Comments on: Labour for Palestine:Can We Build the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Campaign? http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/04/29/1088/ Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:55:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Michael Teper http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/04/29/1088/#comment-124160 Michael Teper Tue, 01 May 2007 01:23:26 +0000 http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/04/29/1088/#comment-124160 <p>What would make Mr. Rosenfeld happy? Perhaps that CUPE and other Canadian unions would galvanize the Canadian people to lead a successful campaign of boycott, sanctions and disinvestment to bring ruin to the Israeli economy? Maybe union movements in other countries around the world would do the same, leading to an impoverishment and weakening of Israel. Maybe, in Mr. Rosenfeld's fantasies, Israelis would emigrate en masse, leading to an eventual liquidation of the state of Israel and its replacement by one or more Arab states. Zionism would then become just a defunct historical movement, rather like Italian irredentanism or French royalist restorationism. Then, once more, the Jewish people would be returned to a position of permanent exile. Perhaps, then, they could just assimilate into the countries where they live and just disappear.</p> <p>After all, its always about Israeli aggression, Israeli oppression, Israeli imperialism, Israeli colonialism, Israeli apartheid, Israeli "sowing of instability and turmoil across the Middle East", Israeli this, Israeli that, on and on and on. Whether the Israeli government is Likud or Labor, religious or secular doesn't matter -- Israel can do nothing right, Israel must always be condemned. Because for the BDS crowd, the agenda is not about criticizing any particular policy of the Israeli government, its about working to bring about the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. For some reason, they think that Jews are not entitled to have a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Would they prefer it somewhere else? (Mongolia and Uganda were considered in the late 19th century.) Putting the Jewish state somewhere else is not really on the agenda, though. What the the BDS crowd really wants is that the Jews should not have a state at all. What they really want is a world without Zionism, and, since very few of them have much use for Jewish religious belief, Jewish religious law or ritual, or anything else that's Jewish -- they want a world without Jews.</p> What would make Mr. Rosenfeld happy? Perhaps that CUPE and other Canadian unions would galvanize the Canadian people to lead a successful campaign of boycott, sanctions and disinvestment to bring ruin to the Israeli economy? Maybe union movements in other countries around the world would do the same, leading to an impoverishment and weakening of Israel. Maybe, in Mr. Rosenfeld’s fantasies, Israelis would emigrate en masse, leading to an eventual liquidation of the state of Israel and its replacement by one or more Arab states. Zionism would then become just a defunct historical movement, rather like Italian irredentanism or French royalist restorationism. Then, once more, the Jewish people would be returned to a position of permanent exile. Perhaps, then, they could just assimilate into the countries where they live and just disappear.

After all, its always about Israeli aggression, Israeli oppression, Israeli imperialism, Israeli colonialism, Israeli apartheid, Israeli “sowing of instability and turmoil across the Middle East”, Israeli this, Israeli that, on and on and on. Whether the Israeli government is Likud or Labor, religious or secular doesn’t matter — Israel can do nothing right, Israel must always be condemned. Because for the BDS crowd, the agenda is not about criticizing any particular policy of the Israeli government, its about working to bring about the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. For some reason, they think that Jews are not entitled to have a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Would they prefer it somewhere else? (Mongolia and Uganda were considered in the late 19th century.) Putting the Jewish state somewhere else is not really on the agenda, though. What the the BDS crowd really wants is that the Jews should not have a state at all. What they really want is a world without Zionism, and, since very few of them have much use for Jewish religious belief, Jewish religious law or ritual, or anything else that’s Jewish — they want a world without Jews.

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