reports in Electronic Intifida, 3 July 2020
A prominent European Union official is once again spreading lies about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
Katharina von Schnurbein, the bloc’s anti-Semitism coordinator, on Wednesday welcomed and shared suggestions from pro-Israel groups supposedly meant to “make Europe a more inclusive place for Jewish students.”
But the proposals from the European Union of Jewish Students and its German member JSUD, actually call for official condemnation of the BDS movement based on libels and fabrications.
The document asserts that “BDS is an anti-Semitic movement targeting Jewish life in Europe.”
It claims that “BDS leaders and supporters repeatedly seek to hold Jews collectively accountable for the actions of an Israeli government.”
The movement calls for no such thing.
“It is hardly shocking that Katharina von Schnurbein, an unelected EU bureaucrat who acts more like an advocate of Israel’s apartheid regime and a defender of its war crimes, is trading in anti-Palestinian racist fabrications and propaganda,” Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the BDS movement, told The Electronic Intifada.
“But with this latest outrageous lie against the nonviolent Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, she has stooped even lower than before.”
Barghouti emphasized that the movement “stands categorically against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism, as its anti-racist statement of principles explicitly states and as its 15-year record of progressive and intersectional human rights advocacy proves beyond doubt.”
“BDS consistently targets complicity, not identity,” Barghouti said.
“It believes that there is nothing Jewish about Israel’s ethnic cleansing, siege, military occupation and murderous apartheid policies against Palestinians, and that Israel does not speak for or represent all Jewish communities.”