A senior European Union
representative has been advised to malign Palestine solidarity campaigners.
Vera Jourova, the
EU’s justice commissioner, was given a briefing paper earlier this year about
how to handle various topics in a discussion with the pro-Israel lobby.
Drawn up by Brussels
officials, the paper provides some talking points about the EU’s “position” on
the Palestinian-led boycott,
divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. It alleges that “the encouragement
of boycotts against cultural and academic institutions or artists” contradicts
the “EU’s stand on non-discrimination and freedom of expression.”
That paints a false picture of
the BDS movement. Its activities are subject to guidelines,
which make clear that the cultural boycott does not target Israeli artists as
individuals.
The cultural boycott is,
instead, applied to artists who represent the Israeli state or institutions
complicit in Israeli crimes or take part in branding exercises intended to
divert attention away from the oppression of Palestinians.
Jourova’s briefing paper –
which was obtained under freedom of information rules – can be read below. It
was prepared ahead of a Holocaust
memorial ceremony held in January this year.
The ceremony was hosted by
Israel’s embassy to the EU and the American
Jewish Committee, a pro-Israel advocacy group.
The officials who drew up the
paper recycle almost verbatim accusations made in 2016 by Katharina
von Schnurbein, the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator. Von Schnurbein had claimed
that “anti-Semitic incidents rise after BDS activities” in Europe’s universities.
She was unable to provide specific examples of such incidents when asked.
Jourova’s office did not
respond to requests for comment.
“Appalled”
The BDS National Committee, a
Palestinian umbrella group that coordinates boycott activities, stated that it
was “appalled” by Jourova’s briefing paper. The document “defamed the BDS
movement as anti-Semitic,” Ingrid Jaradat, a legal adviser to the committee,
stated.
A crucial detail omitted from
the briefing paper is that the BDS movement has consistently
denounced anti-Jewish
bigotry.
Jourova’s briefing paper is at
odds with previous comments made by other EU representatives.
The Union’s foreign policy
chief Federica
Mogherini stated
last year that the EU “stands firm in protecting freedom of expression.”
Although she opposed the boycott of Israel, Mogherini recognized that activists
have a right to advocate BDS tactics. That right is protected by the EU’s Charter
of Fundamental Rights.
Despite the clarity of that
statement, some of the EU’s institutions and governments have continued to cast
aspersions against the Palestine solidarity movement.
Emmanuel Macron,
the French president, has conflated
opposition to Israel’s state ideology Zionism with hatred of
Jews. On Sunday, Macron called
anti-Zionism “a mere re-invention of anti-Semitism.”
Dishonesty
Macron’s comments echo a
decades-long effort by Israel and its supporters to imply that Palestine
solidarity activists have ulterior motives. The efforts have been undertaken
since at least 1973, when Abba Eban, Israel’s
foreign minister at the time, labeled anti-Zionism
as the “new anti-Semitism.”
That deliberate dishonesty has
been reflected by a dubious definition of anti-Semitism approved last year by
the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental body.
That definition is virtually
identical to one which was proposed
by pro-Israel lobby groups more than a decade earlier. It recommends
that strong criticism of Israel – such as describing that state’s foundation as
a “racist endeavor” – should be seen as anti-Semitic.
Even the definition’s lead
author, formerly a senior figure in the American Jewish Committee, has strongly
criticized efforts to use it to stifle speech critical of Israel.
Yet the German government has
been particularly supportive of the definition. In late 2016, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, then the German foreign minister, contacted senior EU officials to
argue that the definition was a “very useful instrument for combating
anti-Semitism – both for the police and in science and education.”
The definition is not legally
binding. Yet 24 of the EU’s 28 governments have endorsed it. According to
internal documents, police services in a number of the Union’s countries are
already using the definition for training purposes.
During a visit
to Israel last month, Jourova issued a joint statement with her hosts
applauding the European
Parliament for endorsing the definition. She encouraged governments to use
it while monitoring their citizens’ activities.
Not for the first time, the
European Union’s representatives are sending out mixed signals. Supposed
champions of free speech are trying to muzzle dissent. Solidarity is being
smeared to placate an increasingly belligerent Israeli government.
The only way to defeat Trump—
and to redeem what is worth saving in liberal democracy—is to detach ourselves
from liberal democracy’s corpse and establish a new Left.
Elements of the program for
this new Left are easy to imagine.
Trump promises the
cancellation of the big free trade agreements supported by Clinton, and the
left alternative to both should be a project of new and different international
agreements.
Such agreements would
establish public control of the banks, ecological standards, workers rights,
universal healthcare, protections of sexual and ethnic minorities, etc.
The big lesson of global
capitalism is that nation states alone cannot do the job—only a new political
international has a chance of bridling global capital.
Excerpt from:
“We Must Rise from the Ashes
of Liberal Democracy”
BY Slavoj Žižek
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19918/slavoj-zizek-from-the-ashes-of-liberal-democracy
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