Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment's Binding Ties With Terrorists

The ugly face of the anti-Israel BDS movement just got uglier. Or, to put it another way, a study of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement removed its mask to reveal some very nasty characters.

According to an 80-page report published this week by the Strategic Affairs Ministry, there are more than 100 different connections linking terrorists groups to organizations that promote anti-Israel boycotts, including “the employment of 30 current and ‘retired’ terror operatives.”

The report sports the catchy title “Terrorists in Suits,” and, as I suspected, beyond BDS’s useful idiots – Roger Waters and his ilk – lies an even darker layer of BDS-ers who are terrorists all dressed up. Connecting the dots, you can trace a line from “terrorists in suits” to terrorists in suicide vests. The lines crisscross through organizations professing to deal in human rights, spreading across continents.

This goes way beyond attempts to shoot down Tel Aviv as the host of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. This is about shooting down Israel, period.

The report shows how Hamas and the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) have ties to at least 13 anti-Israel NGOs. This includes 20 members now occupying senior positions in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who have previously sat in jail, some for murder. The report “shows how boycott organizations and terrorist designated organizations raise finances together, share the same personnel, and showcases that contrary to popular belief, these officials have not abandoned their support for terrorism, but instead, continue to maintain organizational, financial and active ties with terrorist groups.”

Follow the money trail and you’ll find the BDS organizations have received millions of euros in funding from European countries and philanthropic foundations, in addition to funds raised through crowdfunding, banks and other means.

Search for the femme fatale and you’ll find Leila Khaled, one of the stars of the study.

Khaled, the PFLP’s poster girl in the 1970s for her part in the hijacking and attempted hijacking of two airplanes, remains active in the organization. Far from renouncing “armed struggle,” in 2011 she acted as a mediator between the Syrian PFLP command center and a terrorist cell planning attacks in Jerusalem.

Among the PFLP’s atrocities was the attack at a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood in 2014, which led to the deaths of five worshipers and a police officer. During a visit to Germany in 2016 as part of a tour of European countries, Khaled, the report notes, said: “Negotiations will be held only with knives and weapons.”

Khaled apparently still appeals to a certain type of person – the type who thinks hijackers are glamorous. Last year, she was invited to appear at an arts festival in Barcelona, for example, and the Johannesburg City Council proposed naming a street after her. It obviously pays to be a fund-raiser for BDS South Africa.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/My-word-BDSs-binding-ties-with-terrorists-580068