Activism and BDS Beat 4 December 2019
Campaigners are not deterred by efforts across Europe to smear their support for Palestinian equality and human rights as anti-Semitism. (via Facebook)
France’s National Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution conflating support for Palestinian equality with hatred of Jews – an initiative supported by the country’s Israel lobby.
But most lawmakers did not take part in the vote.
Meanwhile, Wallonia, one of Belgium’s three federal regions, confirmed that it is pulling back on official cooperation with Israel, citing Israeli violations of international law.
Fewer than half of the 577 members of France’s lower house were present for Tuesday’s vote.
Of those, 154 backed the resolution and 72 opposed it.
The so-called Maillard resolution endorses the controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism promoted by Israel and its lobby.
The IHRA definition has been widely condemned for conflating criticism of Israel’s racism against Palestinians with anti-Jewish bigotry in order to delegitimize support for Palestinian rights.
The National Assembly resolution however calls the IHRA definition “an effective tool to combat anti-Semitism” which, it alleges, includes “manifestations of hatred towards Israel justified solely by the perception that it is a Jewish collectivity.”
The nonbinding resolution urges law enforcement to use the IHRA definition to “uncover and prosecute” supposed instances of anti-Semitism.
On Monday, 127 Jewish and Israeli intellectuals published a call in the newspaper Le Monde urging French lawmakers not to back the resolution.
“Our opinions on Zionism may be different, but we all think – even those who consider ourselves Zionists – that associating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is fundamentally wrong,” the intellectuals say. “This conflation is profoundly harmful to the numerous Jews who consider themselves anti-Zionist.”
They add that for Palestinians, Zionism has meant “dispossession, displacement, occupation and structural inequality.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise party announced Monday that his bloc of lawmakers would vote against the resolution and shared the intellectuals’ statement.
Other lawmakers posted on Twitter that they too would oppose the measure:Israel’s racist state ideology
The resolution’s sponsor, Sylvain Maillard, is a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling La République en Marche party.
Earlier this year, Macron told the French Israel lobby group CRIF that his government would support efforts to criminalize opposition to Zionism, Israel’s state ideology.
Zionism is the belief that Jews should have a state of their own in historic Palestine.
However since Palestine’s indigenous Muslim and Christian population was – and still is when Palestinian refugees living in forced exile are taken into account – overwhelmingly non-Jewish, Zionism is inherently discriminatory.
Zionist militias could only establish Israel as a Jewish state in 1948 by perpetrating the Nakba, the expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of cities, towns and villages.
Israel has only been able to maintain its violently gerrymandered Jewish majority by preventing the return of Palestinian refugees, in violation of international law, solely and exclusively because they are not Jews.
Israel relentlessly pursues the Zionist goal of a Jewish-majority state through blatantly racist policies ranging from apartheid laws discriminating against Palestinians to regular massacres in the Gaza Strip.
While the French resolution passed, it clearly failed as an effort to impose a consensus that criticizing Israel’s racist ideology and practices is itself racist or anti-Semitic.
Despite official efforts to silence them, activists in France continue to press for accountability, especially their campaign urging insurance giant AXA to divest from firms that aid Israeli human rights violations.
Belgian trade mission canceled
A similar resolution passed by the German parliament in May has been used to justify growing censorship of support for Palestinian equality and human rights.
The European Union is also working closely with Israel lobby groups to institutionalize the IHRA definition in an effort to stamp out activism for Palestinian human rights.
But campaigners on the continent appear undeterred.
Activists in Belgium last week celebrated victory after a trade delegation to Israel was canceled.
Officials from the Wallonia and Brussels regions had been scheduled to travel to Israel this month to promote Belgian exports.The campaign group Association Belgo-Palestinienne said that mobilizing its members to oppose the mission produced results: Official participation in the junket has been called off.
Elio di Rupo, a former Belgian prime minister who is now premier of the Wallonia region, confirmed to state broadcaster RTBF that no officials would take part in the trip.
“The absence of progress in the peace process, the lack of progress on the ground and the violation by Israel of the Geneva Conventions push us to hold back on official cooperation,” di Rupo said.
Comments
France
Permalink Frank Dallas replied on
And the Jerusalem Post reports that the gilets jaunes are essentially antisemitic. No doubt amongst those millions of people there are some antisemites, but there will be some psychopaths, some child abusers and some vile sexists-the law of large numbers dictates it. Of course, the gilet jaune movement is an uprising and any kind of uprising is anxiety-creating for a regime like Israel's.
Macron ought to call his movement en arriere. That he's incapable of seeing the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is evidence of his intellectual vacuity and moral disorientation. Zionism rests on the notion of the superiority of its supporters. As Weizmann remarked: "...there is a fundamental qualitative difference between Jew and Arab." Racism in the raw. This remains the view of many Zionists: there is no such thing as a Palestinian. This is tantamount to robbing Palestinians of their humanity. When Weizmann met Isaiah Berlin in 1942, he expressed the view that the Jews were a race (Berlin seems to have agreed in his later memorandum to Begin) and argued the Arabs would never have their own State in Palestine.
In the utterly skewed reporting of alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party it is implied time and again that any Jewish source is righteous and virtuous. Jewish commentators are never asked about their view of the Israeli State, their attitude to the Palestinians. Today, we are told 70 staffer and ex-staffers have made statements about the supposed problem: how many are apologists for Israel? This wholesale attribution of virtue to any Jewish source is obviously antisemitic: to subsume all Jews to a category of any kind is to fail to treat them like everyone else. Jews are not a morally untarnished elite, they are a group of human being like any other. Macron has fallen into the trap of believing the Zionist lobby is virtuous by nature, in spite of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the dehumanisation of the Arabs.
Race
Permalink Nestor Makhno replied on
The claim that jews are a separate race is baseless and brings those who claim this on the same level as the Nazis who maintained this aswell. The genomen of jews is not particularly different from non jews. Weizmann's claim equals that of Martin Buber who made the same statement in his book "Der Jude und sein Judentum"
intellectual vacuity
Permalink Peter Purich replied on
Sadly, that "evidence of ... intellectual vacuity and moral disorientation" is just Macron appeasing the Zionist regime. It's a type of cognitive dissonance.
criminalizing dissent is an antisemitic act
Permalink tom hall replied on
In the same way that the Catholic prelates and Vatican undertook to beat, violate, plunder and silence the body of the faithful, ie the world's Catholics, the Zionist gangs are now operating to do the same to the Jews. If they can suppress Jewish dissent, it will be so much easier to pass laws and jail non-Jews in the name of fighting antisemitism. And it is no small occasion for irony when the most aggressive proponents of legal penalties for supporters of Palestinian rights are drawn from the ranks of history's most notorious Jew-haters: European and American upper class gentiles.
It is therefore a matter of urgency that Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel organize to protect their own rights as well as their neighbors'. So long as a substantial number of Jewish voices are heard in defense of liberty and justice for the oppressed, these charlatans will not prevail. Imposing a fearful orthodoxy on a disparate population leaves no room for debate, and silencing dissent- including Jewish dissent- is an antisemitic act.