Why Its Stance on BDS is B.S.
Talk about a hot mess.
The editorial board at the Harvard Crimson is comprised of 86--count 'em--86 people. That's not an editorial board. It's a Greek chorus and one that's woefully off-pitch, given its April 29 editorial endorsing the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement on campus, whose primary goal is the destruction of the state of Israel.
You'd think that's a pretty serious move at a pretty serious school, right? After all, this is Harvard, the school with a 5% acceptance rate for applicants clamoring to be in Cambridge. Alas, you'd be wrong.
Let's first circle back to the 86. On its website, the Crimson states:
Three times per week, the board meets to discuss the biggest campus issues of the moment and vote on a shared stance to be published under “The Crimson Editorial Board” byline. While we strive to find a meaningful consensus — that is inclusive of our varied perspectives and concerns — we often disagree. Occasionally, when the board is divided about the opinion expressed in a staff editorial, dissenting board members have the opportunity to write a dissent.
All righty, then. However, a dissent has yet to appear at The Crimson.com four days after the editorial was published and generated a firestorm on Jewish media. Does that mean all 86 agree with such bilious statements like:
"Israel’s current policy pushes Palestinians towards indefinite statelessness, combining ethnonationalist legislation and a continued assault on the sovereignty of the West Bank through illegal settlements that difficults the prospect of a two-state solution; it merits an assertive and unflinching international response."
For that alone, the 86 should be 86ed. And, yes, they said "difficults." No, difficult is not a verb, no matter what the Wiktionary says. They apparently were too self-satisfied having used "ethnonationalist" in a sentence to notice.
Look, these Mensa wannabes are actually latecomers to embrace BDS. It's supplanted Hacky Sacks as a campus pastime. But because it's Hah-vahd and The Crimson has a long roster of luminaries who once toiled there, including FDR and JFK, this editorial has received outsized attention.
So, no surprise if a few of them are doing revolutions six feet under because of sentences like this:
We unambiguously oppose and condemn antisemitism in every and all forms, including those times when it shows up on the fringes of otherwise worthwhile movements.
In case you wondered if students who get in to Harvard are truly our best and brightest, that line reveals the answer is an unequivocal no.
BDS is an unapologetically antisemitic movement. It rejects a two-state solution in the Middle East. It only wants one state, and it is not a Jewish one. It wants full rights for Arab citizens--conveniently omitting that Israeli Arabs, who make up 20% of the population--already have full rights. That emboldens the BDSers to throw around phrases like "apartheid" and "colonialists," without accounting for the fact that Jews have lived in the region for over 2,000 years.
So, yes, 86, if you oppose antisemitism, you can't be for BDS. How do you know it's antisemitic. Take this test (I know, 86, not another test), put forth in The Forward by former dissident and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky back in 2005, to determine whether something's antisemitic. It's the three D's--demonization, delegitimization and double standards. On that account, BDS passes with flying colors. As one example, Sharansky writes:
It is antisemitic discrimination, for instance, when Israel is singled out for condemnation by the United Nations for perceived human rights abuses while proven obliterators of human rights on a massive scale — like China, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria, to name just a few — are not even mentioned. Likewise, it is antisemitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.
So, facts. Not fancy. You would have thought at least one out of 86 would have realized that.
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