Jun 8, 20202 min read

BDS /Anti-Israel Activists Hijack George Floyd's Story

Updated: Aug 20, 2020

This was inevitable. A movement that for the last decade plus has tried to link itself to the struggle of African-Americans - if not straight out co-opt it - has done it again. They have turned George Floyd into a Palestinian martyr and the cop who murdered him into an Israeli soldier.

This is hardly new behavior. They make unfounded claims that Israel is an apartheid state - which is outright offensive to anyone who actually suffered under real apartheid in South Africa. They claim that the Jews ran the slave trade in America, despite the fact that Jews barely existed in the Americas at the time and those who did, barely owned slaves. Part of this is to deflect attention from the horrific Arab/Muslim slave trade in Eastern Africa which rivaled that of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade but began in the 7th c. and still continues today (in places like Sudan and Mauritania)! They claim that Israel trains the US police to use brutal tactics, despite the fact that there obviously had been all kinds of anti-black violence in the US long before Israel was created and the fact that the US police and military train with a number of security forces around the world to determine best practices (which generally means finding ways to keep both their own casualties and civilian casualties to a minimum). This is all part of a campaign to paint their cause in human rights terms using words like occupation, colonialism, racism and apartheid, even if they have nothing to do with the reality and ignore both major important facts about the history of the Jewish connection to the land and the nature and history of our conflict. It also works well to deflect from their own horrific record on human rights and freedoms. Anyway, if I were African-American (or African), I would not be able to stomach this usurpation of my cause. And a number of them are speaking out about it...

Here is an article by the incredibly talented African-American writer Chloe Valdary who was speaking out about this already in 2014 when BDS activists were trying to hijack the Ferguson protests: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/students-justice-palestine

Here are two columns from African-Americans about the phenomenon now after the George Floyd incident:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-palestinian-appropriation-of-black-pain/

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/black-history-is-unique-it-cant-be-hijacked/

Here are some articles debunking the idea that Israel is an apartheid state:

http://www.thetower.org/article/im-a-south-african-activist-who-used-to-fight-against-israel-until-i-went-there/

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israeli-policy-is-not-apartheid-1.5391146

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-oren-israel-apartheid-20140518-story.html

Here is an article about the Arab/Islamic slave trade:

https://newafricanmagazine.com/16616/

And finally, here is a video about the most recent incident and some historical context.