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.
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