Tehran Helps Keep BDS in Business

March 19 2018

The worldwide anti-Israel movement—and especially the drive to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish state (BDS)—portrays itself as a grassroots effort inspired by or cooperating with Palestinian activists. But for many of its European offshoots, Tehran is a primary source of funds and direction. Asaf Romirowsky and Benjamin Weinthal write:

[A]nnual al-Quds Day rallies [named after the Arabic term for Jerusalem], which were inaugurated in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s theocracy, urge individuals to support the BDS movement and the destruction of Israel. Al-Quds Day rallies blanket European cities such as Berlin, London, and Vienna. Iranian-backed Islamists have no qualms about marching together with an amalgam of neo-Nazis, German leftists, and supporters of the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist entity the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Iranian regime-owned Islamic Center of Hamburg charters buses with Iranian regime and Hizballah supporters to travel to Berlin to march in the al-Quds Day rally. Since 1996, there have been 21 al-Quds Day marches in the German capital. . . .

Iran’s grassroots campaign to shape European and American opinion is not limited to demonstrations. In 2016, the Bavarian city of Bayreuth awarded 10,000 euros to a U.S.-based activist group—Code Pink—that supports a boycott of the Jewish state and has participated in a conference in Iran with Holocaust deniers. The women’s organization Code Pink has gone to great lengths to defend Iran’s regime. In January, the Israeli government banned representatives of Code Pink and an additional nineteen BDS organizations from entering the country because of their campaign to dismantle Israel. . . .

Moreover, . . . the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has played a role in promoting the nuclear deal with Iran. . . . RBF at large has [also] been a staunch supporter of the BDS movement with its support of the organizations Jewish Voice for Peace and Breaking the Silence. . . .

Read more at National Interest

More about: BDS, Breaking the Silence, Europe, Iran, Israel & Zionism, Jewish Voice for Peace

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula