Kenneth L. Marcus This evening in Tel Aviv, LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus will deliver an important keynote address at an important conference on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The IAM conference, entitled “BDS Campaign Against Israel: On Campusand Beyond,” will take tonight at 6 p.m. in Tel Aviv University, Max Webb Hall 1. LDB President Marcus, a former Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, will address “What is Anti-Semitic About the BDS Movement?” In his keynote address, Mr. Marcus will explain why the BDS movement must be considered anti-Semitic even if some of its advocates deny harboring conscious anti-Semitic intent. Marcus will also discuss legal tools that can be used to address some of the more extreme abuses of the movement. Other conference speakers will include historian Richard Landes, political scientist Ofira Seliktar, and journalist Ben-Dror Yemini. Details on the event are as follows: The public is invited to the IAM event on “BDS Campaign Against Israel: On Campus and Beyond” – Wednesday May 14, 2014 at 6pm in Tel Aviv University, Max Webb hall 1. Tel Aviv University Entrance from gates 1 and 8, paid parking available. Speakers bio and lectures Lecture 1- Keynote speaker: Kenneth L. Marcus What is Anti-Semitic About the Movement to Boycott, Divest from, and Sanction Israel? “Supporters of the BDS movement argue that their campaign is a political response to human rights violations. Accusations of anti-Semitism, they often insist, are a bad-faith effort to limit debate on a legitimate topic of moral and political concern. Kenneth L. Marcus, a human rights expert who formerly directed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, explains why they are wrong. In fact, anti-Jewish campaigns have frequently used the rhetoric of their times to justify anti-Jewish bigotry. The BDS movement, Marcus shows, continues a long-standing effort to marginalize and delegitimize the Jewish people. Some BDS supporters are consciously anti-Semitic, while others are not. The essential feature of the movement however is its assault on the State of Israel as the collective Jew.” Kenneth L. Marcus, President & General Counsel, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. Lecture 2: Ofira Seliktar BDS as a Soft Asymmetrical Conflict: An Intelligence Perspective “BDS is part of a larger phenomenon of Soft Asymmetrical Conflict (SAC) waged against Israel by numerous nongovernment elements embedded in civil society and aided by governmental bodies. SAC is a new form of 21st century warfare that, by and large, surpassed the more traditional Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) based on terrorism. Israeli authorities are not well equipped to deal with SAC, leading to spectacular failures like Mavi Marmara. With its strong roots on campus, the BDS campaign and other forms of SAC require a rethinking of the Israeli intelligence paradigm.” Ofira Seliktar is Professor of Political Science at Gratz College and Chair of the Strategy and Intelligence Section at ASMEA. She has also worked as a consultant to agencies in the United States. Lecture 3: Richard A. Landes The Delegitimization of Israel: From the Fringes of the Internet to Mainstream Media “One of the key functions of the mainstream news media is to serve as a dialysis machine, filtering out the poisons that can weaken the civil polities in which they operate. At least in the Arab-Israeli conflict, they have, alas, played the role of injecting the poisons of lethal narratives into the information stream of the West.” Richard Allen Landes is an American historian and author, currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Boston University. He is most famous for coining the term “Pallywood” for what he considers the practice of “staged filming” of “evidence” against Israel for the benefit of the Palestinians. Lecture 4: Ben-Dror Yemini “Foundations on Which Boycott Campaign is Built On” A boycott is a legitimate tool in the framework of international relations. Western countries boycotted Austria because the neo-Nazis joined a government coalition there, Iran was a subject of boycott and sanction, as well as Burma and recently Russia, following the crisis in the Ukraine. The boycott of Israel is problematic because the claims used to justify the campaign label Israel as an apartheid state are false. In addition, the agenda of the hard-core boycott advocates has nothing to do with human rights, but rather the denial of Israel’s legitimate rights in the Middle East. Occasionally, senior officials such as Secretary of State, John Kerry, use the rhetoric of apartheid – attesting how successful and widespread the label has become. Ben-Dror Yemini is an Israeli columnist and researcher, his book “The Industry of Lies” will be published in Hebrew in two months.