An international organization that receives funding from progressive billionaire George Soros is calling on travel companies to boycott Israeli tourism in disputed territories in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
Amnesty International condemned Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor for profiting off tourism in areas which the organization describes as “occupied” by Israel. The demand falls in line with the anti-semitic Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
In return, Israel threatened to ban the London-based non-governmental organization (NGO), which fired back at the Jewish state for spreading “lies” about its anti-Semitism.
Soros-funded group endorses BDS principles
In a report titled “Destination: Occupation,” Amnesty International dramatically accused the four travel companies of complicity in “war crimes” for listing properties and attractions in “illegal” Israeli settlements in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, which it said helped “normalize” the Israeli government’s settlements.
All four companies claim to operate under high ethical values and respect for the rule of law. However, none of these standards appears to influence the companies’ decisions in relation to settlement listings. In doing business with settlements, all four companies are contributing to, and profiting from, the maintenance, development and expansion of illegal settlements, which amount to war crimes under international criminal law.
Amnesty International singled out TripAdvisor as the main target of the campaign because of “the company’s relative importance to the tourism industry in Israeli settlements.” TripAdvisor lists more than 70 “illegal” attractions and listings in Israeli settlements, more than any other digital tourism company. Amnesty International released a mock tourism promo on Wednesday that slammed TripAdvisor for promoting “illegal” settlements.
Hey, @TripAdvisor, we’ve made a more *suitable* promo video to advertise your properties, activities & attractions in illegal Israeli settlements. Check it out. pic.twitter.com/zIUVDMW21i
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) January 30, 2019
In its report, Amnesty International described the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem as “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and Israeli settlements there as “war crimes” under international law, but Israel has disputed the status of the territories, which are rich with Jewish history. Eastern Jerusalem contains some of the holiest sites in Judaism, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall, and several holy tombs in Judaism are in the West Bank. Palestinians have never had a state in the territories, which Israel captured in 1967 in the Six Day War.
Amnesty International has received funding from Soros, and it’s not the only Soros-linked group to be involved with BDS. Airbnb said in November that it would remove listings in the West Bank in response to pressure from Human Rights Watch, another group that receives Soros funding.
Amnesty International included Airbnb in its report despite the company’s policy reversal and called on the tourism giant to remove more than 100 listings in Eastern Jerusalem.
Israel responds
Israel accused the group of endorsing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and Israel’s Strategic Affairs and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said he was looking into banning Amnesty International, tweeting that the group “has become a leader in the anti-Semitic #BDS campaign. The report it will release tonight on #Israel is an outrageous attempt to distort facts, deny Jewish heritage & delegitimize Israel.”
Amnesty International responded by accusing Israel of serving up a distraction from its “war crimes” and called the Jewish State’s accusations of anti-Semitism “blatant incitements based on lies.
Professor Gerald Steinberg, founder of watchdog group NGO Monitor, said that Amnesty International’s report intentionally downplayed the Jewish cultural inheritance in the so-called “occupied” lands.
Israel black-listed 20 groups that support BDS last month, including four that have received funds from Soros: the American Friends Service Committee, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and CODEPINK.
Soros’s philanthropy has been linked with numerous other progressive organizations that have endorsed the movement like the American Civil Liberties Union and Black Lives Matter. He has also expressed anti-Israel sentiments in his public statements and a hack of e-mails from his philanthropy, the Open Society Foundations, uncovered a goal to “challeng[e] Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies in the international arena.”
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