GOP congressmen: BDS akin to 1930s anti-Semitism

Settler leader battles anti-Israel boycott in Washington

Republican politicians compared the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to anti-Semitism from the 1930s, at a congressional seminar on the anti-Israel movement in Washington.

BDS is “the reemergence of the scourge of anti-Semitism,” Representative Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado) told The Jerusalem Post by telephone on Thursday. “It is the same hatred just put into new clothing.”

Lamborn was one of a half dozen speakers at the antiBDS panel discussion one day earlier at the Rayburn House Office Building, which also featured Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan.

“If you want to approach a Holocaust that starts by divestment and sanctions, we know where that goes,” Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) told the seminar participants. “We are not going to let you get this off any further then it is already.”

It was important, Gohmert said, to fight BDS economically through legislative action in the United States. “Enough is enough,” he said. “We are coming after your investments and what you are doing. We are going to hit you in the pocket book until you stop your anti-Israel” actions. “We need to take a stand and we haven’t done it. It’s time.”

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Lamborn said, one of their first steps was to stage an economic boycott against the Jews of Germany.

“Economic boycotts were the very first step in the tragic history of European anti-Semitism throughout the pogroms and inquisitions of Europe, and infamy in the gas chambers, pits and ovens of the Holocaust,” said Lamborn, adding that the Holocaust “was born out of the demonization, hatred and vilification fomented by the Nazis’ early Jewish business boycott. I have wanted to believe that the tragic history of anti-Semitism had finally ended with the Shoah, but unfortunately, anti-Semitism still exists and it is now rearing its ugly head in the form of BDS.”

The real aim of BDS, he said, is to destroy the only Jewish state in the world.

“At a time when we are watching the complete devastation of Christian, Yazidi, Chaldean and other minority communities throughout the Middle East at the hands of radical jihadis,” Lamborn said, “it is absolutely astounding to me that it is our only one true, dependable, democratic ally in the Middle East – Israel – that constantly comes under attack for vilification and stigmatization in the form of the BDS movement.”

Lamborn was the congressional sponsor of the event, which was organized by the Washington-based Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) and the Samaria Regional Council, which sent a delegation to the event from Israel.

The council has long been on the forefront of the issue, particularly in the European parliament, but this is the first time it has helped organize an anti-BDS event at a congressional building in Washington.

Dagan said that the event helped place the battle against BDS on the public and political agenda in the United States.

He told the panel that Judea and Samaria was the Biblical heartland of the Jewish people, and a place of coexistence where both Israelis and Palestinians work together.

“The Shomron is 12 percent of the area of Israel,” Dagan said. “This land is at the core of the history of the Jewish people. Most of the events of the Bible took place here in the Shomron. Our historic roots are the foundation on which we build, day after day, our future.”

Dagan said the goal of BDS is to sabotage the only real example of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East. “Employers in my regional council give work to thousands of workers, both Jews and Arabs,” he said.

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minnesota) said that boycott against settlement products was economically harmful to both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

“The BDS movement is specifically designed to divide Israelis and Palestinians further, so that this economic cooperation can’t grow,” said Paulsen. “Why? Because the people pushing the BDS movement are the same people that don’t want peace and stability in the region. They want anger, they want resentment, and they want violence, and the best way to achieve those goals is keeping Palestinians economically marginalized.

“Combating the BDS movement is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” he said. “This is a human issue. Failure to combat anti-Semitism and stop the negative economic impacts could lead to the destruction of Israel and the defeat of our common goals of liberty, freedom and equality.”

Paulsen is among a number of Republican congressmen who have already turned their actions into words.

Paulsen is a co-sponsor of H.R. 4515, the Combating BDS Act, which authorizes a state or local government to “adopt and enforce measure to divest its assets from, or prohibit investment of its assets in entities that engage” in commercial activities against BDS.

Lamborn, who has also supported A CONGRESSIONAL SEMINAR on the anti-Israel BDS movement that included (from left) Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado), Rep. Peter Sessions (R-Texas), Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan and Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) is held in Washington on Thursday. anti-BDS legislation, said that it had been difficult to pass those initiatives under the Obama Administration.

The congressman told The Jerusalem Post that he has thrown his support behind his party’s presidential nominee Donald Trump, whom he believes will be strong for Israel and stand against the BDS campaign. He added that the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would be better on that score than President Barack Obama.

“I am hopeful that with the new administration coming in January, it will be easier” to pass anti-BDS legislation, Lamborn said.