The Indiana resolution accuses the BDS movement of promoting anti-Semitism.

The Indiana legislature’s resolution was a response to a divestment resolution passed by the Student Senate at Earlham College. The Earlham statement, which explicitly condemned anti-Semitism, targeted three American military contractors – Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard – that profit from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its periodic wars in Gaza. In its most recent assault on Gaza, Israel destroyed UN schools where it had been informed civilians were taking shelter.

Many Americans support a two-state solution that would be negotiated by both Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem are undermining that possibility, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. Israel’s new Deputy Defense Minister, Eli Ben Dahan, responsible for West Bank civil administration, said: “To me, [Palestinians] are like animals, they aren’t human.”

People of conscience must unite to combat racism and hate in all forms. The charge of anti-Semitism should be reserved for that awful reality, which is on the rise together with discrimination against Muslims. Such charges must not be devalued or used as cudgels to silence a painful but necessary debate about security and justice for Israelis and Palestinians.

Sources:

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Indiana-senate-passes-anti-BDS-resolution-400821
https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2015/resolutions/house/simple/59#
https://bdsearlham.wordpress.com/divestment-resolution/
https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/disingenuous-and-dangerous-israel-attacks-bds-antisemitic-1126163414
https://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/6/kill_anything_israeli_soldiers_say_gaza
https://act.jstreet.org/mailings/view/3899?akid=3899.152658.g6BEas

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands that Congress kill the agreement and increase sanctions. Mr. Netanyahu claims the alternative to this “bad” deal is not war but “a better deal.”
Republicans, and Democrats such as Indiana’s Senator Joe Donnelly, are supporting a bill that – even after revisions — recklessly endangers the agreement.

Some of the best informed Israelis, however, acknowledge that diplomacy is achieving what war cannot. Ron Ben-Yishai, the senior military analyst for Israel’s most mainstream newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, wrote: “We could not have achieved a better outcome even if Israel, the United States, and other countries had carried out military strikes on the nuclear sites in Iran.”

If the U.S. and Israel reject the concessions that Iran has made, other powers would resume business with Iran – without the limits that the deal provides. The pressure for a U.S. or Israeli strike would grow.

Bombing could set back Iran’s program at most five years; the negotiated agreement lasts ten. Even repeated bombing would make Iran more, not less likely, to build a nuclear weapon deep underground to deter future attack.

Citizens should encourage Senators to withstand the pressures of right wing billionaires and instead support diplomacy. Senator Donnelly, as a moderate Democrat, is key.

Sources:

https://972mag.com/israel-media-survey-iran-deal-not-so-bad-after-all/105259/
https://972mag.com/netanyahu-resurrects-no-partner-excuse-for-iran-deal/105357/
https://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/irannuclear-deal32015reduced.pdf
https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2015-02-11/Voting-Up-or-Down-on-an-Iran-Nuclear-Deal-Not-as-Easy-as-123

Yet hardliners in Congress are preparing a new sanctions bill. President Obama has vowed to veto it. Whether Congress reaches the two-thirds majority to override his veto depends on whether some Democrats – notably Indiana’s Senator Joe Donnelly – join the Republicans pushing this legislation.

Hawks claim that their bill would mean increased leverage, pushing Iran to make further concessions. But the bill is an ultimatum imposing increased sanctions if Iran does not accept what many experts believe are unnecessarily humiliating terms for a final agreement. The President and global diplomats believe the bill would instead lead Iran to break off negotiations. Iranian hardliners, who have also opposed negotiations, would be vindicated, and Iran would likely step up nuclear activities. That in turn would set the stage for Israel to attack Iran and unleash a new war in the Middle East, almost surely involving the United States.

The last thing the world needs is another war, which would increase the risks of global terrorism as well, ironically, as the chances Iran would actually build a bomb.

Sources:

https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2015-01-15/Congress-Should-Support-Negotiations-Not-New-Iran-Sanctions

https://www.rollcall.com/news/let_the_diplomats_do_the_driving_with_iran_commentary-232362-1.html

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000003454696/obama-urges-against-new-iran-sanctions.html

https://fcnl.org/issues/iran/israeli_us_security_experts_support_first_step_deal/

Mr. Obama decided not to provide more arms to the moderate Syrian rebels precisely because he was rightly concerned that these weapons might well fall into the hands of ISIS.

The current chaos in Iraq, Syria, and beyond is a consequence of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Hillary Clinton supported and Barack Obama opposed.

In its first decree, the American occupation ordered that all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba’ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector. This effectively disenfranchised huge numbers of Iraq’s Sunnis, who were the core of the old regime. The new government was Shiite and sectarian. Until these deeper political issues are addressed, ISIS will find support even among those who deplore its brutality.

It is not President Obama, but the Neoconservatives who planned the invasion of Iraq before the September 11th attacks, whom Hillary Clinton should be blaming. She might add a word of remorse for her own role.

Sources:

The Atlantic

The Guardian

Mondoweiss

On De-Ba’athification

Slate

The Nation

The BDS movement urges those who oppose current Israeli government policies to avoid purchasing products made in Israel or the Occupied West Bank, divest from Israeli companies, and lobby for governmental sanctions against the Israeli government in an attempt to change Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

To accuse the boycott’s supporters of anti-Semitism is an old and well-worn tactic that attempts to discredit those who would protest against what many in the international community see as Israel’s unjust and illegal actions aimed at the Palestinian people and their land. The accusation of racism seeks not only to discredit the messenger, but to distract from the real issues at hand. In fact there is nothing racist in condemning Israeli government policies, just as there would be nothing racist in, say, condemning President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for his unjust and illegal actions.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a moral, legitimate and grassroots response to the Israeli government’s aggressive and unwise policy to expand settlement activity in the West Bank and to turn a blind eye to settler violence, as well as its cruel and unjust blockade of Gaza.

Many in the BDS movement (although by no means all) believe that Israeli government actions in the West Bank and Gaza undermine the possibility of a two-state solution and thus in the long term threaten Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. Opposing Israel’s unjust actions and supporting the boycott is therefore anything but anti-Semitic. Indeed, from my perspective, it is the moral calling of our time.

Forty years later, the American Studies Association and other academic groups are moving along the same path. They are adopting resolutions calling for boycotts or other steps against Israeli institutions, ostensibly because of Israeli policies toward Palestinians. These actions stem from a campaign to treat Israel as a country that practices apartheid, as South Africa once did.

However, not even those it is supposed to help support this movement. Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has objected to boycotting Israeli goods.

Nor is it apt to be very effective. The Economist magazine has called the boycotts “flimsy” with little impact. Even Israeli critics of their country’s policies regard these tactics as counter-productive.

Most importantly, the campaign to equate Zionism with racism is fundamentally flawed. The case for the state of Israel rests not on the claim that Jews are better than other people, but on their right to national self-determination. Until that right is recognized by others in the Middle East, conflict will persist.

In 1991, the UN repealed its resolution. IU’s Michael McRobbie and other academic leaders have already denounced the action of the American Studies Association. But until the Jewish desire for a homeland is accepted, anti-Semitism will continue to flourish in a new form among those who should be most resistant to it.

 Sources

Zionism as Racism Resolution: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, with Suzanne Garment, A Dangerous Place, Little Brown, 1978.

“Campaign Against Israel” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

“Boycott by Academic Group Is a Symbolic Sting to Israel” (New York Times)

“Boycotting Israel: New Pariah of the Block” (The Economist)

“A Leftist’s Critique of BDS” (Daily Beast)