Boycott Israel? Not in Bethlehem

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 |  Israel Today Staff

It’s somewhat ironic that as “human rights” activists around the world push to boycott Israeli goods, in Bethlehem, which is the capital of Christian efforts to promote the BDS movement, products from the Jewish state are widely available there.

That fact was demonstrated last week by Israeli activist Kay Wilson, who during a visit to Bethlehem to spend the day with a Palestinian friend decided to browse a number of local shops.

“I saw some beautiful Palestinian shops. I saw Israeli goods sold in Palestinian supermarkets (which makes a mockery of the Boycott, Divestment [and] Sanctions),” Wilson wrote on her Facebook page.

She went on to note how Bethlehem, often propagandized as an open air prison, is a perfectly normal town, no better or worse off than most Israeli towns.

“Just like any other town, Bethlehem has wealthy neighbourhoods and poor neighbourhoods. Personally, I saw some very nice housing,” Wilson explained. “I saw that some Palestinians have cars that the rest of us can only dream of.”

Wilson’s post when viral on Facebook, and for good reason. Pro-Palestinian activists and the mainstream media that eats up their words routinely caricature Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in a way that wholly defies reality.

And that phenomenon only puts genuine peace further out of reach. For, as Wilson correctly pointed out, “for peace to be possible, it has to be based on truth. And the truth is that there is no genocide against the Palestinians. There is no Holocaust being perpetrated by Jews.”

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