The BDS Activists in the Black Lives Matter movement

The NSW Board of Jewish Deputies along with the Jewish Community Council of Victoria will host an online event exploring the Black Lives Matter movement, simmering racial tensions, accusing Israel of complicity in the Floyd murder. This is an online event, 27th of August 2020.

About this Event
The murder of George Floyd, a Black American who was killed on May 25, 2020, while in police custody triggered the most widespread racially charged protests in the United States and Europe since the 1960s. International protests over Floyd’s death, led by the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), have generated expressions of sympathy and support from Western prime ministers, legislators, law enforcement officials, and local government. Jewish leaders have similarly demonstrated solidarity. In the spirit of the 1960s Black-Jewish unity in the civil rights movement, American Jewish leaders unequivocally condemned the Floyd killing.

Despite universal Jewish support for BLM, it failed to prevent a surge of anti-Semitic violence across the United States in the aftermath of the Floyd murder. Jewish storeowners were assaulted; Jewish-owned stores and restaurants were defaced and looted. Social media has been rife with anti-Semitic libel denouncing the Jewish State and delegitimizing Jews. Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) organizations have exploited simmering racial tensions, accusing Israel of complicity in the Floyd murder, seeking to compare the oppression of American Blacks and Palestinians, and promoting a narrative of “Palestine as the new South Africa”.

In this panel discussion, hosted by the Jewish Community Council of Victoria in collaboration with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, three international experts, Dan Diker (Israel), Olga Meshoe Washington (South Africa) and Joshua Washington (USA), will explore the efforts to exploit the Black Lives Matter movement to advance the goals of the global BDS movement.