BDS – Sinister Hoax With Genocidal Objective…writes David Singer
The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) instituted in 2005 by “Palestinian civil Society” against Israel and its civil society continues to attract people from all around the world – including Jews and Israeli Arabs – who support the campaign without realising its genocidal objective.
The BDS manifesto makes clear that its punitive measures are to be pursued until Israel ends:
These are code words effectively calling for Israel’s destruction since:
- According to the PLO: Israel is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab home land, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
- According to Hamas: Israel is an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it.
Those who have:
- boycotted theatre performances by Israeli groups in Barcelona,
- stripped supermarket shelves of Israeli food products in London,
- marched in South Africa to protest Woolworths stocking Israeli made goods or
- protested outside Max Brenner outlets in Sydney
are actually supporting a racist campaign that calls for the total elimination of the Jewish State.
However the European Union (EU) – mindful of the Jew-hatred endemic in the BDS campaign – yet anxious to appease its Arab trading partners and burgeoning Arab populations within its member countries – has targeted only the West Bank – presently working to enact measures requiring Israel to label products coming from Jewish settlements there – following guidelines established on 18 July 2013.
These EU policy initiatives are ostensibly based on the 1980 Venice Declaration – which stressed that:
- Israel needed to end its territorial occupation of the West Bank
- Israeli settlements constituted a serious obstacle to the peace process in the Middle East.
- Jewish settlements established there – as well as modifications in population and property – were illegal under international law.
The EU position on the illegality of those Jewish settlements has now been totally discredited following the recent decision by Norway’s largest pension fund – KPL – to sell its shareholdings in Heidelberg Cement AG and Cemex SAB de SV – whose two Israeli subsidiaries are currently operating quarries established after 1967 in Area C of the West Bank.
Under the 1995 Oslo Accords Israel has sole civil and security control in Area C – comprising 60% of the West Bank where no more than 4% of the West Bank’s Arab population currently lives.
KPL first sought advice on the legal situation pertaining in the West Bank from the Oslo-based International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI) – an independent institute focusing on good governance, peace and conflict, and international law.
The advice completely refutes the EU’s long held position.
Senior ILPI Partner Gro Nyusten – former Norwegian Foreign Affairs staffer, former Associate Professor of International Humanitarian Law/the Law on Armed Conflict at the University of Oslo, from 2008 Associate Professor at the Defence Staff University College in Oslo and former chair of the Council on Ethics of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global –- advised KPL that:
- international law does not provide “unambiguous answers”
- it was “highly probable” that the operation under Israeli licence of the subject quarries was inconsistent with the requirements of the law of belligerent occupation
- a case on quarrying activities in Area C went all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court – but was rejected because the court concluded that it raised issues that could only be resolved through political channels and not through the court
- Occupation law did not prohibit Israel from making use of real property – but Israel’s role was restricted to that of a caretaker that must restore such property to the “occupied power” once the conflict has ended. Significantly Ms Nyusten failed to identify that the “occupied power” was Jordan – whose annexation of the West Bank in 1950 was declared illegal by every country except Great Britain and Pakistan.
- The issue of whether Israel was entitled to open new quarries which did not exist before 1967 – was “controversial”.
- The 1995 Oslo Accords (Oslo II) “presume” the ultimate transfer of Area C from Israeli to Palestinian control through so-called final status negotiations. Ms Nyusten however did not point to any provision in the Oslo Accords that supports this “presumption”.
Ms Nyusten’s legal opinion also failed to consider two territory-specific provisions in international law sanctioning the right of Jews to live in the West Bank for the purposes of reconstituting the Jewish National Home there – article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
In the end KPL – faced with no definitive international law to justify its decision to disinvest – concluded:
“that the ethical arguments carry the heaviest weight in this case”.
Ethics are not law.
EU decisions supposedly based on judicially determined principles of international law were exposed as myths that can no longer be legally or politically sustained.
The BDS hoax is set to swallow many more well-intended people into its Jew-hating vortex.
The EU could suffer a similar fate with the introduction of its labelling policies – no longer being able to rely on non-existent international law to camouflage that decision – whilst opening itself to the charge it is supporting a genocidal campaign designed to dismantle the Jewish State.
Common sense will hopefully prevail.
David and Leon
Lets not forgot that the average man on the street doesn’t even know where or what ‘oslo’is. This morning on my way to work i saw 3 BDS stickers on bus stops (Adelaide) saying “Boycott Israel” etc, etc. These stickers a bright, professional looking and very difficult to remove. This is what influences the uneducated masses and fuels anti-semitism. I appreciate your expert disection of internation law, but it seems irrelevant on the streets!
Alan
You are right.
Intolerance breeds on ignorance.
There are a lot of people on the streets who would be shocked if they knew they were being duped into being part of a campaign designed to wipe Israel off the face of the map along with its Jewish population.
How – they wonder – could this possibly happen if they were only boycotting a Max Brenner outlet or not buying Israeli products or protesting at an Israeli academic seeking tenure at an Australian University?
They do not understand that boycotts against Jews were the precursor to what happened in Germany in the 1930’s.
I recommend you read the following – comparing those 1930’s Jewish boycotts with those Jewish boycotts taking place in 2015.:
http://edgar1981.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/is-boycott-israel-campaign-different-to.html
Maybe you can get this instructional fact sheet laminated and paste it alongside – or even over – the 3 BDS stickers causing you offence.
In order to occupy territory of a sovereign state, the occupying state must first cross an international border.
In 1967 Israeli forces crossing into Judea and Samaria in a defensive war did not cross any international border, only a temporary armistice line.
Leon
Spot on.
That is why Ms Nyusten was probably not prepared to identify who was the “occupied power” – since there was not one – as Jordan’s annexation and occupation of the West Bank between 1948 and 1967 was never recognised as legal by the international community with the exception of Great Britain and Pakistan.
Fact is Judea and Samaria West Bank) and Gaza are no-mans land under the sovereignty of no State at present. Competing Jewish and Arab claims remain to be resolved.
As these areas were designated as territory within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter – the Jewish claim to sovereignty in this remaining 5% of the territory comprised in Mandatory Palestine is certainly superior.
This is especially so when one understands that 78% of Mandatory Palestine- now Jordan – was denied to the Jewish people in 1923 to reconstitute their Jewish homeland – after having been promised to them for that purpose just three years earlier.
Trying to create a new Arabs-only state between Israel and Jordan for the first time ever in recorded history has been a spectacular flop.
If there is to be any hope of peacefully ending the Arab-Jewish conflict then it will only come in direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan – the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine – to divide up sovereignty of the West Bank between their two respective States and redraw their current shared border to reflect such agreed changes.
Two peoples need two States – not three.