Follow the money

There is a war going on in the United States. It is being fought on college campuses across the nation. This battle is not about Affirmative Action or the ridiculous costs of a college education. Not even about Bernie and Hillary—that’s a different one with its own dynamics. No, this is about a well-funded, well-organized movement to discredit the State of Israel and by proxy every Jew in the world.

Of all the injustices piled upon the peoples of the world, why should so much attention be paid to tiny Israel? Why not Russia with its abysmal human rights record? Why not Saudi Arabia with its Wahhabism and the rights of its women? Why not Miramar or Uganda or Iran?

It’s the money.

Arab money has paid for most of the hatred, misinformation and pure anti-Semitism heaped upon the homeland of the Jewish people. When Israel declared its independence 68 years ago, all the Arab nations, most of whom had been well trained by the British Army, came to destroy a new nation located on less than one percent of the land of the Middle East. A nation with no oil, no diamonds, no hostile army. Just Jews.

They failed, of course. As they did in 1957, 1963 and 1967. So, the new tactic does not require armies or air forces or naval vessels. It is a battle for minds and hearts. It is not being fought in the newspapers or on television; it is being fought on college campuses across the country.

It is called BDS (boycott, divest and sanction the State of Israel). It seeps into the classrooms of gullible students. It takes advantage of the lack of education and vulnerability of the millennials.

And it is really well-funded. Arab governments are funding organizations on campus of which BDS is the most visible. It is creating a mindset on campus that moves swiftly from anti-Israel to anti-Jew.

Arabs have money. Every time you fill up your gas tank, you see to that. And they have never spent significant funds to better the lives of fellow Arabs in Gaza, the West Bank or in the squalid “refugee camps” that have lingered for four generations.

One of the mantras of BDS is about “settlements” being built on “Palestinian land.” No. First of all, very little of the land of Israel, Gaza or the Palestinian territories ever belonged to Palestinians. It belonged for generations to absentee landlords in Turkey or elsewhere. Over many years most of it was purchased by the Jewish National Fund to settle Jews not welcome in other people’s countries. Matter of fact, the JNF still owns about 17 percent of the land of Israel.

BDS is trying to put Jews out of business. Adolph Hitler and his minions started by putting Jews out of business before he started slaughtering us. Casting us as “The Other” has been the weapon of choice of many groups, organizations and governments since Roman times.

The head of BDS is a man named Omar Barghouti. He is an activist born in Qatar and educated in the U.S. Right now, and you will find it hard to believe this—this guy who wants to ban all Israeli products in the world is in the PhD program at Tel Aviv University.

He finds himself as an Arab in the middle of a large Jewish University, with all the benefits of the State of Israel. He who claims that Israel not only discriminates, but practices Apartheid against Arabs. He buys Israeli clothing, eats Israeli food products, buys everyday necessities made in Israel and wants the rest of the world to stop buying them.

About three months ago, Rachel and I, along with son Tom and daughter Robin were in South Africa. We visited the notorious township of Soweto, a black “Township” where, during Apartheid, black Africans in their own country were forced to live. We met people who lived under it or observed it as white citizens. Barghouti who is taking his PhD in philosophy would do better to go to Joberg and learn some history. Apartheid does not let the citizens against whom it discriminates sit as Judges or members of the government, much less attain a PhD at one of its universities.

BDS is paid for by Arab governments who use Anti-Semitism to take attention from their overt discrimination, funding of extremist mosques and participation in horrific terror acts around the world. If BDS were to be followed, inventions from voice mail to breakthrough medical research would be gone from our lives. BDS was in part responsible for Soda Stream leaving the West Bank, costing over five hundred Arabs their jobs. Give up the wonders that the Jews bring to the world. But don’t call it justice. Call it what it is. Anti-Semitism in yet another cloak.