After being sworn in on Thursday, Elan Carr, President Trump's new special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, established that he finds any boycott of Israel to be anti-Semitic.
"An individual has the right to buy or not buy what they please," said Carr, a former prosecutor from Los Angeles. "However, if there is an organized movement to economically strangle the state of Israel, that is anti-Semitic. We are going to focus relentlessly on eradicating this false distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism."
Under international law, Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories are considered illegal, but Carr suggested that extending the boycott to include those areas is also anti-Semitic. "Two communities that are living side by side, and one refuses to buy from Jews and one wants to buy from non-Jews, I think that's very clear what that is," he said.
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The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, started by Palestinians, aims to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti was supposed to fly from Tel Aviv to the U.S. on Wednesday, but was not allowed to board the plane. Barghouti was going to go on a speaking tour and visit with a rabbi in Chicago. He said he's not sure why he wasn't able to fly, considering he has a visa he used before, but suspects it is "ideologically and politically motivated." Carr said BDS is not "a ragtag group," and because they want to "deny the state of Israel economic prosperity ... that is anti-Semitism."
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