Elan Carr, the recently appointed State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, criticized the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement during an April 16 press conference for promulgating “hatred of the Jewish people.”
Carr was asked by a reporter if he viewed the BDS movement as anti-Semitic rather than just criticism of the Israeli government.
“If there is an organized movement to economically strangle the state of Israel, that is anti-Semitic, and the administration’s gone on the record as being opposed unequivocally to the BDS movement,” Carr said. “And the idea that somehow there can be movements organized to deny Israel its legitimacy and not to allow Israel to participate in economic commerce in the world, sure that is [anti-Semitic].”
“Hatred of the Jewish state is hatred of the Jewish people, and that’s something that’s very clear and that is our policy,” Carr added.
The new US envoy for combatting antisemitism Elan Carr speaks out and calls out BDS for #antisemitism: pic.twitter.com/2aQRJqHljZ
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) April 15, 2019
In the Journal’s February 8 issue cover story, Carr made similar comments to the Journal regarding the BDS movement.
“The idea that Israel should be singled out for disparate treatment and should be subjected to boycotts and to demonization is anti-Semitism,” Carr said. “An obsessive hatred of the Jewish state is nothing more than an obsessive hate for the Jewish people.”
He also told the Journal on the matter of anti-Zionism that “anyone who seeks to deny the Jewish people that form of expression is seeking to deny the Jewish people the ability to express themselves as Jews, and that is anti-Semitic.”
