Exclusive to CIJnews, Part 2 of 3

Bassem Eid, born in the Jordanian-occupied Old City in Jerusalem who currently resides in Jericho, is the founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, established in 1996 during the Oslo process to monitor human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority against its Palestinian citizens.

Bassem is a harsh critic of the Palestinian Authority and a leading voice against the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement who is not afraid to speak the truth about Israel or the conflict in the Middle East, which is rarely seen among Arab Muslims discussing the Middle East today.

For his refusal to blame Israel as the sole source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has been called a “traitor”, his talks have been disrupted, and his most recent lecture at the University of Chicago was shut down by a mob of anti-Israel BDS activists, forcing him to be escorted out by police for his own safety.

Bassem travels extensively in Europe and North America, lecturing and giving interviews, criticizing the Palestinian Authority and, more recently, trying to explain to the world that the activities of the BDS hate movement are only undermining the dream of a Palestinian state.

Bassem spoke in Toronto on March 11, 2016.

“I am very proud to say it – my people want to survive and as long as the Palestinian people aren’t boycotting Israel, we don’t need BDS to do it for us.”

He explained his claim that the boycott, divestment and sanctions program which targets Israel is harmful to Palestinians because it fuels the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Everybody is earning money from BDS. I don’t believe the international community is donating money in order to solve the conflict. It is investing money to continue the conflict and ordinary people pay a high price.” BDS, says Eid, is just another organization sapping money that could otherwise be used to advance the welfare of Palestinians.

Not a single Palestinian has ever benefited from the calls for boycott of Israel. In fact, BDS has done serious harm to ordinary Palestinians, as was the case with SodaStream which had to lay off hundreds of Palestinian workers when it relocated its manufacturing facility from Judea and Samaria to the Negev desert after it was targeted by BDS activists.

“Around 2,500 Palestinians lost their jobs because of the move,” Eid said. “BDS is a stupid activity and is nothing more than a prelude to genocide.”

BDS is known not just for its vicious and obsessive hatred and its open calls for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish State, but also for its sheer hypocrisy. For example, Omar Barghouti, one of the leaders of the campaign for the boycott of Israeli universities decided not to boycott Israeli academia himself and enrolled to study for a PhD at Tel Aviv University. When an Israeli newspaper asked him for comment he said: “My studies at Tel Aviv University are a personal matter and I have no interest in commenting.”

Anyone who has witnessed BDS in action will be in no doubt that the movement is not just anti-Semitic, but is also racist because it singles out one and only one nationality – Israelis – for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena.

Bassem has no doubt that the BDS movement is tainted with anti-Semitism. “There are many anti-Semitic elements that have hopped onto the BDS bandwagon,” he said. “I wonder why those same people remain silent when Palestinians are slaughtered in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria. Of that I say: No Jews – no news.”

“Everybody is earning money from BDS. I don’t believe the international community is donating money in order to solve the conflict. It is investing money to continue the conflict and ordinary people pay a high price.”

“BDS is a prelude to a genocide. In the process of trying to destroy the Israeli economy, BDS activists also destroy the Palestinian economy and they don’t care. Today, around 92,000 Palestinian workers hold Israeli work permits. Besides, there are 15,000 Palestinians employed in the West Bank settlements. I am very proud to say it – my people want to survive and as long as the Palestinian people aren’t boycotting Israel, we don’t need BDS to do it for us.”

“Among the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, there is no BDS movement. The problem of the BDS is they are calling to boycott Israel. That’s hypocrisy. How can we survive? What is the alternative for boycotting Israel?”

“It is very comfortable for BDS activists to go around Los Angeles or France or Germany or Sweden calling for a boycott of Israel. It doesn’t cost them anything. But for us, it is very hard to make a decent living working in the West Bank. If you go every morning to Palestinian cities, you will find hundreds of boxes of vegetables and fruits from Israel. Did they come from Jordan or Egypt? We, the Palestinians, are smuggling Israeli settlement products to our markets! We want to work and survive and take responsibility for the future of our children. BDS is surviving on the suffering of the Palestinians. How did they benefit the Palestinians?”