The BDS Bullies on Campus

The bullies have taken over the Campuses. * * * The Online Dry Bones Academy of Cartoon Advocacy and Activism will empower students to fight back. If you want to help us please click on www.igg.me/at/drybones

BDS The Simple Truth

The Simple Truth * * * The Online Dry Bones Academy of Cartoon Advocacy and Activism will empower students to fight against the cartoon war of lies and libels that is being waged against them and the future. If you want to help us please click on www.igg.me/at/drybones

BDS="Neo Nazi"

A week ago I did a cartoon called "Hitler in Hell". It was about the neo Nazi BDS movement. * * * I am now working around the clock on the Online Dry Bones Academy of Cartoon Advocacy and Activism. The Academy will empower students to fight against the cartoon war of lies and libels that is being waged against them and the future. If you want to help please click on www.igg.me/at/drybones

Tonight's the Night!

Not sure what this holiday is all about?
Well, according to www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org:

The Torah teaches that "the Jewish people are obligated to count the days from the second night of Passover to the day before Shavu'ot - a total of exactly seven full weeks or 49 days. This period is known as the Omer, in reference to the biblical omer which meant a unit of measure. On the second day of Passover, in the days of the Temple, an omer of barley was cut down and brought to the Temple as an offering.

The counting is intended to remind us of the link between Passover, which commemorates the Exodus, and Shavu'ot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah. It reminds us that the redemption from slavery was not complete until we received the Torah. Therefore, every night, from the second night of Passover to the night before Shavu'ot, Jews recite a blessing and state the omer count, in both weeks and days. For example, on the 16th day one would say, "Today is sixteen days - which is two weeks and two days - of the Omer."

The Omer period is also a time of partial mourning in memory of a plague that killed dozens of Jewish scholars during the lifetime of Rabbi Akiba. As such, Jewish tradition prohibits weddings, parties, live music, dancing and haircuts.

The 33rd day of the Omer (the eighteenth of Iyar) is a minor holiday commemorating a break in the plague. Today it is known as Lag B'Omer - the word "Lag" is not really a word at all; it is the number 33 in Hebrew, as if you were to call the Fourth of July "IV July" (IV being 4 in Roman numerals). The mourning practices of the omer period are lifted on that date.

In modern Israel, Lag B'Omer has been reinterpreted to commemorate the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans, leading to customs that include having large dinner celebrations and lighting bonfires. In Sephardic tradition, Lag B'Omer is also the hillula, or anniversary of death, of the great sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. In celebration of his life, every year thousands of Jews ascend Mount Meron outside the city of Safed to "eat, drink, and be merry." It is customary to throw locks of hair in bonfires as well."

And Tonight's the Night!

Customs

And so it goes . . .

Lag Ba'Omer

Right now I'm away from my studio.
I did today's cartoon before leaving for a U.S. lecture tour. * * * This cartoon is a follow-up to an earlier cartoon that I did during Israel Apartheid Week. * * *
Right now I'm in America on my "Dry Bones Campaign to turn Z Street into the Grass Roots Zionist Movement that America Needs", and to explain my YIISA (Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism) "Secret Codes" findings.

* * * You can keep up with my adventures in the U.S.A. by following me at facebook.com/drybonescartoon.

I plan to return home to Israel in time for for Shavuot (June 7).

Survival

Today, May 2, 2011 is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day.

For further info please click HERE.

Clean Up

We are now in the midst of the annual anti-Israel anti-Zionist hate-fest circus of antisemitic libels now parading through university campuses. Those of us who are activists sigh, gather our quotes, write our rebuttals, and prepare to expose the double standards and lies of the BDS movement and its annual Israel Apartheid Week. Yes, It'll soon be clean up time again. * * *

According to Dr. Catherine Chatterly, director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism:

"The first [Israeli Apartheid Week] event was held at the University of Toronto in 2005. The following year, it included Montreal and Oxford. In 2007, it grew to eight cities; in 2008, to 24 cities; in 2009, to 38 cities; last year, to over 40 cities. This year, IAW will be held in over 55 cities worldwide.

Four years after Durban I, in 2005, Israeli Apartheid Week was born in Toronto. That July, 170 Palestinian civil-society organizations released an official call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (better known as BDS) against Israel. The document clearly stated that the call was modelled on the example of the South African struggle against Apartheid.

As with the original anti-apartheid movement, the goal of IAW is explicitly political. And yet the rhetoric of IAW is left open enough to incorporate: (1) critics of Israel who still support a two-state solution; (2) those who support the dismantling of the current Jewish State and its replacement with a single (highly theoretical) secular democratic state; and (3) those who support the destruction of Israel by any means necessary. All three camps are included amongst supporters of IAW and the BDS campaign, and therefore the lines are often blurred between harsh criticism of the state of Israel, outright condemnation of its continued existence, and calls for its eradication. This is a serious problem, and one that appears to be designed quite consciously by IAW and the BDS movement."

Divestment (2004)

Today's cartoon is only six years old. I came across it but did not remember doing it. And I was struck by the point it made. Especially in light of the growing BDS movement. I decided to do some research. Here's what I found.

"During the mid-1970's the United States adopted two laws that seek to counteract the participation of U.S. citizens in other nation's economic boycotts or embargoes. These "antiboycott" laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA), [which is found in Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code]."

Primary impact:

The Arab League boycott of Israel is the principal foreign economic boycott that U.S. companies must be concerned with today. The antiboycott laws, however, apply to all boycotts that are unsanctioned by the United States.

Who is covered by the laws?

The antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to all "U.S. persons," defined to include individuals and companies located in the United States and their foreign affiliates. These persons are subject to the law when their activities relate to the sale, purchase, or transfer of goods or services between the United States and a foreign country. This covers U.S. exports and imports, financing, forwarding and shipping, and certain other transactions that may take place wholly offshore. -more

* * * So is the cartoon correct? Are they getting away with possibly illegal secondary boycotts by calling them divestments?

More Hitler in Hell

I've decided to turn the Hitler in Hell cartoon of two days ago into a series.

Here's some positive news as reported in the Forward:

JCPA Taking Direct Aim at Anti-Israel Boycotters

"With anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts gaining visibility, the Jewish community’s main public-policy coordinating body is for the first time confronting the BDS movement as a specific and stated priority.

At its recent annual plenum, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs passed a resolution stating that BDS should now “be regarded with the utmost seriousness and urgency.”

“This is a very serious matter,” JCPA’s executive director, Rabbi Steve Gutow, told the Forward. “We need to wake up, whether we are on the right, left or center.”

The JCPA, an umbrella body representing Jewish community relations councils across the country and more than a dozen leading national Jewish groups, adopted the anti-BDS resolution at its plenum in Dallas on February 23. Gutow said that JCPA member groups are planning to create a permanent body that would respond to the activities of the BDS movement.

While efforts to promote boycotts, divestment and sanctions targeting Israel are nothing new, an international BDS movement embracing a shared platform emerged only in 2005, in response to a call from Palestinian NGOs. Thus far, the BDS movement has taken various forms in different places, pushed forward by decentralized groups of activists around the world with the aim of branding Israel as an international pariah, drawing inspiration from efforts against apartheid South Africa. In the United States, the movement has launched boisterous public demonstrations, such as those that have greeted the Israel Ballet on its current American tour." -more

Hitler in Hell

It all began with boycotts. Boycotts that were taken to defend against an imaginary Jewish threat. For info about the Nazi BDS program I turned to the History Place to track events of 1933:

Above: Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivers a speech to a crowd in the Berlin Lustgarten urging Germans to boycott Jewish-owned businesses. He defends the boycott as a legitimate response to the anti-German "atrocity propaganda" being spread abroad by "international Jewry."

Below: Nazi storm troopers block the entrance to a Jewish-owned store. Their signs read: "Germans, defend yourselves against the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" and "Germans, defend yourselves, buy only at German shops!"

On April 1, 1933, a week after Hitler became dictator of Germany, he ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores. But the boycott was mostly ignored by German shoppers and was called off after three days. However, the unsuccessful boycott was followed by a rapid series of laws which robbed the Jews of many rights.

On April 7, "The Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service" was introduced which made 'Aryanism' a necessary requirement in order to hold a civil service position. All Jews holding such positions were dismissed or forced into retirement.

On April 22, Jews were prohibited from serving as patent lawyers and from serving as doctors in state-run insurance institutions.

On April 25, a law against the overcrowding of German schools placed severe limits on the number of young Jews allowed to enroll in public schools. -more

And it all began with the supposed victims fighting back with what they claimed was a legitimate response ...an anti-Jewish boycott to "defend" against the Jewish "threat".

Presbyterian Conference

Presbyterians in America held a week-long conference this past week.

The meeting of Christians provided an opportunity for political radicals to continue their campaign against the Biblically-promised rebirth of Israel and the return of "His Chosen People" to "their Promised Land".

The story is reported by the NY Sun in a piece headlined:
Presbyterian Church Proposals Could Reopen Wounds With Jews

"At least 19 Jewish organizations, ranging from Americans for Peace Now to the Zionist Organization of America, have spoken out against some of the so-called overtures to be debated at the week long biennial meeting of Presbyterians in America." -more

Your thoughts?