[Opinion] When human-rights NGOs adopt anti-Semitic language
[Excerpts]
Last month, the Israeli NGO B’Tselem launched a discriminatory and hateful campaign titled, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.”
The NGO attacked Israel’s role as a haven for the Jewish people (the Law of Return) and used the phrase “from the river to the sea”—echoing long-standing Palestinian terminology for the destruction of Israel.
Most analysis has pointed to the incongruity and offensiveness of the “apartheid” analogy. However, B’Tselem’s troubling adoption of the term “Jewish supremacy” has received far less attention.
This phrase originated among anti-Semites who believed that the Jewish people considered themselves superior to non-Jews and manipulated the banking system and the media. Its usage in the Israeli context deliberately draws parallels to “white supremacy” and the worst forms of racism.
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