Tuesday, November 13, 2018

The Train Has No Brakes: International Scouting Edition

Two French Jewish delegates were barred from an interfaith scouting meeting hosted in Tunisia, in response to demands from the Tunisian BDS movement. Neither delegate was Israeli, and the organization they were representing, the International Forum of Jewish Scouts, is an umbrella organization for Jewish scouts across the globe.

There does seem to be some confusion as to who was responsible for the exclusion: the JTA article attributed it to meeting organizers, but the IFJS statement contends that BDS activists and nationalist parties in Tunisia sought and received a judicial order barring the Jewish delegates from attending.

But nobody seems to be contesting that this was a consciously sought-after outcome by Tunisian BDS groups, who had explicitly condemned the participation of the IFJS as "disguised normalization" of Israel.

In conclusion, the BDS movement has nothing to do with antisemitism and Jews who think otherwise are simply incapable of tolerating criticism of French Jewish scouts Israel.

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