Alarm bells recently went off among American Jews when Boston BDS, a shadowy group that has no identified members, published a detailed, interactive Mapping Project report online.
The report is a roadmap to anti-Jewish violence: The Mapping Project brazenly and openly maps and promotes “dismantling” and “disrupting” long lists of Boston-area Jewish institutions across the political spectrum, synagogues throughout Massachusetts, staff members, Jewish family foundations, schools and numerous other entities that allegedly have some sort of connection, past or present, real or imagined, to American Jews, Judaism, Jewish charities, Jewish education, Jewish donors or Israel.
Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA) aptly called the Mapping Project a dangerous “antisemitic enemies list with a map attached.” The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) sent a detailed letter to the US attorney-general and FBI director, urging them to investigate, monitor and where appropriate, prosecute the Mapping Project and other groups, such as Within Our Lifetime (WOL), which are mapping, promoting and inciting violence against American Jews and Jewish organizations.
WOL mapped and threatened Jewish organizations in New York City, and calls for “globalizing the Intifada” – meaning, expanding to the United States and the rest of the world the horror of the Intifada terror wars, in which Arab terrorists murdered or maimed 10,000 Jews in Israel.
Notably, the Mapping Project’s targets include hostile-to-Israel groups, such as J Street – whose many anti-Israel activities include promoting anti-Israel UN resolutions. Jewish foundations that give donations to hostile-to-Israel groups were also targeted.
Ironically, the Mapping Project is even targeting the left-wing Jewish group New Israel Fund (NIF), which funded the initial Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) target list. That target list is the foundation for the BDS movement’s antisemitic economic warfare campaigns.
Specifically, in 2008-2011, NIF disbursed grants of $146,630 to the left-wing Jewish/Palestinian group Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), according to NIF financial statements for those years.
During the same period, NIF grantee CWP established and operated a Who Profits project, which researched and assembled a BDS target list of companies to boycott, in order to implement the 2005 BDS call that launched the modern BDS movement. CWP’s Who Profits project became the Who Profits BDS organization, in 2013.
The Mapping Project now relies on Who Profits’ boycott-targeting research, both directly and indirectly, by relying on the anti-Israel “Investigate” (boycott-targeting) project of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
THE AFSC are virulently, antisemitic quacks who demonize and work to destroy Israel, while claiming to be promoting peace. The AFSC’s website explains that its BDS database of target companies supplements and “rel[ies] heavily on information published by the Who Profits research center.”
It’s not surprising that BDS is now biting the NIF hands that fed it. It seems that this has always been the case: Jews who helped an enemy of the Jewish people ended up being targeted themselves.
Almost a century ago, in 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote about the phenomenon of certain Jews who helped attain autonomy for a nation that was boycotting and pogroming Jews, only to have that nation’s anti-Jewish oppression become worse. Jabotinsky commented: “It is incredible what political simpletons Jews are!”
The Boston BDS Mapping Project and groups such as WOL have laid bare the true nature of BDS and the reality of the threats against us. BDS is not a civil rights movement aimed at improving Israel. BDS is a political, propaganda, cultural and economic-warfare campaign to completely dismantle and eradicate Israel, and more. In fact, we are dealing with a warfare campaign against the entire Jewish people, wherever they may be.
The Mapping Project and its ilk demonstrate that Israel-haters will ultimately turn on all of us, because hatred of Israel is ultimately hatred of all Jews. The hardcore Israel-haters consider all of us – Left, Right and Center – to be evil colonialist Zionists who deserve to be destroyed.
To understand this reality we are dealing with, we only need to hear WOL leader Nerdeen Kiswani threatening, while WOL activists burned a Zionist (Israeli) flag in front of Rockefeller Center in New York City, “The most notorious Zionists in this country, they’re right here in our city. We marched today, we took over the streets and we visited multiple Zionist settler foundations – multiple. We let them know we know where they’re at. We know where they work. We’re gonna find out more about where they’re at, too. And we’re gonna go after them.”
Unfortunately, although NIF discontinued funding CWP, the NIF still continues to donate huge sums to multiple groups, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel-ACRI, B’tselem, Breaking the Silence, etc., which falsely demonize, harass and incite against the Jewish state and the Jews living there. Other far-Left Jewish groups also continue to make it a common cause with the hardcore Israel-haters.
Perhaps the Mapping Project and WOL’s Globalize the Intifada will finally bring our Jewish brethren to their senses.
The writer is national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).