The Simon Wiesenthal Center has listed United Auto Workers Local 2865 among its "Top Ten Worst Global Anti-Semitic Incidents" of 2014 for attacking Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians.
The pro-Israel human rights group also said the worldwide campaign to "demonize and delegitimize" Israel was growing rapidly in academia in the United States, according to
The Washington Examiner.
UAW Local 2865, which represents teaching assistants at the University of California at Berkeley, became the first U.S. labor union to support the global crusade for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, the newspaper reported.
The BDS movement has attacked Israel's position on the Palestinians and hopes to employ worldwide economic sanctions to pressure Israel into changing its policy.
The Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center’s social action director, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, says BDS supporters are actually attempting to wreck the "prospects for peace" between Israelis and Palestinians and "to mainstream hate against Israel and her supporters."
He added, "It is not having an impact on the Israeli economy, but it is poisoning the discourse" with the Palestinians.
Cooper said calls to join the BDS movement have spread through academia, pointing to Columbia University and New York University as leading examples.
He said the center would press the UAW's leaders, who have not given their backing to the BDS movement, to release a statement opposing the local's decision, according to the Examiner.
In its year-end survey of the
10 worst anti-Semitic incidents, the center’s report said, "2014 was a year of unprecedented explosions of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hatred."
"Our top ten this year shows how pervasive anti-Semitism has become around the world. The 10 examples are tragically indicative of burgeoning threats and challenges to the Jewish people not encountered since the end of WWII," the report said.
"2014 was the year of ISIS, of 'lone-wolf' terrorism, of targeted murder and rape of Jewish citizens in European democracies, of pro-Hamas sentiment reverberating on the streets of Europe and on American university campuses."
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