http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154594#.T4J-nNmDnUs Jewish Anti-Israel Group Promotes BDS at Passover Seder
The 'Jewish Voice for Peace' has published a new type of Hagaddah, aimed at demonizing Israel and championing ‘Palestinian’ cause.
By Rachel Hirshfeld
First Publish: 4/8/2012, 11:38 AM
Seder table
Seder table
Israel news photo: Flash 90
The Jewish anti-Israel organization, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), has recently published a new type of Hagaddah, aimed not at celebrating the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt, our journey from slavery to freedom, or the miracle of attaining national self-determination in our ancestral homeland. The Haggadah does, however, aim at demonizing the State of Israel, promoting the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement and rallying the ‘Palestinian’ cause.
The JVP’s version of the Passover seder disregards the Jewish redemption altogether and focuses, entirely, on championing the ‘Palestinian’ cause.
While the organization prides itself on furthering notions of “peace,” it instead “has become a leader in the American anti-Israel movement and has assumed a particularly visible role in the renewed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel,” notes the Anti Defamation League (ADL). “JVP's local chapters actively support divestment initiatives on college campuses and have helped anti-Israel student groups pressure their universities to divest from corporations that profit from the ‘Israeli occupation.’”
The group has rebranded the ten plagues to represent the “Ten Plagues of Israeli Occupation,” the maror (bitter herbs) to symbolize the “bitterness of [‘Palestinian’] life under [Israeli] occupation,” and the four cups of wine to toast the efforts of the BDS movement.
In addition, Moses’ declaration to Pharaoh of “Let My People Go!” is being used to champion the efforts of the Gaza Flotilla to “free” the ‘Palestinian’ people from Israel’s military blockade.
At the ‘Yachatz’ portion of the seder, the JVP commemorates the “break that occurred in Palestinian life and culture with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”
As Jonathan Tobin of Commentary Magazine notes, “One of the standard tropes of anti-Semites is to try and paint Jews as the mirror image of their oppressors. Calling Israelis Nazis is a commonplace slur, but for Passover, the JVP has made them Egyptians and attempted to transform one of the sacred rites of Judaism into a vicious exercise in Israel-bashing.”
“In doing so,” Tobin continues, “JVP has demonstrated that it has no place within the organized Jewish community or among the society of decent Americans. Their desire to wage economic war on Israel already places them outside the boundaries of normal political dissent. But their compendium of Passover-themed slurs is an act so despicable that it merits their being shunned the same way we would any other hate group.”