Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic Party’s 2016 nomination for President, today called for a bipartisan campaign against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and criticized “attempts to compare Israel to South African apartheid.”
In a letter to Haim Saban, a Los Angeles businessman and major Democratic Party donor, Clinton expressed “alarm” over the BDS movement, and wrote that “we need to make countering BDS a priority. From Congress and state legislatures to boardrooms and classrooms, we need to engage all people of good faith, regardless of their political persuasions or their views on policy specifics, in explaining why the BDS campaign is counterproductive to the pursuit of peace.””
“I am seeking your advice on how we can work together – across party lines and with a diverse array of voices – to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel,” wrote the former Secretary of State and New York State Senator.
She called comparisons of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa's former policy of suppressing black rights part of current “existential threats to its survival … we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.”
steve@jewishweek.org
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