Palestinian terrorist leader’s arrest highlights extensive overlap between BDS

Palestinian terrorist leader’s arrest highlights extensive overlap between BDS

The announcement on Wednesday by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency that it has arrested some 50 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) capped off a monthslong targeting of the terror group for its role in the deadly terror attack on Aug. 23 that killed an Israeli teenager hiking with her father and brother.

Rina Shnerb, 17, died as a result of an explosion near the town of Dolev in Samaria; her brother, Dvir Shnerb, 19, was injured, along with their father, 46-year-old Rabbi Eitan Shnerb. According to Israeli reports, the explosive device included 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of explosive material, making it an “unusually powerful bomb.”

The arrests coincidentally provide evidence of further links between the PFLP and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. Among those arrested by the Shin Bet include Khalida Jarrar, 56, who the Israeli security service noted was the head of the terror group’s operations in the West Bank. Until recently, Jarrar also served as the vice chairperson, director and board member of the BDS organization Addameer.

“With regard to Jarrar, this is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the BDS/terror connection,” said Marc Greendorfer, president of the Zachor Legal Institute and author of The New Anti-Semites: The Radicalization Mechanism of the BDS Movement and the Delegitimization Campaign Against Israel.

“Jarrar is simply one example of the extensive overlaps between terror organization leadership and BDS, going all the way to the top, where the organizing and operational leadership of BDS [the BDS National Committee, or BNC] includes a coalition of groups designated as foreign terror organizations by the United States and other countries,” Greendorfer told JNS.

Last February, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry released a report titled Terrorists in Suits that found that Hamas and PFLP activists had infiltrated organizations that call for boycotts on, divestment from, and sanctions on Israel.

The report, which examined 13 international BDS organizations, discovered that senior positions were held by 30 terror activists – 20 of whom who had actually spent time in prison for their crimes, including murder.

It also determined that global interconnections between BDS and terror organizations were vast, with more than 100 connections being identified.

Founded in 1992, Addameer claims to be an NGO that works to support Palestinian prisoners, yet evidence suggests that the organization is actually an affiliate of PFLP.

According to NGO Monitor, more than half of Addameer’s current and former employees, as well as lawyers that work for it, have links to the PFLP; other employees have ties to Hamas.

Addameer is a member of the Palestinian NGO Network, which itself is a member of the BNC or BDS National Committee, that coordinates the global BDS movement.

Source: Israel Hayom