How BDS and IAW came so unstuck last week

Shalom reader,

It has been a heated weekon university campuses: SAUJS, leading Israel Awareness Week, battling it out against BDS, leading Israel Apartheid Week. While BDS was again “selling” the old “Israel is an apartheid state” canard, SAUJS and colleagues at DEISI hit the road running with a series of innovative posters, graffiti walls, talks, concerts and messages on social media, in an attempt to bring across a different message. Read below to hear all about it.

Last week theHelping Hands division of the Joburg Chev, at a packed out Jewish Entrepreneurs Insight event, hosted Better Place founder Shai Agassi and venture capitalist Adam Valkin. See all the pics!

In a survey that spanned politics, religion and interfaith relations, the Pew Research Centre found that48 per cent of Jewish Israelis would like to see Arabs expelledfrom Israel. Read about the reasons for these changing sentiments.

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THE LATEST NEWS is that Thursday opened with an increasingly embattled BDS – who had reportedly solicited news website The Daily Vox to ensure daily coverage of their Israel Apartheid Week events around the country but found themselves on the whipping end of an editorial on the site today. This followed their aggressive, panicked response after Daily Vox asked them to respond to two posts on the site by BDS supporters Prof Steven Friedman and Minhaj Jeenah.

Read Daily Vox:EDITORIAL:“This is how BDS-SA responded when we offered them the chance to reply to their critics”

It was a mismatched contest, theBDS vs. SAUJS this week, as BDS supporters agreed

• VERBATIM FROM THE MOUTHS OF BDS BOSSES – THE HOUSE OF HORRORS
• VERBATIM: PROF FRIEDMAN SAYS BDS-SA INCOMPETENCE PROMOTING ZIONISM
• VERBATIM: JEENAH SAYS BDS MAKING PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY IRRELEVANT
• WITS PSC GROVEL AND APOLOGISE FOR FAUX PAS AFTER THEY HUNG BLACK BODIES

Other stories around the campus event of 2016:

Don’t miss this one – The video that is the subject of a Wits enquiry afterBDS students were nailed on videodestroying SAUJS posters and swearing that they would not allow any Zionist material on campus. Wits management must now decide if these students are to be allowed to remain on campus!

Also read about theSAUJS Media campaignwhich has won the day for them.

Read about Days Two and Threeof theAnnual IAW rivalry which moved online big-time in 2016and see some ofthe elements of the campaignon all of these stories.

RoRo’s new blog:Special Salute: Israel’s sisters are doing it for themselves!– Rolene Marks has some fun with Woman’s Rights Day falling during IAW: “We deserve a salute – and a fabulous pair of shoes!”

IAW Day #1.5 –Guerrilla warfare on web & in the trenches– covered Monday morning to Tuesday mid-day and saw fortune favouring the Jewish students. Read what went on…

A MUST READ: In a letter to BDS, Fed chair Ben Swartz writes tongue-in-cheekthanking BDS for helpingto promote the Zionist cause. If you don’t have a good laugh at Thank you, BDS, for making us stronger, you must be a member of BDS. But, whether you laugh or cry at what Ben has to say to BDS, you will come out on the other side of it far better informed about the anti-Israel lobby group’s activities.

In South African Christian Zionist advocateWillie Patterson’s IAW ‘silly season’ in full swingglobally, Patterson points out that the various programs are cleverly designed “to brand Israel as an Apartheid state.”

Board slams ANC over support for IAWwas posted Monday after Wendy Kahn lambasted the ruling party, and Jessie Duarte, for their Friday announcement supporting BDS, IAW, and sending emissaries from the party’s NEC around the country to speak at BDS events.

BDS and their supporters last week hijacked the Wits Library lawns and effectively started IAW a week early. Granted, Wits did try to stop it (readWits management adopt tough stand on BDSand Stand-off after‘BDS-inspired Wits subterfuge’published on JR Online last week) – but management’s efforts to meet their promises turned out to be fruitless and the demonstration continued unabated.

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Prof David Bilchitzof the University of Johannesburg points out how student protests which had begun peacefully, have quickly turned violent. ‘Unfortunately [they] demonstrate that the culture of protest in our country has failed to change in line with the transformation of our political system. The violence is itself undemocratic…’

‘From the time I could hold a spoon, my grandmother involved me in the cooking process,’ saysNew York Times nutritionist Dawn Lermanwho shares her Grandma Beauty’s hamantashen recipe – with a healthy twist. She says as a child she felt undernourished both physically and emotionally, except for the loving attention she got from Grandma Beauty.

And in her editorialVanessa Valkin poses the questionof whether the SA Jewish community, despite its vast resources, has merelyaccessto government and major decision makers or does it have realinfluence?

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TheSouthAfrican
Jewish Report team

One of the favourite places users like to go to on www.sajr.co.za is the “LATEST” tab www.sajr.co.za/latest where they find many items that don’t make the print version of the paper, or which have more content, pictures, etc.

The other popular place to browse the website is to view ourVIDEO ARCHIVE– from sad to funny to just plain silly – there are hundreds to go through.