and their opposition to illegal Israeli policies presented as hatred of \u2018the Jewish state.\u2019\u00a0 Through a series of outrageous assertions their support for Palestinian human rights is linked to the Nazis, calls for genocide and the Toulouse murders.<\/p>\n
The truth, however, is that the call for BDS has neither an anti-Semitic intent nor an effect, Rather, it reflects the recognition that after 20 years of failed negotiations and almost 44 years of military occupation and illegal colonization, there is no means by which Palestinians can achieve their basic human rights and freedoms except through the activism of international civil society.<\/p>\n
The obligation to act is itself embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights\u2019 prescription:<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n And of course, if states were to take their own obligations seriously there would be no need for such international civil society action.\u00a0 Until that day, however, we are all under obligation to secure human rights for everyone, regardless of race, creed or class.\u00a0 Those who advocate BDS are fulfilling this mandate and it is perhaps a sign of the threat they pose to an unjust situation that they are deliberately misrepresented as Nazis – the worst of all human rights abusers.<\/p>\n Yet, the reality on the ground is that whilst Israel\u2019s calculated colonization of Palestine continues apace, its attendant violations of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights will only increase.\u00a0 In this situation the calls for BDS will not diminish but will grow, and scurrilous attempts to defend injustice and silence people of conscience by sowing fear and defamation will ultimately not only fail but are themselves extremely dangerous.\u00a0 By mendaciously claiming anti-Semitism where none exists they devalue the whole concept and aid the anti-Semitic agenda of making anti-Semitism respectable once again.\u00a0 Indeed they already sully and trivialise the memory of the Holocaust by using it as a means to defend present injustice.<\/p>\n Commenting upon Lieberman\u2019s ploy of using the Holocaust era photograph to defend present illegality, an Israeli source remarked that it had been met amongst Israeli diplomats with \u201claughter, scepticism and a sense of misplaced communication that this doesn’t help one bit the real argument.\u201d\u00a0 The same can hopefully be said of Horowitz\u2019s current distortions, yet in its calculated attacks on individual integrity it may be much more sinister than that.<\/p>\n 28 April 2012<\/p>\n ____________________________<\/p>\n Mairead Corrigan Maguire is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book <\/em>The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com<\/a>. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS<\/em> <\/strong><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>,<\/span> which indicates that it is produced in Israel. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week the David Horowitz\u2019s Freedom Center perpetrated the same (foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman\u2019s) historical distortion in its NYT advertisement comparing college professors who advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel to the Nazi government\u2019s persecution of Jews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nobel-laureates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}