Justin Trudeau’s pack of lies about BDS

Ali Abunimah Power Suits 18 January 2019

I spoke to The Real News about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s renewed attacks and smearsagainst the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement for Palestinians rights.

During a town hall meeting at Brock University in Ontario this week, one questioner asked Trudeau to retract his previous smears that the BDS movement is anti-Semitic.

Instead, the Liberal Party prime minister doubled down, claiming that the anti-racist BDS movement targets Jews.

Trudeau asserted “that anti-Semitism has also manifested itself not just as targeting of individuals but it is also targeting a new condemnation, or an anti-Semitism against the very state of Israel.”

Trudeau’s refusal to distinguish between Jews and Judaism on the one hand, and Israel and its state ideology Zionism, on the other, is, I told The Real News, itself an anti-Semitic move.

The prime minister also repeated the claim that “Jewish students still feel unwelcome and uncomfortable on some of our college and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation” – a frequent smear by Israel lobby groups aimed at criminalizing Palestine solidarity activism by students.

I told The Real News that Trudeau was spouting a pack of lies about the BDS movement and echoing Israeli government talking points.

While he is claiming to defend “Canadian values,” I said that Trudeau is actually smearing Canadians, including Jewish Canadians, who fully support Palestinian rights.

Trudeau is taking his cues from Canada’s powerful Israel lobby – indeed in his answer Trudeau cited as one of his sources his “friend” Irwin Cotler, one of Canada’s top pro-Israel propagandists.

Canadian and US Israel lobbyists greeted Trudeau’s latest pandering with glee:

View image on Twitter

CIJA@CIJAinfo

#BDS is not only fuelled by hatred, but is counterproductive to peace. Its' obsessive campaign against exclusively one country and one community can only be described as #antisemitic. Watch his full statement here: https://bit.ly/2FxfNng 

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5:31 PM - Jan 16, 2019

WATCH: Canadian PM @JustinTrudeau say “I Will Continue to Condemn the BDS Movement” #BDSFail https://t.co/15kdxawhEn

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) 17 January 2019

So did Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs who is leading Israel’s covert efforts to try to sabotagethe BDS movement, including by spying on and smearing citizens in democratic countries merely for exercising their free-speech rights:

Thank you Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau, my friend, for so clearly explaining the anti-Semitic nature of the #BDS movement and condemning those who seek to delegitimize and demonize the State of #Israel! pic.twitter.com/8u7Ea6bSSR

— גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) 17 January 2019

However, as opinion surveys show, Trudeau is out of step with a majority of Canadians who view BDS tactics as a reasonable way for Palestinians to pursue their rights in the face of the complicity and inaction of the so-called international community.

Watch my interview with Gregory Wilpert of The Real News above.