Divest This

Hey guys.  I’m thinking of auditioning for The Onion.  What do you think?

A group from Northeastern University’s Self-Righteous Asshole community made their presence known last night as they marched in front of Max Brenner’s restaurant and chocolate shop in downtown Boston for close to two hours, demanding that people not buy chocolate on Valentine’s Day in protest of something or other.

“We came to make a statement,” said Joshua Amarilla, a student from Stoughton, MA currently studying comparative literature and a leading member of the Self-Righteous Asshole organization at Northeastern.  “This chocolate shop is involved with evil, EVIL I tell you.  And if you look through this seven page flowchart I printed up, you’ll understand why buying cocoa here contributes to repression, Apartheid and other acts of evilness.”

“This protest has our full support,” says Anna Federman, a long-time leader in the wider Boston-based Self-Righteous Asshole community.  “For, as a Jew, I want to loudly condemn all other Jews – including Jewish chocolatiers – who don’t do what we say, and don’t immediately acknowledge that we are both right about all things and morally superior to them in every way.”

“Oh, and did I mention I’m Jewish?” Federman continued.

When asked why the event turned out just 15 people, Amarilla responded angrily.  “Hey, we had 80 people say they’d show up on our Facebook page, so that should count for something” he bellowed.  “After all, 80 is a lot higher than 15!”

The protest did not proceed without incident.  “At least one patron at Max Brenner’s actively tried to muzzle my freedom of speech by telling me to ‘fuck off’ when I handed him some of the literature I spent all night Photoshopping,” said Thomas Herman, a visiting Self-Righteous Asshole from Tufts.  (Waiting times to get into the Max Brenner’s grew to an hour during the period the protesters were insisting a boycott was the patrons’ only moral choice.)

The patron involved with the incident, Anthony Capone (a part-time physical therapist from Somerville) had this to say about what occurred: “After six weeks of effort, I finally got the girl from the office next door (26 year old Alison McNeeley, also from Somerville) to go out with me – on Valentine’s Day as luck would have it.  And just when I was about to make my move, this douchebag stuffs a leaflet into my hand and starts talking about Apartheid.  Honestly, he’s lucky I didn’t smack him across the street.”

“Whether we had 15 people protesting or 50 or 500 doesn’t matter,” responded Amarilla to continued questioning of why their weeks-long call to action ended in a protest barely noticed by the passers-by (much less the hundreds of people inside Max Brenner’s).  “After all, the point is to get people talking about issues that matter to us, specifically about how cool and edgy we are.”

And as it turned out, the event did generate more than twenty tweets during the 12 hours since the protest began, at least four of which were not written by the protestor’s themselves.  Typical of the level of conversation the protest triggered was this one in which a local Bostonian, responding to another tweet that Brenner’s was being picketed, asked: “Gosh, is the food really that bad?”

Apparently not since, in a related story, Max Brenner’s in Boston reports that yesterday was the most successful day in its two-year history and may represent the highest level of Valentine’s Day sales at any Max Brenner’s in the world.

Among the customers who flooded the shop during the course of the day were many Northeastern students who were not available for comment due to the fact that they were all sleeping off a chocolate high.

Members of Northeastern’s Self-Righteous Asshole community were also not available for a follow up interview, having chosen to celebrate their “victory” by locking themselves in their rooms.

It’s not often the forces of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) decide to put their sour souls on display on the sweetest day of the year.

Apparently, someone got it into their head that it would be a brilliant idea to picket Boston’s Max Brenner restaurant and gourmet chocolate shop on Valentine’s Day (i.e., tomorrow) at just the hour when the place will be packed with forgetful husbands and boyfriends trying to head off conflicts far more terrifying than anything the Middle East has to offer.

But a picket of Max Brenner (something local BDSers imported from a failed similar effort in Australia) does accomplish the boycotters single most important goal: showing their Facebook friends that they can act naughty in public.

While I don’t expect hundreds of people to show up at Max Brenner’s in the next 36 hours to buy them out and hold a chocolate party on Boylston Street (similar to the wine bash that began the Buycott movement in 2009), it would certainly be nice if anyone in, near or planning to be around Boston today or tomorrow stop by 745 Boylston Street (across from the Prudential) and show Max Brenner some love.

I’m happy to get things started:

Send me your pix if you’re able to make a purchase.  I recommend the chocolate covered nuts (far preferable to the non-chocolate covered ones that will be chanting incoherently outside tomorrow night).

Well it took some doing, but my faithful team of dumpster divers managed to unearth an early draft of Jewish Voice for Peace’s most-remarkable Hagaddah.

It’s clearly a markup version, but it provides keen insight into the true soul of BDS.

Enjoy!

One of the few good things about the Web savviness of Israel’s opponents is that you sometimes get to see all of the hypocrisy and clownishness of the BDS “movement” by simply visiting a single Web site.  And nowhere is this efficiency more on display than at the site of my West Coast friends’ favorite organization: Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

JVP has been a subject on this site more than any other BDS organization, perhaps because they tend to show up whenever the letters B, D and S appear at any time and in any combination in order to throw in their “As Jews, we approve!” boilerplate, while simultaneously denouncing accusations of anti-Semitism (whether or not they are ever made) and wrapping their message in a kaffiyeh (which they claim to be a prayer shawl).

But in all the years I’ve been visiting JVP-land, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them put all of their pathologies online as much as they have in the last few weeks.

First up, you’ve got to wonder “what were they thinking?” when you watch them celebrate their own success in getting someone censored (in this case, a group of visiting Israeli gay activists) smack in the middle of a list of other stories decrying their own alleged victimization from censorship.

This form of doublethink first came to my attention when I ran across the JVP site Muzzlewatch a few years back, a site supposedly dedicated to shining light on attempts to stifle free speech (JVP’s) in discussion of the Middle East conflict.  During a six month period of challenging their accusations in a freewheeling comments section, it became clear that for Muzzlewatch’s creators, “free speech” meant their own freedom to do and say anything they wanted without being criticized while “muzzling” meant other people using their own free speech rights to say something JVP didn’t like.

Back then, the Muzzlewatchers attempted to justify their own textbook censorship (in that case, of participating in a lawsuit designed to get the media to shut up about a local controversial issue), by artlessly trying to convince readers that their act of attempted censorship was designed to encourage (rather than discourage) discussion (huh?). You can see this same convoluted logic on display in their current characterization of visiting gay Israelis as not actually interested in “open dialog” (defined by JVP of course), thus making it reasonable to shut them up and down.

If you combine this with JVP’s support for like-minded allies who have started shouting and heckling Israeli speakers from the stage, you’ll quickly discover what I learned years ago: that JVP is simply a partisan organization dedicated to its own side’s victory and its opponent’s defeat.  And in this struggle to achieve their ends, all means are allowed, including bastardizing the language of free speech and open dialog (just like they turn words like “peace” and “justice” into weapons of war), knowing full well that it is their opponents who actually possess these virtues that JVP only feigns.

This contradictory behavior plays out particularly clearly when you look at the challenges JVP (and similar organizations) face in trying to portray themselves as open (and even starved) for dialog, while simultaneously doing everything in their power to ensure “dialog” only consists of them saying what they want (from any forum they demand) without challenge.

For example, a few months back JVP’s “Youth Wing” rolled out their Go and Learn campaign and proudly announced they would welcome any and all (including critics) who wanted to talk about their beloved BDS project.  Now as one of those opponents they claim to crave debate with, I swiftly provided them an invitation to begin this dialog immediately.  And to my surprise, they published my comment on their site (although the ability to submit further comments somehow disappeared in the process).

Well here we are months later and despite follow-up e-mails I’ve sent the group, all that’s happened is that my original comment has been disappeared from their site, continuing JVP’s unbroken track record of greedily controlling their own public spaces at all cost while simultaneously shrieking to Gaia whenever anyone else refuses to hand their platforms (and money) over to them.

Later this year, I’m hoping to focus on some of the rhetorical and argumentation techniques necessary to present this type of unquestionable hypocrisy as moral virtue.  But before we get there, it needs to be pointed out that the first victims of the flimflam JVP and other BDSers spend so much time selling are the boycotters themselves.

It would be easy to dismiss their behavior as simply cynical and manipulative.  But no amount of cynicism could possibly explain this latest release on the JVP hit parade: their own version of the Passover Hagaddah, complete with “The Israelis are the new Egyptian Pharos!” words and imagery, delivered with the same subtlety as having a cinder block dropped on your head.

One is first tempted to simply stare dumbfounded at the combination of historic ignorance and cultural contempt required to cast the Jews as the villains in their own foundation story.  Even in an era when Passover readings and rituals have been leveraged for every imaginable political purpose (featuring Hagaddah’s written specifically for those of the woman’s rights, civil rights, Zionist and transgender perspectives), JVP’s foray into this long-abused genre sets a new precedent for utter tastelessness and self indulgence.  It is truly a work that could only have been contemplated (much less executed) by those whose universe consists of nothing but themselves.

But fear not readers.  For even a bit of sober psychologizing has not prevented me from sicing the Divest This dumpster-diving crew on the task of unearthing material that might help us better grasp JVP’s latest groundbreaking work.

Stay tuned…