WarSclerotic

The Palestinians have never laid eyes on US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians know nothing about the plan, which still has not been made public.

That fact, however, has not stopped them from categorically rejecting the yet-to-be-announced plan — a stance the Palestinians repeated this week as US Middle East envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt visited Israel and a number of Arab countries to discuss the plan.

The Trump plan has not even been finalized and, as such, has not officially been presented to any of the parties to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Kushner and Greenblatt have been working on the plan for several months; their current tour of the region comes in the context of Jordan and Egypt.

It is only the Palestinians who are boycotting the US administration. In the past six months, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership has refused to have any dealings with the US administration — except, of course, when it comes to receiving financial aid from the US. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior associates in Ramallah have not only refused to meet with any official from the US administration, they have also been waging a smear campaign of hate and incitement against President Trump and top US administration representatives and officials.

Most of the Palestinian attacks have thus far been directed against Trump’s “Jewish and Zionist” advisors, including Kushner, Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

In the past six months, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior associates have not only refused to meet with any official from the US administration, they have also been waging a smear campaign of hate and incitement against President Trump and top US officials. Pictured: US presidential envoys Jason Greenblatt (left) and Jared Kushner (center) speak with Abbas (right) on June 22, 2017 in Ramallah. At the meeting, Abbas rejected their demand that he halt payments to terrorists and their families. (Photo by Thaer Ghanaim/PPO via Getty Images)

The vicious attacks on Trump and the senior US administration officials have also been accompanied by statements from Abbas and other Palestinian officials concerning the US president’s Middle East peace plan. In these statements, the Palestinians have not only voiced their rejection of the plan that does not yet exist, but have also, on almost a daily basis, been condemning it, dubbing it a “conspiracy” designed to eliminate Palestinian rights. In the most recent Palestinian attack on the plan, Palestinian Authority leaders are now claiming that it is actually aimed at “dividing the Palestinian people” by establishing two separate Palestinian entities — one in the West Bank and another in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian position regarding this unseen Trump plan, is largely based on rumors and media speculation. Palestinian officials have admitted that they get their information mostly from the media.

So, the Palestinians have rejected something they know nothing about. What, then, is bothering the Palestinians about the Trump plan or any other peace initiative? Attempts by the US administration to arrange meetings with PA leaders in Ramallah to consult with them about the proposed plan have fallen on deaf ears. The Palestinians express zero interest in even seeing if they might find something good in the plan.

The Palestinians want nothing to do with Trump’s plan: they know it will never satisfy their demands. The Palestinians are not opposed to the peace plan because of a dispute over a border or a settlement or a checkpoint or the status of Jerusalem. They are against Trump’s plan — and any other peace initiative — because the Palestinians have something else in mind.

The kind of “peace” that the Palestinians are seeking is one that no peace initiative would ever provide. The Palestinians want a peace without, not with, Israel. The reason the Palestinians have a problem with the Trump plan is that they see it as an obstacle to their plan to eliminate Israel. The Palestinians know that the Trump plan — regardless of its details — will not facilitate their mission to destroy Israel. The Palestinians, in fact, see any peace plan presented to them – whether by Trump or anyone else – as an obstacle hindering their effort and dream to continue the jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews. They do not want to have to say “No” to the Trump Administration; it is safer just to duck the issue, stall and buy time until a friendlier US administration comes along.

When the Palestinians denounce the Trump plan as a “conspiracy,” they mean that this is a US conspiracy to thwart their efforts to annihilate Israel. What the Palestinians are saying is: “Who are these Americans to come and preach to us about peace with the Jews living here when our real goal is to drive the Jews out of this land?”

In the summer of 2000, Yasser Arafat walked out of the Camp David summit (with President William Jefferson Clinton and then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak) after realizing that the proposals on the table did not satisfy the Palestinian aspirations and dreams – of destroying Israel. What Arafat wanted was Israel to give him control over the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. What he wanted was to establish a Palestinian state on these territories so that the Palestinians could use it as a launching pad to “liberate the rest of Palestine” – that is, to destroy Israel. When a furious Arafat realized that he would not get what he wanted, he returned to Ramallah and incited Palestinians to wage against Israel another wave of terrorism, called the Second Intifada.

Now Mahmoud Abbas is sitting in Arafat’s seat. Abbas does not like the Trump peace plan, sight unseen: he knows that it will not advance his goal of fulfilling the “phased solution,” in which Palestinians would take land bit by bit of and use it as launching pads to pursue the jihad against Israel.

The Palestinian position is and has been very clear: Israel must give us as much land as possible so that we can continue to build our power, force and energies to continue the struggle to achieve our ultimate goal – eliminating Israel. The Trump plan, as far as Abbas and his associates are concerned, is a bad deal because it does not require Israel to surrender completely and abandon territories that would be later occupied by Hamas, Islamic State, Iran and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

There is only one peace plan that the Palestinians will accept; it is the plan that enables them to achieve the “phased solution” of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

Abbas is opposed to Trump’s plan because Abbas wants a temporary Palestinian state that would be used in the future as a launching pad for Arab armies and Palestinian and Islamist terror groups to wage attacks on Israel. The Trump plan, as far as he is concerned, does not take into consideration the Palestinian dream of eliminating Israel — and this omission goes way over his red lines.

The world already saw what happened the last time Israel gave Abbas land. That was in 2005, when Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip and handed it over to Abbas and his security forces.

Within a few months, Abbas and his cronies fled the Gaza Strip after Hamas and had thrown Palestinian Authority members to their deaths from the top floors of tall buildings, and handed the entire area over to Hamas. The rest, as they say, is history. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, the same scenario would likely repeat itself there. This time, however, Hamas would take over the West Bank not within months, but days or weeks.

In addition, no Palestinian leader is in a position to accept any peace agreement with Israel — especially not after both Abbas in the West bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have spent an entire lifetime radicalizing their people against Israel through incitement and indoctrination.

Decades of incitement in mosques and in the media have turned Israel, in the eyes of most Palestinians, into one large settlement that needs to be uprooted. Consequently, the Palestinian public is not prepared to hear about any peace plan, not from Trump and not even from Prophet Mohammed.

The Palestinians have a problem with Israel’s presence in the Middle East: most of them have still not come to terms with the Jews’ right to live in a secure and sovereign state of their own anywhere in the Middle East.

Undoubtedly, Trump and his envoys come with the best intentions about making peace between Arabs and Jews in our part of the world. However, what they do not seem to see, however, is that as things stand today, there is no partner on the Palestinian side for any deal with Israel.

The Palestinians are divided into camps — one that openly states that it does not want to make peace with Israel because its goal is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state, and a second camp that, even if it wanted to make peace with Israel – and it does not – could never do it because it has trained its own people to accept only a mandate for murder.

The first camp is called the “radical camp.” This is the camp that is opposed to Israel’s presence in the Middle East.

The second camp is what the Palestinians call the “Abbas camp,” which is corrupt and weak and sends conflicting messages to its people and speaks in more than one voice.

The two Palestinian parties, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, may disagree on everything — except the elimination of Israel. The only peace plan acceptable to current Palestinian leaders would be one that facilitated their mission of pursuing jihad against Israel to obliterate it.

If Kushner and Greenblatt wish to learn more about the true ambitions of the Palestinians, they would do well to take in a sermon at a mosque on some Friday or stop into a school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps then they would see for themselves that no peace plan in the world can, at the moment, counter the poison that is injected daily into the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and their children.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

Anglican Bishop Graham Tomlin, heads the diocese of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which has many of London’s most expensive residential properties, is undoubtedly a man of brains and good works.[1]

On May 26, 2018, however, he published in The Times an article, entitled, “If this rich vein of wisdom disappears, a part of us dies”. The “rich vein of wisdom” to which he refers is the long tradition of Christian thought and experience in the region where the religion first appeared, and was handed down through centuries of Islamic rule. For the most part, the article is a well-argued defence of Christians in the Middle East:

The systematic persecution of Christians in the Middle East is a serious threat. The number of Christians in Middle Eastern countries has fallen from about 20 per cent to 4 per cent in recent years and regular bomb attacks on Christians in Egypt are becoming part of a deadly pattern.

So far so good. Tomlin’s heart is surely in the right place. But immediately after that he goes on:

Even in Jerusalem, new regulations are threatening to tax the Christian churches out of existence, prompting the recent unprecedented closure of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as an act of protest. The buildings from ancient times will still stand, but if Christians are hounded out of the Middle East, driven to emigrate by radical Islam, or, in the case of many Palestinian Christians, by the lack of opportunities to thrive in Israel, this rich source of wisdom will disappear just like the ruins of Palmyra.

The “ruins of Palmyra” is, of course, a reference to the widespread destruction of the famous Syrian site, one of the wonders of the ancient world, by Islamic State in 2015 and again in 2017. Referring to this desecration, however vaguely, implies some sort of moral contiguity between ISIS and Israel.

Now, there is no question that ISIS at its height and even today has played a heavy-handed role in the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, notably in Iraq, where one of the oldest Christian communities in the world is under threat of extinction. In Mosul and elsewhere, Islamic State fighters painted the Arabic letter nun (n) on the doors and walls of Christian houses to indicate that the inhabitants were Christians (nasara, nasrani ­– Nazarenes). Given that such Islamic persecution is overwhelmingly real, one has to ask what the bishop is doing by referring twice in this context to Israel. Does Israel really persecute Christians, “systematically” or any other way?

Tomlin is broadly correct in saying that “The number of Christians in Middle Eastern countries has fallen from about 20 per cent to 4 per cent in recent years”. That is true across the board, but Israel is the only country in the Middle East and beyond where the actual numbers of Christians have risen. In 1947, when the UN General Assembly created Israel as a state, some 143,000 Christians lived in the Palestine region to the West of Transjordan. That was a percentage of 7% of the population. But of those 143,000, only 34,000 remained within the state of Israel, a mere 3%. Since then, the number of Christians in Israel proper has risen to 130,000 (just over 2%, given the growth in numbers of Jews and Muslims), while many have been leaving Gaza and the West Bank, largely because of Islamic persecution.

In Israel, Christians, like the followers of several other religions, are given the full protection of the law, their holy places, including churches, are guaranteed security under the 1967 “Protection of Holy Places Law“. This protection applies, not just to the major denominations (Judaism, Islam, Christianity), but to numerous minority groups. For Christians, it applies broadly to the officially recognized churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Monophysite, and Protestant, which together make up around 20 very old institutions (many indigenous and reaching back to the earliest Christian years), with another 30 denominations. Outside of Israel, Muslim states across the Middle East ban, restrict or actively persecute indigenous churches, such as the Copts in Egypt or Christians in Turkey, where Pastor Andrew Brunson is currently facing 35 years in jail, seemingly for preaching Christianity. Christian churches are banned outright in countries such as Saudi Arabia, and conversion of Muslims to Christianity is forbidden. Muslims who do convert suffer severe consequences as apostates, sometimes death. Thirteen Muslim-majority countries sentence apostates to death. In the Maldives, just owning a Bible is punishable by death. In a list of the 25 most dangerous countries for Christians, 18 Muslim states are listed.

In 2014, Duane Andrew Miller published a long study of the status of Muslims who convert to Christianity in the Catholic St. Francis Magazine. Commenting on the situation in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, he describes how converts in the West Bank may be banished or killed by their families and those in Gaza executed. Further down, he writes:

In Israel, the situation is different. Muslims in Israel have the freedom to convert, and Christians in Israel have the freedom to openly incorporate Muslim converts into their churches. I estimate that there are about 300 or so CMB’s (Christians of Muslim Background) in Israel, and perhaps a few hundred more in the West Bank. Nonetheless, this rarely happens. In Israel, persecution will not originate from the state, but according to a Catholic priest in Jerusalem (where, independent of Occupation, citizens are under Israeli law) they can welcome Muslim converts, but they will often be persecuted and even killed by their families.

When such conversions are accepted by the church authorities, documents certifying this change of religion are submitted to the state of Israel to make the shift legal.

If Israel plays a part in the persecution of Christians, it must be doing a very bad job indeed when it even protects the rights of Muslim apostates — something that could well lead to friction with the Arab-Israeli Muslim community. In other countries, Muslim mobs sometimes attack churches where converts worship, as in Egypt. But Israeli security forces have so far prevented such attacks.

Israel protects not just the rights of Jews, Muslims and Christians, but those of many other religious communities, including some who are bitterly opposed by Muslim fundamentalists or others. Two stand out: Ahmadi Muslims and members of the Baha’i faith.

Ahmadis are followers of a 19^th-century Indian leader (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad), who tried to reform Islam by, for example, abolishing the law of jihad and expressing tolerance for other faiths. They number around 10 million and are hated and persecuted in several Muslim countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and, above all, Pakistan, where they number between 500,000 to 4 million. In 1974, under President Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization of the country, Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims and are still treated as the worst people, worse than Shi’I Muslims, Jews or Christians.

Ahmadis arrived in Mandate Palestine in the 1920s, and many settled there when Israel was established in 1948. Around 2,200 are concentrated in the Kababir District of Haifa, where they have a large mosque and other institutions. They play a small but significant role in social relations, emphasizing interfaith activity and ways of conflict resolution. Israel is the only country in the region which gives this inoffensive yet despised community the right to worship, preach, and go about its daily life without fear of molestation.

Just down the road from Kababir, along the front side of Mount Carmel going straight up from Haifa’s famous harbour is an even more astonishing religious site – the world center of the Baha’is. The Baha’i faith is another religion that emerged (and broke away) from Islam in the mid-nineteenth century, in this instance from Shi’ism in Iran. Today, its followers, from almost every nationality and race, number around 5 million, with a presence in almost every country, literature in over 800 languages, and eight major Houses of Worship around the globe, the best-known of which is the astonishing Lotus Temple in New Delhi, which has been described as the most visited building in the world, more than the Taj Mahal. Baha’is in most Muslim countries keep their adherence secret. Their belief in two prophets after Muhammad, the truth of all major religions, and a religious law that has abolished the Islamic shari’a make them universally hated by Muslims.

This hatred is particularly fierce in Iran, where Baha’is are the largest religious minority, and where they are severely persecuted. Many have been executed, others killed by mobs, their leaders are in prison, Baha’is are forbidden to attend universities, and all the Baha’i holy sites and cemeteries have been razed to the ground. International calls by the UN (on numerous occasions), the United States, Human Rights Watch, large numbers of intellectuals, and other states to end the persecution have gone unheeded by Iran’s regime.

In Israel, the Baha’is are supported fully by the state. They have built their two holiest shrines in Israel (one in Haifa, the holiest near Acco), and on the slopes of Mount Carmel their World Center: vast terraced gardens, an arc of white marble buildings, including the seat of their international governing body, the Universal House of Justice, central archives, and more. They have other sacred sites in Acco and its surroundings as well.

Protected by Israel’s freedom of religion, Baha’is have built their two holiest shrines in Israel, and on the slopes of Mount Carmel their World Center (pictured): vast terraced gardens and white marble buildings, including the seat of their international governing body, the Universal House of Justice, and central archives. (Image source: US Embassy Israel/Wikimedia Commons)

Israel’s openness to religious freedom is shown in many other ways, all of which portray a society in which even its enemies are treated well. When Israeli forces entered eastern Jerusalem in 1967, at the end of the Six Day War, a unit of Lt. Gen. Mordechai Gur’s Brigade 55 took the Old City from the occupying Jordanian troops who had been based there but had slipped away the night before. What followed was, by any standards, one of the most profound moments in religious history.

For centuries, Jews had prayed to return to Jerusalem and to possess the Temple Mount, the site of the first and second Jewish temples. When Gur and his men took control of the Mount, centuries of longing came to a glorious end in this spectacular triumph over the latest effort to destroy the new Israeli state. With the Mount in Jewish hands, the Brigade’s Communications Officer brought out an Israeli flag and was given permission to hoist it from the Dome of the Rock. The Dome and the nearby al-Aqsa Mosque are two of the most sacred Islamic sites and had rested on the Mount for centuries. Climbing with the Intelligence Officer onto the Dome itself, he attached the flag to a pole.

Within moments, an order came to lower the flag. Israel’s Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, watching through binoculars from Mount Scopus some distance away, urgently radioed Colonel Gur and demanded that the flag be removed.

Author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi summarized the significance of this act and what followed shortly after:

It is, in retrospect, an astonishing moment of religious restraint. The Jewish people had just returned to its holiest site, from which it had been denied access for centuries, only to effectively yield sovereignty at its moment of triumph. Shortly after the war, Dayan met with officials of the Muslim Wakf, who governed the holy site, and formally returned the Mount to their control. While Israeli soldiers would determine security and stand at the gates, the Wakf would determine who prayed at the site, an arrangement that would effectively bar non-Muslim prayer. The Temple Mount was no longer in Gur’s hands.

As an expression of religious tolerance and a gesture towards avoiding bloodshed, this concession to Israel’s enemies must surely be unparalleled in history.

It should be clear from the above that Israel is one of the least likely countries in the world to persecute the followers of any religion. A well-educated and thinking man, Tomlin ought to have known this or have been able to check the facts for himself. None of the above is remotely secret. Yet he lumps Israel in with the Muslim states which carry out the “systematic persecution of Christians in the Middle East”.

As for his statement that “even in Jerusalem, new regulations are threatening to tax the Christian churches out of existence”, he is exaggerating the true story and is massively out of date: the taxation that was to have been introduced has been cancelled across the board.

By February 27, the Israeli government and Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat agreed to suspend the taxation plan in its entirety, even though many Israeli citizens felt that this involved a concession too far. After all, this exempted Christian institutions from paying taxes on commercial enterprises such as hotels, shops and other businesses; and the same taxes were already made payable by synagogues. In April 2017, Tel Aviv’s historic Great Synagogue was forced to close because it could not pay taxes for its financial activities. Yet Israeli authorities felt it important to forego an appreciable and legally justifiable sum of money rather than to dismay the country’s Christians. Despite this gesture (which was not extended to Jewish places of worship), a full three months later, an Anglican bishop somehow felt the need to cite the abandoned tax plan as an example of Middle Eastern persecution of Christians.

Tomlin further compounded his antagonism by claiming that “Palestinian Christians” lack opportunities to “thrive in Israel” and that this is a further example of this “persecution”. “Palestinian Christians” do not even live in Israel — at all. They are based in the West Bank (in dwindling numbers), Gaza (also close to disappearance), and some in East Jerusalem. The rest, who live in Israel are Israeli citizens and, as such, entitled to exactly the same rights as Jews, Muslims, atheists and all other citizens. Arab Israelis are entitled, for example, to enter university (20% of students, to match the 20% of the general population), to enter parliament if elected, have their own political parties, serve as Supreme Court and lower court judges, and to enter any profession they wish for which they are qualified. Why, then, say they lack opportunities to thrive? There may be discrimination, which exists, as it does in every other country — but not as a result of official mistreatment, and certainly not as a consequence of “persecution”. In fact, the Israeli government has taken strong measures to punish anti-Arab actions and to improve the situation for both Israeli citizens and Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem.

There are indeed restrictions on Arabs living in East Jerusalem, including the Old City. Of the 300,000 Arabs living there, 20,000 are Israeli citizens — but they are not by any means denied basic rights, and many of the limitations they face are self-imposed:

As permanent residents, east Jerusalemites are entitled to receive assistance from the National Insurance Institute and other welfare services that Israelis are entitled to, and the free education system is open to them. They also have freedom of movement, to move freely throughout the entire country (unlike West Bank Palestinians, who are required to obtain a permit to enter into Israel).

As permanent residents, east Jerusalemites are not eligible to vote in the national election for the Knesset. However, they have the option to vote and to run in the municipal election to the Jerusalem City Council. A very low percentage of the residents chose to exercise this right, as part of the ongoing ban on Israeli institutions. Among many of the east Jerusalem’s Arabs, taking part in these sorts of activities was perceived as normalization of ties with Israel.

It is important to note that, although not in large numbers, many Arabs have achieved high office in Israel’s government, judicial system, premier hospitals, universities and more. Salim Joubran was the first Arab to serve on Israel’s Supreme Court. Oscar Abu Razeq served as deputy director of the Tax Authority and director general of the Interior Ministry. Khaled Kabub was recently nominated to serve on the Supreme Court but withdrew for personal reasons. George Karra, a Christian Arab, joined the Supreme Court in 2017. He had previously acted as the presiding judge in the trial for rape of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, sending him to jail. Even if the situation is not perfect, failure to note Israeli efforts to allow its Arab citizens to thrive is defamatory and far from helpful.

How does Tomlin not even mention the dire situation of religious persecution in Iran, one of the worst in the world, where Christians suffer alongside Baha’is, notably those who are converts from Islam, something that can incur the death penalty? Or Saudi Arabia, where Christians are denied most of their human rights, including the right to worship freely? In fact, why include Israel at all?

One can only conclude that Tomlin shares the negative attitudes to Israel — often seen as anti-Semitism — that are fostered in many Christian churches worldwide, including those in the West Bank. These attitudes have been recorded many times by the present writer, here, here, here, and here.

The problem Israel faces from churchmen who attack the Jewish state has never been better summed up than by the Italian journalist, Giulio Meotti:

Christianity is dying in Syria and Iraq. Christian churches are demolished, Christian crosses are burned and replaced with flags of the Islamic State, Christian houses are destroyed, entire Christian communities are displaced, Christian children are massacred, and everything is done in plain sight. Islamists proclaim on a daily basis that they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth. So, are the world Christian bodies denouncing the Islamic forces for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and historic demographic-religious revolution their brethren are suffering? No. Christians these days are busy targeting the Israeli Jews.

Denis MacEoin (PhD, Cambridge) has lectured in the Department of Religious Studies at Newcastle University. Among much other academic work, he has authored many books and articles on the Baha’i religion, which is a reference point in the present article. He lives in the UK and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at New York’s Gatestone Institute.

Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an “Israeli apartheid-free zone.” The move comes days after Navarra, one of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities, announced a similar measure. In all, more than 50 Spanish cities and regions have passed motions condemning Israel. The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

The Valencian measure, introduced by the far-left party València en Comú, was approved during a plenary session of the city council on May 31. The motion, which commits the city to refrain from engaging in business contacts or cultural events with Israeli authorities or companies, aims at establishing Valencia as “a global reference for solidarity with the Palestinians.”

The city of Valencia, Spain has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an “Israeli apartheid-free zone.” (Image source: Ben Bender/Wikimedia Commons)

The motion, which libelously describes Israel as an “apartheid regime,” accuses the Jewish state of “colonialism,” “racism,” “ethnic cleansing,” “tyranny,” and “genocide.”

The measure, which claims to reflect the “dignity, solidarity and justness” of the Valencian people, was introduced by Neus Fábregas Santana, a city councilor whose Twitter feed reveals an obsession with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

Santana works closely with a group called BDS País Valencia, the local branch of a worldwide movement trying to delegitimize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

BDS País Valencia is currently promoting a Spanish documentary about the Gaza Strip called “Gas the Arabs,” a title that alleges, falsely, that the Jews in Israel are doing to the Arabs today what the Nazis in Germany did to the Jews during the Second World War.

An activist with BDS País Valencia, Mireia Biosca, said the motion in Valencia had three objectives:

“The first is the dismantling of the apartheid wall and the return to the borders of 1967. The second is the end of apartheid both in Palestine and in Israel, and the third is the right of return.”

Biosca also said BDS País Valencia would work to prevent the Eurovision song contest from being held in Israel in 2019:

“There is a very clear line: first to ensure that states do not participate in the festival, and obviously a campaign to prevent the festival from being in Jerusalem. For me it is equally boycottable if it is decided that Eurovision will be held in Tel Aviv….”

A Madrid-based organization, Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), which is fighting the anti-Israel BDS movement in Spain, said that Valencia’s motion was anti-Semitic and an incitement to hatred. It said it was studying whether to take legal action against the City Council of Valencia for violating the Spanish Constitution and promoting discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or national origin:

“The declaration is full of lies, manipulations and libels, whilst it calls for the city to formally adhere to the BDS movement and declare itself ‘free of Israeli apartheid’ (a known euphemism in Spain for Judenrein [free of Jews], where any perceived sympathizer of the Jewish State is demanded to publicly denounce the policies of the only democracy in the Middle East in order to be admitted to social, political, economic or civic activities in the municipality) ….

“We informed the local press of the illegality of the BDS campaign, detailing dozens of judicial cases won by ACOM in the Spanish Courts that proved the unconstitutionality of exclusionary measures.”

ACOM has filed more than twenty lawsuits against provincial and town councils which have enacted boycotts of Israel.

Much of the BDS activity in Spain is being promoted by Podemos (translated in English as “We Can”), a neo-Communist party founded in March 2014 to protest the economic austerity measures put into place after the European debt crisis. Podemos received more than 20% of the vote in the national election held on December 20, 2015 and is now the third-largest party in Parliament.

Podemos head Pablo Iglesias and his deputy, Íñigo Errejón, served as advisors to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and have been accused of receiving more than €7 million ($8 million) from Chávez to fund their political activities in Spain. Podemos has also been accused of receiving funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iglesias has a long history of anti-Semitism: he has downplayed the Holocaust, describing it as “a bureaucratic and administrative decision”; compared the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw ghetto; and described Spanish police who apprehend illegal immigrants as being the same as SS guards.

Iglesias hosts a television program, “Fort Apache,” which is broadcast on HispanTV, a Spanish-language cable television network owned by the Iranian government. He has been accused of using his show to repeat anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and tropes.

In a June 7 interview on RTVE, a leading state-owned television and radio broadcast network, Iglesias, said that Israel was an “illegal” country: “We need to act more firmly against an illegal state like Israel. Israel’s actions are illegal. The apartheid policies of Israel are illegal.”

València en Comú, the political party which sponsored the BDS motion in Valencia, is a local offshoot of Podemos. The motion was approved with support from Compromís, a coalition of Communist and left-wing nationalist parties, as well as the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), which recently took over the central government in Madrid.

BDS motions have also been approved in: Abrera, Alcoi, Alhaurín de la Torre, Artés, Badalona, Barberà del Vallès, Barcelona, Benlloch, Campillos, Casares (Malaga), Castrillón, Castro del Río, Catarroja, Concentaina, Córdoba, Corvera, El Prat, Gijón, Gran Canaria, La Roda Llangreu, Los Corrales, Madrid, Mairena del Aljarafe, Molins de Rei, Montoro, Muro, Navalafuente, Navarra, Oleiros, Olesa de Montserrat, Onda, Pamplona, Petrer, Ripollet, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Sabiñánigo, San Fernando, San Roque, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Sant Cebriá de Vallalta, Sant Celoni, Santa Eulària (Ibiza), Sant Boi de Llobregat, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Sant Pere de Ruidebitlles, Santiago de Compostela, Sant Quirze del Vallès, Seville, Telde, Terrassa, Trebujena, Velvez-Málaga, Viladamat, Viloria del Henar, Xeraco and Zaragoza, among others.

ACOM President Ángel Más explained the dynamics behind the rise of the BDS movement in Spain:

“The BDS is a global phenomenon that is born from the modern anti-Semites’ acceptance of the improbability of defeating Israel through military confrontation or terrorist attacks. The objective is the same: the annihilation of the Jewish homeland, ‘from the river to the sea.’ But now, BDS tries to push the international community to condemn Israel as a pariah state and ostracize all those that support her: Zionists. Jews.

“The delegitimizers, as old-time bigots, mask their thuggery, presenting themselves as victims and hiding their true intentions. They appeal to public feelings against oppression or abuse and the sympathy for underdogs and suffering minorities.

“The BDS movement in Spain acquired its current virulence with the emergence of Podemos, a ‘Chavist’ far-left party financed by Venezuela and Iran. Podemos won 25% of the votes in Spain’s 2015 local elections. Before those elections, BDS was a marginal confederation of small groups focusing on academic and cultural boycotts of Israel. The core group that formed Podemos had been active in the BDS initiatives for years, and hostility against Israel was a top priority in their political agenda.

“As Podemos gained control of the municipal governments in the main Spanish cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Cadiz, the anti-Israel movement had access to multiple economic, human and organizational resources. When those far-left groups occupied public institutions, they didn’t distinguish between their own sectarian agenda and the government’s agenda.

“Local administrations (provincial and municipal) formally joined the BDS movement and declared their territories ‘free of Israeli apartheid.’ In effect, Judenrein. Stickers were distributed to be exhibited in shops and offices, public companies were instructed not to work with Israeli firms or individuals and Spanish citizens suspected of being associated or sympathetic to the Jewish state were demanded to repudiate it publicly in order not to be excluded from social, political, economic and civic life.

“Podemos has driven over 90 such declarations in Spain in jurisdictions covering a population of over eight million people. Its plan was to create an oil spill of hatred reaching the majority of Spain in 18 months. This was an existential threat, and we had to act….

“No local boycott is too small to go unchallenged. BDS groups carefully manipulate the information reaching political decision makers, spend massive resources on media campaigns and are masters at social media intoxication. In general, pro-Israel groups are lagging behind in the application of analysis and action in those fields.”

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.