On September 19, 2022 Arutz 7reported "The popular travel application, Booking, will soon begin marking almost all Jewish-owned accommodations in Judea and Samaria under a travel warning, Channel 13 News reported. The application will warn users who plan to go to tourism businesses in Judea and Samaria that "a visit to the area may be accompanied by an increased risk to safety and human rights or other risks to the local community and guests."
Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that "Booking should be ashamed of its ignorance and hypocrisy. Judea and Samaria is the heart of our homeland, the heart of all of us, and you [the residents of Judea and Samaria] are in my heart, you are the activists who fight against this abysmal hypocrisy, kudos to you."
Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov was quick to condemn the decision and said that "a business company will not determine for us what is the territory of Israel and what is not. I will convene the management of the Ministry of Tourism urgently to determine steps to deal with the decision."
In 1949, China invaded Tibet without cause and initiated a massive transfer of Chinese civilians into Tibet. In his 5-point peace plan the Dalai Lama stated:
“When the newly formed People's Republic of China invaded Tibet in 1949/50, it created a new source of conflict. This was highlighted when, following the Tibetan national uprising against the Chinese and my flight to India in 1959, tensions between China and India escalated into the border war in 1962. Today large numbers of troops are again massed on both sides of the Himalayan border and tension is once more dangerously high.
"The real issue, of course, is not the Indo-Tibetan border demarcation. It is China's illegal occupation of Tibet, which has given it direct access to the Indian sub-continent. The Chinese authorities have attempted to confuse the issue by claiming that Tibet has always been a part of China. This is untrue. Tibet was a fully independent state when the People's Liberation Army invaded the country in 1949/50...
"To improve relations between the Tibetan people and the Chinese, the first requirement is the creation of trust. After the holocaust of the last decades in which over one million Tibetans - one sixth of the population - lost their lives and at least as many lingered in prison camps because of their religious beliefs and love of freedom, only a withdrawal of Chinese troops could start a genuine process of reconcilitation...
"The massive transfer of Chinese civilians into Tibet in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) threatens the very existence of the Tibetans as a distinct people.”
"Today, in the whole of Tibet 7.5 million Chinese settlers have already been sent, outnumbering the Tibetan population of 6 million. In central and western Tibet, now referred to by the Chinese as the “Tibet Autonomous Region,”
"Chinese sources admit the 1.9 million Tibetans already constitute a minority of the region’s population. These numbers do not take the estimated 300,000-500,000 troops in Tibet into account – 250,000 of them in so-called Tibet Autonomous Region...
"Human rights violations in Tibet are among the most serious in the world. Discrimination is practiced in Tibet under a policy of "apartheid" which the Chinese call "segregation and assimilation". Tibetans are, at best, second class citizens in their own country. Deprived of all basic democratic rights and freedoms, they exist under a colonial administration in which all real power is wielded by Chinese officials of the Communist Party and the army.
"Although the Chinese government allows Tibetans to rebuild some Buddhist monasteries and to worship in them, it still forbids serious study and teaching of religion...
"While Tibetans in exile exercise their democratic rights under a constitution promulgated by me in 1963, thousands of our countrymen suffer in prisons and labour camps in Tibet for their religious or political convictions... ”
In contrast, BDS activists who capaign against Israel are misguided because Jews are native Judeans, not "colonizers" or "occupiers".
The majority of Eastern Jerusalem's population was Jewish until 1948 when the Jordanian Arab Legion expelled all the Jews and destroyed all the synagogues in the Old City. In 1967 Jews returned to their ancient homeland.
When one hears about BDS campaigns against Israel one may have the impression that Israel stands alone against the world, but Israel is not alone. Besides many Hindus, Christians and Buddhists there are many groups that have been banned from their homelands or are minorities with no political power that support Israel. Native American, Yazidi, Tibetan groups stand with Israel.
In an interview for the Times of Israel Indigenous activist Ryan Bellerose from Alberta said "I feel compelled to fight the idea that Israel is a colonialist state, that the Jews are colonizers from Europe and the entire invalid and false Arab narrative that has been spread since the 1960s. This ridiculous inversion of history has been accepted because nobody really stands up and fights it. And I believe coming from an Indian from Canada, who has lived through actual apartheid (two laws, one state for two peoples), I have a unique perspective. I have lived through colonization, and Israel is not even remotely colonialist."
"I also do not like people who tell lies to Indians or who use our naivete and ignorance of the world to weaponize us. You are Jews from Judea. Your entire history is in the earth you walk on. Some of you were displaced and you fought for 2,000 years to return to the land of your forefathers. You do not need to be apologetic for doing something that is the goal of every indigenous people. You need to be celebratory. You need to be proud..."
"Israel needs to be more assertive about its ancestral lands, it cannot be ambiguous and the people as well as the government need to understand that it’s not about your “religion or spirituality.” It’s about your very identity. Your connection to your ancestral lands is not only spiritual but physical. Israel itself needs to take a larger role in stopping lies and false assertions because they really do cause issues. I believe that you need to become better at telling your story, which really is an amazing story. I think that once Jewish people start seeing themselves through a Jewish and not European lens, once they understand themselves as indigenous people, they will be stronger in their identity and will become what they are meant to be, which is a light unto the nations."
"...You are a great example to my people and to all indigenous people of what indigenous peoples are capable of. You were a damaged fractured people who had the entire world against you, yet you not only regained your ancestral lands, you rebuilt them and you built a thriving powerful nation without losing touch with your ancestral roots. Tell me that’s not a powerful story and example."
Not only Native American groups stand with Israel against the false Palestinian Arab narrative, Hindu, Yazidi and Tibetan groups also stand with Israel.
PM Netanyahu was warmly received in his trip to India earlier this month. Ashutosh Singh, an Indian with a Doctor of Philosophy degree wrote in quora.com "I am a fan of Jews and the State of Israel".
Ezidi.fr is a website that represents the Yazidi community exiled in France. On December 24, 2017 Mr Pir Melek from Ezidi.fr wrote in an email he sent me:
"...the Jewish people supported us. and we support the Jewish people. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel."
"...the Sinjar region belongs to the Yezidi people and today we are a minority there. it became a territory of conflict between Kurds and Arab while it was our country yezdikhan (ezdixane)."
Like the Yazidi, the Tibetans also support Israel. On August 31, 2017 Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada wrote "I stand up for Natural Rights of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria; and I stand up for Natural Rights of Tibetans to their ancestral Homeland. I support His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Five-Point Peace Plan to stop Communist China’s Colonization of Tibet."
"WholeDude.com serves as the official page of Special Frontier Force, a military alliance between the US, India, and Tibet to resist Red China’s Expansionist Policy. Special Frontier Force is funded by United States and it promotes Democracy, Freedom, and Peace in Occupied Tibet...Whole Dude is a phrase that refers to Whole Man in all aspects of one’s being, including physical, mental, social, moral, and spiritual... "
Not only in Tibet have Buddhists been persecutted. Buddhists have also been persecuted by the Muslims. On October 29, 2017 Akhilesh Pillalamarri wrote in the Diplomat "there is an unusually high level of tension between Buddhists and Muslims in regions where the two groups share space, including Rakhine state in Myanmar, southern Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Ladakh, the eastern part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
At the root of this tension is the fear among Buddhists — not completely exaggerated — that Muslims will swamp them demographically. Many Buddhists also fear that their countries will lose their culture and become Muslim, as had been the case in many parts of modern day Central Asia, Xinjiang, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, which were majority Buddhist before the arrival of Islam in the 7th-11th centuries. Often, the arrival of Islam went hand-in-hand with the destruction of Buddhism.
The Muslim persecution of Budhist started in the 12th century when Muslim invaders destroyed Budhism in India. In 1193 the Budhist Nalanda University in India was destroyed by Muslim invaders "Nālandā (Hindi/Sanskrit/Pali: नालंदा) is the name of an ancient center of higher learning inBihar, India. The site of Nalanda is located in the Indian stateof Bihar, about 55 miles south east of Patna, and was a Buddhist center of learning from 427 to 1197 CE. It has been called “one of the first great universities in recorded history...Nalanda University was one of the first universities in the world, founded in the 5th Century BC, and reported to have been visited by the Buddha during his lifetime. At its peak, in the 7th century AD, Nalanda held some 10,000 students and 2000 teachers when it was visited by the Chinese scholar Xuanzang...The library of Nalanda, known as Dharma Gunj (Mountain of Truth) or Dharmagañja(Treasury of Truth), was the most renowned repository of Buddhist knowledge in the world at the time. Its collection was said to comprise hundreds of thousands of volumes, so extensive that it burned for months when set aflame by Muslim invaders..."
On March 12, 2001 the Telegraph reported "The world's two largest standing Buddhas - one of them 165ft high - were blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan at the weekend.
After failing to destroy the 1,700-year-old sandstone statues of Buddha with anti-aircraft and tank fire, the Taliban brought a lorryload of dynamite from Kabul. A Western observer said: "They drilled holes into the torsos of the two statues and then placed dynamite charges inside the holes to blow them up."
The operation to wreck the statues carved into a cliff in the Bamiyan Valley in the Hindu Kush mountains of central Afghanistan was supervised by Mullah Obaidullah, the Taliban defense minister...
Jews, Christians and Hindus also suffered Islamic invasions and had their holy sites destroyed or converted into Mosques.
Instead of demonizing and endangering the only Jewish State BDS proponents like Booking should learn history and realize that Jews, like the Yazidi and the Tibetans should be protected from Arab persecution.
Jews have been persecuted and expelled from most Middle East Countries and they managed to find refuge in Israel, a country smaller than New Jersey. Jimena.org reported that since 1948, 850,000 Jews have been expelled from Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lybia, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia,Yemen and other Middle East Countries. Israel is the only safe haven for Jewish refugees in the Middle-East.
The Palestinian Arabs already have a State in Jordan. Palestine and Jordan are one…” said King Abdullah in 1948.
“The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,”said King Hussein of Jordan, in 1981.
Jordan was created with land from British Mandate Palestine, 78% of the Jordanian population is Palestinian Arab.
The Queen of Jordan is Palestinian, Jordan's next King will be the son of a Palestinian.
Booking, do your homework!
Ezequiel Doiny is author of "Obama's assault on Jerusalem's Temple Mount"