The Middle East Media Sampler 5/3/2012: Another BDS Defeat, But...

From DG:

1) Methodists don't divest

It seeemed like a positive headline, Methodists Vote Against Ending Investments Tied to Israel. Unfortunately, the reporting was less than encouraging.

In Tampa, many delegates took to the floor to testify that they had traveled to the Holy Land and met with Palestinian Christians who were suffering and increasingly desperate for an end to the occupation. But in the end, they listened to some Jewish leaders and fellow Methodists who warned that divestment was a one-sided strategy that penalized only Israel.

Pascal Binczak On BDS Rhetoric Of Hate Parading As Freedom Of Speech

They say no they're not really talking about rights. They're talking about they want to destroy Israel.
Norman Finkelstein on BDS movement (video)

The BDS movement suffered another setback, this time in France, when Pascal Binczak, president of L'université Paris-VIII cancelled a scheduled BDS symposium operating under the title "New sociological, historical and legal approaches to call for an international boycott of Israel, an apartheid state" It had originally been approved for February 27 and 28--but after having allowed it, Binczak reversed his decision and chose the cancel.

In explaining his decision, here is some of what Pascal Binczak wrote, translated from the French with Google Translate, where he decries the rhetorical distortions of the BDS movement parading as a defense of free speech: