American Jewish Committee ad implies BDS endangers children
If Americans Knew | May 26, 2017
The New England chapter of the American Jewish Committee ran a full page ad in the Boston Globe last Friday demonizing the Boycott, Divesment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian human rights.
The ad turned reality on its head by suggesting that BDS could be endangering children–when in fact BDS is opposing an occupation and apartheid structure under which indigenous children are being shot, imprisoned, tortured, traumatized, deprived of basic necessities of life and denied desperately needed medical care.
The ad’s headline reads “Could an academic boycott put a child’s life at risk?” and appears under an image of a young child hooked up to a breathing tube. Part of the text of the ad says:
Academic boycotts inspired by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement undermine the free exchange of ideas—the beating heart of medical progress and research. They are dangerous, anti-democratic, and deceptive… [BDS is an] ill-conceived and cynical maneuver.
The ad highlights an anti-BDS statement signed by over 100 professors in the medical field (see the names here)–even though hundreds of other academics, institutions and others support BDS.
Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions are nonviolent economic actions that can pressure states to end human rights abuses. The same tactics played a part in ending South Africa’s racist apartheid system.
The BDS movement aims to pressure Israel to end its confiscation and occupation of Palestinian territory, stop its invasions of Gaza and the West Bank, and uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes during Israel’s creation in 1948.
Four-year-old Palestinian girl Shayma Al-Masri. Hospital officials said she was wounded in an Israeli air strike that killed her mother and two of her siblings. – Gaza City (July 2014)
Scare ads like this are part of a concerted effort among powerful pro-Israel organizations and individuals desperate to maintain the status quo, or worse, in Israel-Palestine. Due to lobbying from these organizations, 17 states in the U.S. have passed laws that punish people participating in the movement.
While the ad portrays a nonviolent movement for equal rights as “dangerous” and harmful to children, it ignores the fact that the Israeli government kills, injures, or abducts more Palestinian children every day. (Watch IMEMC for a week or so.)
There is no indication that the AJC or the professors who endorsed this ad have spoken out against Israeli violence against Palestinian children, supported by their tax money.
Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans Knew, sent this letter to the editor of the Boston Globe:
The AJC Should Care about ALL Children
To the Editor:
Regarding the recent full page ad placed by the American Jewish Committee: “Could an academic boycott put a child’s life at risk?”
If this group truly cared about children, they would be concerned that in the past 17 years alone, Israeli forces have killed 2,150 Palestinian children, injured tens of thousands of children, imprisoned over 8,000 children, made hundreds of thousands homeless, and made tens of thousands orphans.
They would be troubled that Israel has at times prevented children in Gaza suffering from excruciating and sometimes fatal health problems from traveling to outside hospitals for treatment, according to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel.
They would be disturbed that according to UNICEF, children in Gaza are suffering malnutrition, stunting, and depression due to Israel’s blockade, in addition to severe psychological trauma.
It is time for the AJC and the other Israel partisans who signed their advertisement to leave their chauvinism behind and care equally for all children, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, and to demand that Israel stop its violence against children of the “wrong” religion/ethnicity.
– Alison Weir
Injured Palestinian children receive medical treatment at al-Najar hospital in Rafah in the Gaza strip, following an Israeli military strike on August 1, 2014.
RELATED:
UK Telegraph : Revealed: the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces
CounterPunch : Israeli video games in Gaza: “Minimal collateral damage”
No comments yet.
Featured Video
Prof. Ted Postol: US–Iran War? Israel’s Fatal Gamble
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Still No End in Sight of the Murder and Mayhem Wrought by the 9/11 Culprits
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 17, 2016
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Fourth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
Back in 2006 all but a prescient few, such as Christopher Bollyn, perceived it as premature to try to identify and bring to justice the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes. There was still some residue of confidence that responsible officials in government, law enforcement, media and the universities could and would respond in good faith to multiple revelations that great frauds had occurred in interpreting 9/11 for the public.
Accordingly, the main methodology of public intellectuals like Dr. Kevin Barrett or, for instance, Professors David Ray Griffin, Steven E. Jones, Peter Dale Scott, Graeme MacQueen, John McMurtry, Michael Keefer, Richard B. Lee, A.K. Dewdney, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, and Michel Chossudovsky, was to marshal evidence demonstrating that the official narrative of 9/11 could not be true.
The marshaling of evidence was spurred on by observations coming from government insiders like Eckehardt Wertherbach, a former head of Germany’s intelligence service. In a meeting in Germany with Christopher Bollyn and Dr. Andreas von Bülow, Wertherbach pointed out that, “an attack of this magnitude and precision would have required years of planning. Such a sophisticated operation would require the fixed frame of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a loose group like the one led by the student Mohammed Atta in Hamburg.”
Andreas von Bülow was a German parliamentarian and Defense Ministry official. He confirmed this assessment in his book on the CIA and 9/11. In the text von Bülow remarked that the execution of the 9/11 plan “would have been unthinkable without backing from secret apparatuses of state and industry.” The author spoke of the “invented story of 19 Muslims working with Osama bin Laden in order the hide the truth” of the real perpetrators’ identity. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ‘Britain’s Index of Repression’ documents 964 incidents of anti-Palestinian crackdown
- Prof. Ted Postol: US–Iran War? Israel’s Fatal Gamble
- UK prosecutors drop aggravated burglary charges against 24 Palestine Action activists
- Unidentified drone downed over Lebanon airbase, US forces block authorities from crash site
- Peeling Back the US Information Operation in Iran
- Israel ‘dictating terms’ to US – Turkish professor
- US ramps up nuclear claims against China
- Erdogan wants nukes: What a Turkish bomb would mean for the Middle East
- Ukrainian disruption of Russian oil pipeline triggers emergency in EU state
- Kaja Kallas: an uncomfortable figure useful to the EU’s Russophobic purposes
- If Americans Knew
- Compliant aid: Who are the Israel-approved NGOs scaling up in Gaza?
- Why won’t Trump’s “Board of Peace” bring peace? – Not a ceasefire Day 131
- Help end the injustice against Shadi
- Israel’s Favorite American President
- Israel’s “Yellow Line” Is a Death Trap for Palestinians. We Drove Into It.
- Why Israel’s expanding occupation in Syria presents a critical legal test
- Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is the victim of genocide enabled by global inaction
- Netanyahu’s plan to “end” US aid to Israel is to give even more money under a different name
- Israel ceased firing on Gaza for just 15 days of the “ceasefire” – Not a ceasefire Day 130
- In Gaza, “rats run over our faces” – Not a ceasefire Day 129
- No Tricks Zone
- Coal Power Back In Trend As Globe Tries To Keep Pace With Growing Demand For Power
- New Study: A 4°C Warmer Beaufort Sea Had ‘No Sea Ice’ 11,700 – 8200 Years Ago
- Unfudging The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Centruy Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
Aletho News 
Leave a comment