MidEast

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Palestinian Authority: Israel Invokes Holocaust to “Blackmail” European States to Pass Anti-BDS Laws

In a furious response to the passing of a landmark anti-BDS resolution in the German Parliament, the Palestinian Authority released a sickening statement in which it accused Israel of invoking the Holocaust to “blackmail” European countries to reject the boycott of the Jewish State.

In a vote on Friday, an overwhelming majority of German lawmakers deemed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement anti-Semitic and reminiscent of the Nazi campaign against the Jews.

The statement released by the PA’s Foreign Ministry in response to the adoption of the resolution deployed overtly anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations against Israel. The PA charged that Israel is using the Holocaust to its own political and financial advantage.

“Israel continues to impose its wishes on the representatives of the European peoples by blackmailing them using the historical German stigmatization of the Jews to achieve what it [Israel] wants,” the statement said.

As a consequence, the statement added, the “German establishment is entrenching its complicity in Israel’s crimes of military occupation, ethnic cleansing, siege and apartheid, while desperately trying to shield it from accountability to international law.”

Ben Cohen noted in The Algemeiner that the statement failed to acknowledge the $100 million in aid provided by German taxpayers to the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA in 2018, nor did it mention the German government’s pledge to increase its contribution to Palestinian development projects following dramatic cuts in U.S. government funding last year.

Instead, the PA statement charged that the German Parliament’s decision “reflects first that the role and action of the [BDS] organization is so influential that Israel and its supporters began to look for a pretext or justification for attacking the organization and distorting its image.”

The anti-Semitic BDS movement seeks the total destruction of Israel, as acknowledged by leaders of the campaign. Co-founder Omar Barghouti said: “Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

[Photo: Alex Chis / Flickr]