Boston's Mapping Project Demonstrates BDS is Inherently Anti-Semitic

Anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head in Boston with the emergence of a website called The Mapping Project.

This website tracks the physical locations of Jewish organizations including the home addresses of individuals involved said organizations including synagogues, Jewish schools and businesses owned by Jews and their relationships to governmental, academic and other community organizations. According to The Mapping Project:

Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.

The Mapping Project also claims:

Boston's Zionist leaders and powerhouse NGOs, which buy legitimacy and support from universities, use their influence to enable a range of oppressive agendas: supporting the Israeli army and Israeli settlements in Palestine; criminalizing Palestine liberation activists on college campuses; funding US police departments and cop unions; extracting wealth from colonized Puerto Rico; and advancing the privatization of US public schools.

So how exactly does The Mapping Project intend to disrupt and dismantle these "local entities and networks" organized by "Boston's Zionist leaders"? The Mapping Project does not say but one cannot rule out the possibility of violence. Tellingly, The Mapping Project also has the support of the local chapter of the BDS (Boycott, Sanctions & Divestment) Movement which seeks to dismantle Israel by demanding the return of all Arab lands and the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

The Mapping Project has drawn condemnation from several members of Massachusetts' congressional delegation including Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren as well as Representatives Jake Auchincloss, Seth Moulton and, surprisingly, Ayanna Pressley who told Marc Rod of The Jewish Insider, “It is not acceptable to target or make vulnerable Jewish institutions or organizations, full stop.”

Pressley has been notably critical of Israel voting against funding for the Iron Dome last September along with her fellow Squad members. However, it is worth noting that Pressley was notably absent when Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution demanding the U.S. recognize the creation of Israel as "Naqba" (or catastrophe) last month. Is Pressley distancing herself from fellow Squad members where it concerns Israel? The jury is still out. Pressley attributed this and the stabbing of a rabbi in Brighton last year to "organized white supremacy". While white supremacy is a menace it is not white supremacists who are responsible for these particular acts of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, her statement is a step in the right direction.

The Mapping Project and BDS' support of it demonstrates that BDS is inherently anti-Semitic. The Mapping Project is targeting Jewish individuals and organizations and see fit to blame them for the "colonization of Palestine" and other "harms" for which they bear no responsibility be it "policing, US imperialism, and displacement/ethnic cleansing".

For BDS, Jews and Israel are inexorably connected. Just as they wish to dismantle the State of Israel they also wish to dismantle the Jewish community in the diaspora by any means necessary.