President Joe Biden announced Thursday an executive order targeting what he called “extremist settler violence” that allows the U.S. to sanction Israel and Israelis much more broadly. It is a gift to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The BDS movement began more than 20 years ago, during World War II. intifadawhen Palestinian leaders rejected a generous Israeli peace offer at Camp David in July 2000 and launched a brutal campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis.
In 2001, at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in South Africa, activists declared Israel a new “apartheid” state and isolated it through sanctions and economic pressure, much as apartheid South Africa was isolated. We have started our efforts.
There is no “apartheid” in Israel, Jews and Arabs have equal rights, and Arab political parties have recently joined the Israeli government.
As for the “occupied territory” that Israel occupied in its defensive war against Arab states in 1967, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and converted the West Bank (known to Israelis as Judea and Samaria) into Palestine. It is co-governed with the autonomous government. Terms of the 1993 Oslo Peace Agreement.
Most Palestinians live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in “settlements,” most of which serve as commuting suburbs to Israel’s major cities.
The goals of BDS are vague. Some want to force Israel to leave the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) in order to establish a Palestinian state next to Israel. Some seek to use BDS to completely collapse the state of Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state, just as apartheid South Africa ultimately collapsed. (Little thought is given to what that state will be, whether Islamist, democratic, or otherwise.)
Whatever its goals, the BDS movement is united by tactics that demonize Israel and use economic pressure to isolate it. Biden’s executive order is a major victory that provides the weapon against Israel that the BDS movement has been seeking for decades.
The executive order has no legitimate purpose. Although the phenomenon of “extremist settler violence” exists, it is rare and dwarfed by extremist Palestinian violence against Jewish civilians. Jewish civilians remain protected by international law even if the parties live in areas of conflict.
Israeli settlers are also subject to Israeli criminal law. Anti-Israel activists claim that Israel does not enforce its laws against “settlers,” largely because the activists want to hear only one side of the story.
In many cases of violence between Jewish and Arab populations in conflict areas, it can be reasonably argued that there is a conflict between the two peoples and that the “settlers” are acting in self-defense. Occurs in situations.
Biden’s executive order does not target Palestinians who commit acts of violence or encourage violence. By that standard, the Palestinian Authority itself, which pays bounties to terrorists and broadcasts anti-Israel hatred, should be sanctioned.
Biden’s conditions presidential order It’s not limited to violence. It applies to anyone or anything that the government says “threats the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank.”
This loose definition theoretically allows the United States to protect anyone inside or outside the territory, including those who believe that Israel should retain at least part of the West Bank in a future peace agreement (i.e., the majority of Israeli citizens). It becomes possible to sanction things. Create a Palestinian state.
So while Biden is now asserting the authority to apply financial sanctions against Israelis in the West Bank, and indeed against Israelis in general, regarding Israeli policy in the West Bank, most of that policy is based on terrorism. It is adopted for self-defense against
That is exactly the kind of weapon the BDS movement has been trying to wield against Israel for 25 years. Already, anti-Israel groups have issued statements calling on Biden to use new powers to sanction Israeli government officials.
BDS has been overwhelmingly rejected by the American people and representatives at all levels of government. In 2019, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution against BDS by a 398-17 vote. Several Republican and Democratic-governed states have also passed laws banning the BDS movement and boycotting companies that participate in BDS, which isolates Israel. Left-leaning California passed an anti-BDS law in 2016 with near-unanimous support.
President Biden’s executive order violates the democratic will of the American people to impose fiat BDS. It is also a time when Israelis are literally fighting for the survival of their country against Hamas and other Iranian terrorist proxies.
Biden issued an order on his way to Michigan to appease Arab and Muslim American voters. In doing so, he defied Congress and the majority of Americans and delivered the BDS movement’s greatest victory.
Those who truly oppose BDS must oppose this order.
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. He published his 2021 e-book “The Zionist conspiracy (and how to join it)‘ has been updated and a new preface has been added. He is also the author of a recently published e-book. Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 US Presidential Election. He is the recipient of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpolak.
