The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Berlin announced Tuesday that the BDS movement has been classified as “unconstitutional.”
The head of the office, Michael Fischer, explained that the movement’s status in Berlin’s antisemitic and anti-Israel landscape has significantly strengthened over the past year.
Fischer clarified that BDS’s ideology is based on “explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist.” According to him, BDS activity goes beyond boycotting cultural events or Israeli economic products. “The goal is to make the existence of Israel impossible in the international context. It is aimed at its destruction,” Fischer stated.
Sebastian Leber is not a credible source as pointed out. Pointing out the credibility of a source is relevant and providing better sources is necessary. For journalists and historians critique of sources is one of the key aspects of their work. In that sense your argument of rebuking false friends should equally be applied to Leber as he is discrediting the fight against antisemitism.
Employing that source critique should also apply to RIAS, who published your source. RIAS says on their website that they work closely with the “Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland”, which morphed over the past decades to become radically pro Israel. Among other things it published an “opinion peace” in its “Jüdische Allgemeine” paper which claimed “The civillians in Gaza aren’t innocent” and justified the murder of civilians. It backtracked and published a reaction by a Jewish German journalist who asked how they could come to “elevate this inhumane (menschenverachtend) polemic into the paper”.
RIAS uses the IHRA Definition and considers calling Israel an Apartheid state as antisemitic, as it would delegitimize Israel. The ICJ is therefore antisemitic as it concluded that Israel is violating the prohibition of Apartheid or Racial seggregation.
https://report-antisemitism.de/documents/25-06-24_RIAS_Bund_Jahresbericht_2023.pdf
P 17:
P 18:
While Israel is mass murdering civilians damaging Israeli flags that are presented at German public buildings is considered “antisemitic” by the RIAS.
Just a few paragraphs earlier:
So RIAS acknowledges that conflating Judaism and Israel is antisemitic, but at the same time does not employ this standards to themselves.
P31
Here the circle closes. By considering boycott calls towards Israel as antisemitic a large swath of people and demonstrations can be deligitmized as antisemitic. Again this logic includes the ICJ who made it clear that any economic activity that helps facilitate the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel must be stopped.
Again, calling out the Nakba as ethnic cleansing or genocidal and the seizure of territory by force as colonialism is apparently antisemitic to RIAS.
P 38
The 07. October 2023 is considered an “even of extreme violence with genocidal Character” by RIAS. In the same report that is saying that calling Israel an Apartheid state or genocidal is antisemitic.
P 42
RIAS accuses German public broadcasters as “distributing fake-information”. It further claims Hamas would have spread fake-information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosion
As for the discussion about the origin of the attack, for which after a lot of back and forth an Israeli fragmentation bomb is identified as the likely source, RIAS just cuts this short, assuming the attribution to Israel to be “fake-information”.
P 44
So RIAS claims to not consider calling out genocide as antisemitic per se, despite giving examples where they do not explain why it would be antisemitic in this context. In the particular example given now "One genocide does not justify another one“ is considered as equating the it with the Holocaust. This is frankly absurd. Especially since the attacks of October 7, but also before Israel is constantly referring to the Holocaust as a key justification for its attacks and oppression against Palestinians and many more people in neighboring countries.
Calling Israel a murderer of children is considered antisemitic by RIAS. The UN just reported that in the next days 14,000 Babies in Gaza will be killed by starvation unless the blockade is lifted. Even the Israeli opposition is now crying out the “murder of babies as a hobby.”
Now to get to the BDS report of RIAS:
P 4 preamble
“An act of genocidal violence … the distributed videos of heinous acts aim at instilling fear in Jews worldwide”
This decontextualizes the attacks and motivations of Hamas, who employ acts of terror but whose actions are targeted at achieving their political goals in regards to Israel/Palestine. Hamas is often likened to Al-Quaida or ISIS, i.e. by Netanyahu, to create an idea of it being a threat to western countries.
P 49 that is linkes as source:
From the source linked in the report:
RIAS ignores the context that in the morning of the 07. October it was only known that the border wall and army stations have been overrun, which is covered by the right of people to resist their occupation and needs to be differentiated from terrorist attacks on civilians, for which evidence emerged during the day. Also note RIAS mixing 07. and 08. October. This can happen as a tipo but should not, as the chronology is crucial here to see what is legitimate and what is terror sympathy.