BDS: A Movement That Would Destroy Israel! is the title of an article written by Jakie Schreiber against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Movement (BDS) the Palestinian nonviolent civil network, “which is designed to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel”, according to this journalist. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers BDS “a strategic threat against Israel”. Indeed, Israel is now at the height of a supreme military power, while the major Arab armies of Egypt, Syria and Iraq are involved in devastating internal battles on their national soil and no longer represent any threat to the Zionist state. But BDS, founded upon the principles of international law and the universal declaration of human rights, now poses a certain threat to the legitimacy of Israel. Why is that? And in what sense?

We live in a world of fast communication driven by social and news media. The information industry once monopolised by the Israeli/Zionist media groups has now been shattered for good. The truth can never be hidden any more. Secondly, the world, traumatised for nearly 40 years by the so-called ‘Palestinian Terrorist’ has now become open to a legitimate non-violent Palestinian civil movement showing the daily brutal force waged by the Israeli occupiers against the Palestinian people.

The movement’s very successful campaigns exposing the Israeli racist policies of Judaisation in Occupied Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Jordan Valley, the Naqab and the building and expansions of illegal colonial settlements in occupied Palestine have shocked every conscience around the world as well as many Jews and Israelis. A BBC poll in 2013 showed “Israel competing with North Korea as the third or fourth worst-perceived country in the world”.

BDS is asking the civilised world “to fulfil its moral obligation to desist from complicity in oppressing the Palestinian people by ending its lavish aid to Israel”, which in effect is prolonging the suffering of the Palestinians squeezed in a walled prison under the rule of brutal military Israeli occupiers. BDS is asking the western world, in a non-violent civilised way, to end its participation in the criminal Israeli policies against the Palestinians for the sake of international peace and security and for the prevention of extreme violence that is bound to erupt as a result of the humongous oppression being imposed upon the Palestinians in the Holy Land of Palestine.

News media recently reported that (BDS) is gaining momentum in a way that is “de-legitimising Israel as a state”. The news came as a result of BDS recent success with the African National Congress’ endorsement of and support for the movement in 2012, cancellation of events in Israel by world-renowned artists and music bands, the academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association (ASA) among others as well as the decision by the world’s leading scientist, Dr. Stephen Hawking who cancelled his participation in the Hebrew University Conference. ASA president Curtis Marez, said in a statement that “the boycott is the best way to protect and expand academic freedom and access to education. Palestinian academics are frequently impeded by Israeli occupation authorities, schools and universities have been bombed by US-supported Israeli military forces. As an association of scholars and educators, the ASA has an ethical and moral responsibility to act”.

The far-right religious zealots who are now calling the shots in Israel, pushing further the judaisation process of historical Palestine, have agreed to raise the electoral threshold to force Arab parties out of the Knesset. This is just an additional racist aspect which is now ruling the state of Israel who is becoming defenceless in the face of the BDS campaigns. BDS is against such practices (occupation, colonisation, judaisiation of Palestinian land and culture … etc) but not against Israel as such.

The only lame and pathetic Israeli response is accusing the BDS movement of being an “anti-Semitic movement!” The BDS movement was established in 2005 by the Semitic Palestinian people, and no such movement could be anti-Semitic by any stretch of imagination. Indeed, who could be accusing BDS of being anti-Semitic except the European Aryan Jews, the Ashkenazis, who converted as Khazars originally, to Judaism in the 7th century? It is to be remembered that a recent blood analysis of the Ashkenazi Jews confirmed their European non-Semitic origin with absolute certainty. The Ashkenazi Aryan Jews have now been forced out of the picture by blood tests and by historical facts recorded in the universal Jewish Encyclopedia.

The far-right religious and ultra-nationalist non-Semitic rulers in Israel have a great deal to worry about these days. The BDS’ call is not only being heeded by people of conscience across the world, but also by many Israelis. Zeev Smilansky, an ardent Israeli Zionist of the old secular movement that once “yearned to build a conscientious state in Palestine” wrote in Haaretz that “Israel has become Zionism’s worst enemy….the occupation is emptying Judaism’s toolbox of all wealth, turning Zionism and its manifestation, the State of Israel, into another fleeting, sad episode in the gloomy history of the Jewish people”. Smilansky declared:”I boycott the Jewish settlements [colonies] in the (Palestinian) West Bank, I will not cross the Green Line and I do not buy products from the West Bank settlements [colonies]. I will not collaborate with scientists attracted to Ariel [colonial settlement] University”.

I am absolutely certain the BDS’ response to Smilansky would be ‘Amen’!

— Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.