On Wednesday, protesters identifying with the Black Lives Matter movement marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol building reportedly to demonstrate the ties between BLM and the BDS movement that targets Israel. As they marched, the demonstrators chanted, “Israel, we know you, you murder children, too.”
It was only a matter of time before the DC protests turned anti-Semitic. pic.twitter.com/YTbwwGuOYh
— Nic Rowan (@NicXTempore) July 1, 2020
The march was led by Harvard University student Christian Tabash, accompanied by roughly 200 people, some of whom brandished signs that celebrated either the Palestinian Liberation Organization or Black Lives Matter. Tabash read poetry that listed alleged crimes of Israel against Palestinians, the Washington Examiner reported, including one making a conspiratorial suggestion referring to Israel as the “puppet master of continents.”
The Examiner noted, “While Tabash walked out in front of the marchers, he paused several times to say that the Palestinian movement is ‘intrinsically tied to Black Lives Matter.’” He shouted, ‘American capitalism’ and Israel were built on the ‘repression of minorities … And that’s why we say police from Palestine to Mexico to the United States — police as a whole — need to go!'”
The Blaze noted, “The anti-Israel chant by BLM protesters comes days after Black Lives Matter U.K. sparked outrage by publicly declaring on Twitter, ‘As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand by our Palestinian comrades. FREE PALESTINE.’”
As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades.
FREE PALESTINE.
— #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) June 28, 2020
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) fired back, “The Black Lives Matter movement should embrace solidarity from Jews. There have been calls for violence against us from prominent BLM supporters with no official condemnation. Now from the official UK BLM account, we hear the lie that fighting antisemitism has ‘gagged’ legitimate debate. Zionism is the movement for the self-determination of Jews. The right to the ‘self-determination of peoples’ is universal and enshrined in Article 1 of the UN charter. So-called ‘anti-Zionism’ exclusively denies Jews that universal right and is therefore antisemitic.”
They continued, “BLM should aspire to be a movement against racism that unifies people and achieves lasting change, not a movement that spreads hatred and achieves lasting division. Educate yourselves. You cannot fight prejudice with prejudice.”
In 2016, an alliance of groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement released a 40,000-word manifesto accusing Israel of waging “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs.
Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz blasted the manifesto, noting that it singled out Israel, writing:
No, it wasn’t the Syrian government, which has killed tens of thousands of innocent people with barrel bombs, chemicals, and gas. Nor was it Saudi Arabia, which openly practices gender and religious apartheid. It wasn’t Iran, which hangs gays and murders dissidents. It wasn’t China, which has occupied Tibet for more than half a century. And it wasn’t Turkey, which has imprisoned journalists, judges, and academics. Finally, it wasn’t any of the many countries, such as Venezuela or Mexico, where police abuses against innocent people run rampant and largely unchecked. Nor was it the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where the police are a law unto themselves who act as judge, jury and executioner of those whose politics or religious practices they disapprove …
In defending its citizens against terrorism since before its establishment as a state in 1948, Israel has killed fewer Palestinians than did Jordan and Syria in two much shorter wars. The relatively low number of civilian deaths caused by Israeli self-defense measures over the past 68 years compares favorably to the number of civilian deaths in other conflicts. This is because, as Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, put it: There has been “no time in the history of warfare when an Army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties…than [the Israel Defense Forces].” Though Kemp was specifically referring to the wars in the Gaza Strip — which are also the apparent focus of the Black Lives Matter Platform — his conclusion is applicable to all wars Israel has fought.
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