To Jewish groups, this raises a serious red flag: Many regard the BDS movement as intrinsically racist because they believe it unfairly singles out Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, for scrutiny that is not applied to other regimes. They were therefore deeply concerned at the weekend to see Black Lives Matter UK wade deeper into this choppy water by using its Twitter account, which has 73,000 followers, to post a criticism of what it calls Israel’s ‘annexation’ of the West Bank. It read: ‘[As] mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades. Free Palestine!’ The use of the word ‘gagging’ in such a context is regarded as anti-Semitic because it advances the conspiracy theory – first popularised by the Nazis – that Jews have conspired to secretly exert control over Western politics and the media.
Western Culture under Attack Part 10
