{"id":107735,"date":"2014-02-12T17:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T17:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=107735"},"modified":"2014-02-12T17:00:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T17:00:06","slug":"nyt-reporter-treats-israeli-boycott-immoral-anti-semitic-reminiscent-nazis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/nyt-reporter-treats-israeli-boycott-immoral-anti-semitic-reminiscent-nazis\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018NYT\u2019 Reporter Treats Israeli Boycott as Immoral and Anti-Semitic, Reminiscent of Nazis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Weiss\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren\u2019s piece on the\u00a0boycott movement is titled<\/a>, \u201cWest Bank Boycott: A Political Act or Prejudice?\u201d and it reveals the reporter (again) as culturally bound\u2014 operating within the Israeli Jewish experience. She begins by citing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s view that a boycott is \u201cimmoral\u201d and she seems to agree, for she promptly brings in the Nazis:<\/p>\n

for many Israelis, the boycott that comes to mind is the Nazi-led one of Jewish-owned businesses that spread in the 1930s from Germany across Europe and beyond. Avoiding a coffee shop because you don\u2019t like the way the boss treats his employees is voting with your wallet; doing so because the boss is Jewish \u2013 or black or female or gay \u2013 is discrimination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But no one is boycotting Jews as Jews. They are boycotting Jews because of the way they treat people under occupation when they boycott settlement products, the supposed focus of this story.<\/p>\n

Though it is surely the case that some boycotters oppose Israel\u2019s right to exist as a Jewish state, does that make them anti-Semitic?\u00a0I should think that would make them anti-Zionist.<\/em>\u00a0Rudoren equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Many believe, she says,<\/p>\n

that the movement is motivated by anti-Semitism, that the ultimate target is not Israeli policy, but Israel\u2019s right to exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, she quotes Omar Barghouti, saying BDS is not singling out any religious or ethnic group, but our West Jerusalem minder promptly steps in\u2014 \u201cMany Israeli leaders do not buy this,\u201d and quotes a torrent of rightwingers, government spokesman Mark Regev (\u201cIt\u2019s of dubious morality\u2026\u201d), Dani Dayan, Netanyahu, and Malcolm Hoenlein.<\/p>\n

FYI, Hoenlein is not an Israeli at all, but an American Jewish leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeventy years ago, you went after, \u2018Kill the Jews\u2019 \u2013 here you say, \u2018Kill the Jewish state,\u201d\u2019 said Malcolm Hoenlein\u2026 \u201cThe politically correct way to be anti-Semitic is not to say, \u2018I hate the Jews,\u2019 but to say, \u2018I hate Israel.\u201d\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I can think of at least two Jewish groups who are for boycott of settlement products, Peace Now and Jewish Voice for Peace. Do they hate Jews? No they hate the colonies. And Peace Now and Peter Beinart are Zionists. Why didn\u2019t Rudoren quote them when she was calling Americans to talk about Israeli opinion?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Peace Now is a constituent of the Conference of Presidents, of which Hoenlein is the executive director. Why does Peace Now remain in the Conference when Hoenlein is calling it a collection of anti-Semites?<\/p>\n

It is surely good news that the fat is in the fire on boycott, that people are discussing it at last in the mainstream.\u00a0But Nazis?<\/em>\u00a0This is a form of hysteria. To her credit, Rudoren did a pretty good job about going into the territories to write\u00a0up Palestinian employment in settlements\u00a0<\/a>the other day; but when is she going to talk about the actual conditions of life inside the occupation, which even\u00a0Haaretz say<\/a>s is a form of slavery, because Palestinians lack control over their lives and bodies? When will the Times undertake to explain how it has come to pass that a couple dozen other peoples have gained the right of self-determination in the 67 years since the U.N. voted to give the Palestinians a state, but they still don\u2019t have that right? That is why I am for boycott, and so many other Americans are, too. To do what I can to lift the heel of the oppressor.<\/p>\n

Philip Weiss is a writer for\u00a0Mondoweiss.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Weiss\u00a0 RINF Alternative News New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren\u2019s piece on the\u00a0boycott movement is titled, \u201cWest Bank Boycott: A Political Act or Prejudice?\u201d and it reveals the reporter (again) as culturally bound\u2014 operating within the Israeli Jewish experience. She begins by citing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s view that a boycott is \u201cimmoral\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-107735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}