Dear Letter to the editor:
By 2005 Omar Barghouti, a founder of BDS (“Boycott, Divest, Sanction”), had acknowledged that the sole purpose of BDS was the euthanasia of Israel. A student of history, Barghouti knows full well that the Nazi T4 Euthanasia Program was the foundation of the Final Solution of the Jews as enacted in January 1942 in the Wannsee Protocols. His use of the word euthanasia leaves no doubt that they founded BDS to continue the antisemitic eliminationist mission formalized by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann at the Wannsee Conference.
Yet for years sycophants of Barghouti — professors, journalists, politicians and students — have engaged in euphemisms to avoid stating Barghouti’s clear and unequivocal euthanastic purpose for BDS.
The Harvard Crimson: “rightful justice”;
University of Minnesota students: “violating indigenous sovereignty”;
NYU Law School: “international law and universal human rights”;
CUNY Law: “settler colonialism and structural racism”;
University of Illinois: “occupied West Bank”; and
Columbia University: “the state of Israel’s acts towards Palestinians”.
The list of euphemisms is endless. The list of supporters of BDS unwilling to state the obvious and hiding behind euphemisms goes on and on.
Except for one group of BDS supporters at one university in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2013 at Wits University in South Africa Israeli jazz artist Daniel Zamora performed or attempted to perform as hundreds of BDS protesters interrupted his performance with a call to “Shoot the Jew!” No euphemisms here. Just a direct line to Barghouti’s euthanistic purpose for BDS.
In fact both the clarity of the Wits University BDS “Shoot the Jew”!” and Barghouti’s “the euthanasia of Israel” have their origin in the events of November 9-10, 1938 in Germany — Kristallnacht. It was then that the Nazis gave up the pretense that boycotting Jewish business was their purpose. It was then that they publicly made clear that shooting of Jews was their purpose — and that boycott was a euphemism for murder.
The Wits University BDS clarion call to “Shoot the Jew” leaves no doubt that “Boycott, Divest, Sanction” is just a euphemism for “Shoot the Jew” — or as the Nazis made clear, murder.
Richard Sherman
Margate, Florida