Seattle Rabbi Promotes Boycott of Israeli Products
Rabbi David Basior: Photo Credit Durst Breneiser Photography – via Facebook
With his ready smile and gentle demeanor Rabbi David Basior’s disarming persona has earned him a loyal following as spiritual leader of the Kadima Reconstructionist Community of Seattle, WA.
This past Shavuot the congregation based in the Madrona neighborhood of Seattle hosted an all night learning session, an ancient tradition commemorating the giving of the Torah on Sinai. Ensconced within the jam packed program of Klezmer, astronomy and baking was a session titled “Go & Learn: Jews Study & Discuss Boycott“. The class as described in Kadima’s promotional materials promised to “study the Palestinian call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS), and discuss our role as progressive Jews in the BDS movement.” The BDS study session was led by local leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that has earned it’s place on ADL’s list of the top ten anti-Israel organizations.
Rabbi Basior signed on to a petition which asserted that the BDS movement is “consistent with Jewish values”.
The affiliation with groups that promote BDS, a movement defined by Seattle Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, is not at all unusual for Basior, himself a longtime member of the Jewish Voice for Peace “Rabbinical Council”. Basior has repeatedly signed on to anti-Israel boycott efforts going as far back as 2012 with a petition supporting the BDS movement and another urging the Presbyterian church to divest from Israeli companies; doing the same again in 2014. In February of 2012 Basior lent his name to an open letter goading the United Methodist Church to divest from Israeli companies, referencing what the letter writers called “the oppression of Palestinian Christians under Israeli occupation”.
Rabbi Basior promoting”resistance” against Israel and against a Jewish presence in the city that is home to the burial place of the Jewish forefathers and mothers.
In his zeal, Basior has no compunction about placing his name alongside anti-Zionist and blatantly anti-Semitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. He has even joined together with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in calling for a boycott of Israeli beauty products. According to NGO Monitor, there are ISM members with ties to terror groups.
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Representatives from the United Methodist Church will gather in Tampa, FL, to participate in a historic vote on whether to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation. I hope you and everyone you know will join me now in asking them to vote yes on divestment. –Open letter from Rabbi David Basior
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In April of this year Basior joined dozens of anti-Israel activists in opposing a speaking engagement at the University of Washington by Kenneth Marcus, a leading expert on anti-Semitism. In 2015 Basior became a member of the Open Hillel Rabbinical Council. Open Hillel is a group devoted to introducing anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist programming into the hundreds strong chain of college based Hillel Houses.
Rabbi Basior soliciting assistance in running a BDS program in Israel- via Facebook.
Basior has most recently expanded his outreach to the Jewish community of South Seattle, holding several events at The Collaboratory, a rented hall on Rainier Avenue S, just a stone’s throw away from some of Seattle’s oldest congregations.
Displaying a Torah at a Kadima event at the South Seattle Collaboratory. Photo Credit: Kadima Reconstructionist Community via Facebook
While one might think that his controversial activism would earn Basior pariah status in the organized Jewish community, this has not been the case. In November of 2015 Basior was invited to join prominent local Rabbis and community leaders as a lecturer at Congregation Herzl-Ner Tamid’s Torahthon, the Seattle area’s premiere communal Torah learning event. At his session titled “The Sacred Art of Tochecha”, Basior promised to “delve into interpersonal human communication on tense issues we find hard to talk about”. One issue Basior has no trouble talking about is his desire to single out and sanction the one Jewish state.
Update: Despite Rabbi Basior’s support of boycott against the Jewish state and promotion of anti-Israel movements like BDS; Herzl Ner-Tamid Congregation on Mercer Island has again invited Basior to be part of their “distinguished faculty” at Torahthon on December 10, 2016.
BDS and Rabbi in the same sentence is an oxymoron. It is a terrible error to call this person a Rabbi.
There are many people with psychological problems who hate themselves desperately. Issues from the parenting they received, or their own vile self-image. Some turn against their own people in order to express their self-hatred.
When they had the discussion on the origins of BDS, did they include mention of the Durban conference, which was openly anti-semitic and publicly displayed images of hook-nosed Jews and other such stereotypes? Did they discuss how BDS publicly declares that its goal is to dismantle the state of Israel and to turn the entire region into a single Arab state?
Many people forget that many American Jews and most of their representative organisations were not in favour of the creation of the State of Israel. In particular, the Reform Movement, (which is now uncompromisingly Zionistic), and the Reconstructionist Movement, were based on an idea that the Messianic vision was realised in America (and 19th Century Germany), where Jews had full rights as citizens and could be “lights unto the nations” from within. Calling the Synagogue “Temple” was a statement that our “temple” is wherever we are, and not necessarily in Jerusalem. So, the fact that many in the Reconstructionist Movement have not changed their views should not surprise us. Mordecai Kaplan himself was Zionist. However, his movement was all about redefining Judaism in a context that was quite particularly American. And you can’t ask rational people to have dual loyalty. Love of Israel is connected with faith, with belief that whatever is wrong will ultimately be made right. Not everyone has that sort of faith. So, I am not in the least shocked. From Jerusalem with love.
We have to pray for him to do Tshuva and wake up his lost soul and come home to his people NOW!
We have to pray for his lost soul and that Hashem will wake him up before it is too late !!!!!!
This is horrendous! Who hires this type of person as a Rabbi?
Elisa
I think believing and telling the truth are Torah-based concepts. How sad that this “rabbi” has so little regard for the God-given truth of Torah. I did something in my personal life today to combat BDS, and lend support for the farmers, families, businesses, the very land of Judea and Samaria. We can all do something. We can all pray, and then act.
ANOTHER SELF HATING JEW. OUR GREATEST ENEMY HAS ALWAYS BEEN FROM WITHIN
Sadly, what read as an open minded commentary on on the Palestinian situation, ended with the usual distortion of reality.
and what distortion would that be?
“Rabbi” Basior is in Seattle, why one may ask. Is it that this man can not live up to being a Rabbi among qualifies Rabbis? History does point to “Rabbis,” who are not really Rabbis, much like Jews who are not Jews. To be either one must accept the burdens, and they are many, and not just claim the image when convenient
Speaking of “Palestine,” the yet to exist nation, or non existing “occupied” territories, or the totally unjust BDS is escaping one Judaism for lack of ability to defend and support Judaism.
And what a disrespect for the Sefer Torah to unroll it and hold it that way. Rabbi is a teacher of Jewish values. This guy is the opposite.
When their terrorist friends will have enough of these useful idiotic schmucks and go after them, they will all flee to Israel on their knees for protection.
so sad that some Jews think the only way to extinguish anti-semitism is to “fix” something in their fellow Jews. Its not them, they reason, they are the good Jews. Its those Jews over there…
We Jews in many cases have our selves to blame for the boycott movements and similar spurious activities.
the Talmud teaches us, a painful truth, some of our greatest enemies come from within, many even masquerading as spiritual leaders, the case spoken about in the attached article is such a clear example of painful to observe “Jewish self loathing”.
The anti Israel lobby is acutely aware that many among us have a slightly ambivalent attitude towards Israel and how it relates to the world in general and the Arab world in particular.
We Jews have eternal ownership of the Land of Israel, it was given to us by G-d.
The United Nations vote of 1948, did not give us our Land, no man or woman can cede Eretz Yisrael to any Gentile Nation.The vote reaffirmed an existing truth.
Palestine if anything describes Jews who lived in the Land over the generations, there was never an Arab Sovereign entity in the region, because there was never a Palestinian people,its purely a latter day response to the reemergence of Jewish sovereignty in our eternal home.
All this said, we as Jews have a Torah directed moral imperative to guarantee and promote equality of opportunity and responsibility for ever citizen of Israel, there can be no discrimination based on race religion or creed.
Bless you for that well written, thoughtful comment. And I will memorize the exact wording of your answer to the fools pushing the BDS agenda. It is based on a pyramid of untruths, flat out lies, and outright theft of our history in the lands of Israel.
You disgust me.
Exactly who disgusts you?
Just as I thought not a real rabbi but a Reconstuctionist clergyman!!!
The only way to knock out the BDS movement waged against the Jewish State of Israel, is to remove the oppositions most repetitive strategic false narrative word used over and over again on a daily basis; “Occupation”, “Occupation”, “Occupation”. This will require the strength and courage of the Jewish State of Israel to once and for all legally Annex Judea and Samaria, by exercising their L.E.G.I.T. and rightful ownership of land that was designated by the winning allies of WWI for the “Creation of a Homeland for the Jewish People”, resulting in 51 League of Nations member States signing the San Remo Resolution on April 25, 1920. The Jewish State of Israel holds “LEGAL SOVEREIGN TITLE” to all of Mandated Palestine, according to the “CURRENT” United Nations Security Council, based on International Law rooted in Treaties and Customs established by the Nations of the world and the Jewish State of Israel! Am Yisrael Chai! ! !
kol hakavod