We all know Linda Sarsour. In January 2017 she spoke at the Washington Women’s March in which half-a-million people participated and said, “Israel adopts methods of colonialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinian natives”; “Nothing is more repugnant than Zionism”; “Palestine existed before the State of Israel”; “Our generation will restore the Palestinian state to the Palestinian people”; “The Palestinians are struggling every day against their water and land robbery. My dream is to see liberated and free Palestine.” In March 2017 she said it was impossible to be a Zionist and a feminist In August 2017, in support of Colin Kaepernick, an American football player who was not signed to a contract in the 2017 season after protesting the US national anthem, Sarsour likened neo-Nazism to Zionism saying, “We will not be silenced by blue-blooded, supremacist activists whites, neo-Nazis, or right-wing Zionist activists,” and to “expect our coming whenever there is a fight against injustice.” In August 2015 Sarsour participated in a rally in support of terrorist Muhammad Alan, an Islamic Jihad activist who served three years in an Israeli prison for his involvement in a suicide bombing. Sarsour also shared a false picture that supposedly showed how Israel “stole” Palestinian’ land over the years. The maps that Sarsour presented proved false, and MSNBC even had to publicly apologize for publicizing them. This week she spoke at a conference of Americans Muslims for Palestine held in the US and said, “How can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, which is built on the idea that Jews are superior to everyone else? When faced with intense backlash, Sarsour tried to minimize her statements, tweeting that she was actually referring to the Israeli Nation-State Law (signed only two years ago). “I was specifically referring to the racist argument at the heart of the Nation-State Law recently passed by the Israeli government – not the Jewish people. I apologize for the confusion,” she wrote. But she couldn’t really erase the harsh impression she gave at the conference of thousands. THIS WEEK the National Assembly of France (the French Parliament’s lower house) approved a bill that states that anti-Zionism is a new form of antisemitism. The decision was made by a majority of 154 to 72. The proposal was prompted by a series of antisemitic incidents over the past year, including the attack by Jewish-French philosopher Alan Finkelkraut during the yellow-vest protest. A few days later, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that France would define anti-Zionism as a modern form of antisemitism. In May the German Bundestag approved a sweeping condemnation decision against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. In doing so, Germany became the first major European country to define the organization as antisemitic. The decision was widely supported. In various parts of the world, antisemites are punished. In April, French author and essayist Alan Sorrell, considered one of the country’s leading right-wing ideologues, wrote in March that “Jews are manipulative, domineering and hateful.” He was sentenced to a year in prison In September a Muslim who distributed antisemitic propaganda material near the Chabad Center of East London was sentenced to a year in prison and was fined In January Lara Kollab, a doctor who worked in a clinic in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, was fired from after posting vicious antisemitic statements and encouraging violence against Jews on social networks Sarsour’s actions and speech are anti-Zionist. Sarsour is an anti-Zionist, and a supporter of the boycott movement on Israel.
It is time for Sarsour’s statements to be defined as racism, incitement and antisemitism, not as random statements of expression.
As of June 27 states in the US from New York to South Carolina approved regulations that minimize the boycott movement’s steps on Israel, but federal legislation has not yet been implemented to impose criminal penalties on officials who boycott the State of Israel. Equating Zionism with white supremacy and implying that American Zionists (the vast majority of Jews) are complicit in supporting a racist state is antisemitic, and endangers and incites against Jews. The time has come to punish and restrict these types of statements and calls for boycotting Israel in the United States.
The writer is the head of The Institute for Zionist Strategies, a right-wing, Zionist, liberal think-and-do tank that works at the checkpoints and in east Jerusalem.
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