The Mapping Project Is Warfare Campaign Targeting Jews

As published in Newsmax.

July7, 2022.

If you want to know what antisemitism looks like, here it is — the BDS Mapping Project, a scheme that targets Boston area Jews using an interactive map identifying the names, locations and leadership of Jewish institutions and all organizations that have any relationship, past or present, with Jewish institutions.

The Project is being promoted by the Boston branch of the antisemitic BDS movement — the boycott, divest and sanction crusade to eliminate the State of Israel. They and their allies are calling on supporters to use this roadmap to identify, disrupt and “dismantle” the infrastructure of the Jewish community in Massachusetts and across America.

This BDS campaign is a dangerous escalation of rank antisemitic rhetoric, hate, intimidation and incitement to violence from the Left. It places a target on the backs of Jewish Americans and is a welcomed resource for any potential synagogue or Jewish school shooter.

The creators of this “mapping project” claim the organizations targeted represent local support for the “colonization of Palestine.” The project ties Zionism, the Jewish right to self-determination in their ancient homeland, and Jewish Americans to imperialism, white supremacy, structural racism, ableism, ecological harm, gentrification, the prison-industrial complex, policing and other perceived sins.

Virtually every Jewish organization in the Boston-Cambridge area and some across the Commonwealth, including any organization that has the word “Jewish” in its name, is included.

This interactive map visually portrays Jewish/Zionist community institutions and individuals and their connections to government, politicians, police, universities, corporations, media and other national and local organizations as a nefarious web. Any links, past or present, real or imagined, to Judaism, Jews, Jewish donors, Jewish charities or Israel makes a non-Jewish organization or individual also a Mapping Project target.

The creators declare, “We have shown physical addresses, named officers and leaders, and mapped connections.” The project’s goal, clearly stated on its home page, is “to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them,” in other words, shunning, isolating, disenfranchising and, ultimately, eliminating them as punishment for their collective guilt.

This BDS hit list includes Jewish centers, newspapers and synagogues, Jewish-managed charities, a Jewish school, a center for Jews with disabilities, Jewish environmental groups, left and right-leaning Jewish political action groups, Jewish student groups, universities (e.g. MIT, Tufts), hospitals like Mass. General, Harvard Medical School, police departments (Brookline for arresting Arabs who attack Jews) and corporations (e.g. Amazon, Boeing) for having some direct or remote connection to or involvement with Jews and Israel. Even the Newton, Mass, public school district with its high Jewish population.

The Mapping Project charges Boston’s “Zionist leaders” with police violence, “extracting wealth from colonized Puerto Rico” and “advancing the privatization of U.S. public schools.”

It targets the Boston Museum of Science, claiming that a 2010 exhibit, Israel Innovation Week, was intended “to whitewash the realities of Israel's colonial conquest of Palestinian land and theft of Palestinian resources.”

In the age-old manner of antisemitic conspiracy-mongers, this BDS mapping presents Jews as uniquely powerful and manipulative and responsible for all the adjudged “ills” of society.

Historically, Jew-hatred frequently extended beyond mindless bigotry to identify Jews as the cause of whatever the haters revile most. That’s why Jews were blamed for Bolshevism by capitalist antisemites and blamed for capitalism by Marxist antisemites, hated by white supremacists and hated by Black Lives Matter extremists.

The underlying messages are clear: This is a warfare campaign against the Jewish people, wherever they may be. Anti-Zionism is a disguise for antisemitism. Hatred for Israel is hatred of Jews.

To the woke Israel-hater, Zionists are Jews and, as such, Jews are white oppressors who conspire with our institutions to cause great societal harm. If you maintain a relationship with Jewish organizations, you too will be targeted and the BDS map will identify where to find you.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., tweeted, “This project is an antisemitic enemies list with a map attached.”

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., called this mapping project “chilling,” echoing “a very sinister vein of Western history” — identified with past efforts to keep rosters of Jews, including, but not exclusive to, the Holocaust.

In an interview, the Mapping Project creators expressed a willingness to “share our tools and what we’ve learned with organizers who are similarly committed to dismantling these oppressive systems.”

The Project has quickly inspired other groups and is a prototype for similar Jew-targeting efforts.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL) is distributing its own “map” to identify and threaten Jewish groups in New York. In a WOL video, chairperson Nerdeen Kiswani told a Rockefeller Center crowd burning an Israeli flag, “The most notorious Zionists in this country, they’re right here in our city. ... We let them know we know where they’re at. We know where they work. ... And we’re gonna go after them.”

At a 2021 rally, one of their leaders clearly advocated violence: “Every single person, who says that we shouldn’t be calling for resistance, that we shouldn’t be calling for violence, well then stand the f*** up!”

WOL provokes terrorism against Jews, urging people to “organize an action in your neighborhood … to channel the spirit and example of the Palestinian Intifada.”

WOL’s “globalize the Intifada” campaign encourages violence against American Jews and Jews worldwide, just as the Palestinian Arab Intifada murdered or maimed 10,000 innocent Jews with bombs, cars, knives and guns.

Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) director Zahra Billoo admonished her followers in late 2021, “We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federations. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues…know your enemies.”

The Palestinian Youth Movement tweeted, “May this project be an inspiration to anti-Zionist and anti-racist organizers everywhere.” Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network promotes the project.

This is the way things began in Nazi Germany.

Regarding hate crimes, the FBI’s statistics for 2020 reveal that, although Jews comprise less than 2% of the U.S. population, 60% of religious-motivated hate crimes in the U.S. are anti-Jewish. According to the ADL, in 2021, antisemitic incidents increased at a higher rate in New England than the rest of the country, with Massachusetts ranking as the worst offender.

When it comes to hate crimes, Jews have been the major target of all religion-based hate crimes in the United States.

The BDS Mapping Project is not about human rights, social justice or the improvement of life for even one Palestinian Arab. This is all about demonizing American Jews and inciting violence against them.

History warns us that extreme movements can become mainstream very quickly, especially in difficult economic times. In tough times, people always find scapegoats.

The BDS Mapping Project and others like it must be vigorously opposed. Supported by the evidence, our state and federal agencies must identify, monitor and prosecute these groups to the fullest extent of the law. Lives depend on it.