Religion and Politics

How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism is Fracturing American Politics

For The New York Times, Nathan Thrall writes that American support for Israel has exacerbated divisions within and between political parties. He writes that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (B.D.S.) “seeks to exert economic, moral and political pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, grant equal rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel and recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return.” The movement is dividing both college campuses and Capitol Hill, with some supporters of B.D.S. seeing the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a case of apartheid, while the opposition maintains that B.D.S. amounts to anti-Semitism. Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said, “The concern that politicians have is being labeled anti-Semitic or labeled anti-Israel or labeled opposed to the cultural values of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Read at The New York Times

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