Censoring anti-Semitic agenda is not denial of free speech

Sydney Kaye, Johannesburg

First, Limmud is not in position to deny free speech, since those activists have any number of venues where they are free to speak.

Second, the issue is not whether it is desirable to hear people with different views (because generally it is), but whether those people are there in good faith, or whether they come with an agenda, or more likely with a planted agenda from BDS, which is an anti-Semitic organisation, whose sole aim is to delegitimise Israel, not to support the Palestinian cause as it purports to do.

The obvious questions to ask BDS Jews is:

• Why amongst all the human-rights issues in the world do you feel obliged to join those who you should know by words and actions are clearly anti-Semitic in their campaign against Israel, and
• Does it not strike you that you are being used by Israel’s enemies, not because you are wonderful, progressive, sensitive human beings who feel for the oppressed, but because you are Jews. You must have heard, as we all have, how BDS gleefully tells the world it cannot be anti-Semitic because it has Jewish members. Maybe you are too young to remember that whenever former Prime Minister PW Botha was accused of racism, he would roll out his black puppets and say, “How can I be, when there are blacks that agreed with the policy?”

Perhaps you should be smart enough to consider whether you are being led by the nose, and are BDS’s poletzny duraki (useful fools).