BDS Boston's Mapping Project Puts Jews on a Target List
What is the Mapping Project?
The Mapping Project is a local BDS campaign targeting Jewish and pro-Israel institutions in Massachusetts. It was launched in June 2022 by BDS Boston. The campaign’s website says that its goal is to reveal “the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them.”
The website centers around an interactive map that plots the names and addresses of the majority of Boston’s Jewish-affiliated institutions, including staff and board members, and draws connections to other local governments, police departments, universities and corporations, included for their ties to Israel.
The website enables the user to explore 13 types of “harms” done by these entities, with “Zionism,” listed as the first among the “harms” and defined as a “form of white supremacy.”
The Mapping Project names approximately 500 organizations. Among this number are the Jewish communal groups who are identified as “Boston's Zionist NGO circuit” and accuses them of not only of “supporting the colonization of Palestine” but also “violence worldwide.”
Exclusive Blog: The Mapping Project — A Target List
The Mapping Project proves that the BDS movement is pure anti-Semitism. It puts every Jew on a target list, Zionist or not.
The Mapping Project is not shy about its intentions, which they clearly state:
“Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.”
The project calls out Jewish leaders by name. This effectively makes it – for any anti-Israel group or just plain madman – a virtual anti-Semitic hit list.
The Mapping Project’s online, interactive map (target list) includes 483 institutions, organizations, charities and the like. Next, it ties them to 1,366 "objectionable" entities or activities.
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BDS Boston
Who is BDS Boston?
BDS Boston is an anti-Israel group "devoted to building the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in the greater Boston area.” The group was formerly known as Massachusetts Against Hewlett-Packard (Mass-Against-HP or MAHP), but in May of 2019, they announced they were “transforming into BDS Boston.”
According to their Principles of Unity, BDS Boston:
Supports resistance “through whatever actions they deem to be necessary,” [a euphemism for terrorism]
Opposes any dialogue with Israel
Calls for the release of convicted terrorists from prisons
Labels Zionism as “white supremacy”
BDS Boston is most recently known for launching the Mapping Project, a controversial and antisemitic campaign that received national attention for targeting Jewish and Zionist institutions in the greater Boston area.
BDS Boston Activists
What Makes the Mapping Project so Dangerous?
The Mapping Project singles out the Jewish community in Boston. In a time where violent attacks on Jews are on the rise across North America, this map can easily be turned into a list of Jewish targets for dangerous antisemites looking to harm Jews.
The website’s map targets Zionist and Jewish philanthropies, day schools and youth groups, media outlets, cultural centers, disability service organizations and synagogue networks.
The map also includes Boston’s liberal Jewish groups explicitly opposed to Israel’s political agenda, such as J Street and the New Israel Fund (NIF).
This project calls for the “disruption" of Boston’s Jewish Community. It is meant to intimidate and put a target on the back of those institutions and individuals on the list. How else can the following words be interpreted:
“Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted"
“We have shown physical addresses, named officers and leaders, and mapped connections. These entities exist in the physical world and can be disrupted in the physical world. We hope people will use our map to help figure out how to push back effectively.”
The Mapping Project is issuing a threat to every Jewish institution and individual on its list. Further, by using the vague phrase “push back effectively,” it encourages dangerous individuals to use this information to commit acts of violence against the Jewish community.
Jewish Mapping Attracts and Encourages Violent Individuals
The mapping of Jewish individuals and institutions predates Boston BDS’ Mapping Project. This BDS intimidation technique emerged in April 2021 from the radical anti-Israel, pro-BDS organization Within Our Lifetime (WOL).
The NY-based organization formed a coalition with several other organizations to harass Jewish institutions in New York City. One of these organizations is Decolonize This Place, an anarchist group responsible for $100,000 of damage done to the city during their protests.
These groups identified multiple companies that do business with Israel, pro-Israel charities and pro-Israel philanthropists located in New York City. These businesses, groups and individuals then become the physical target of WOL’s unrelenting violent protests aimed to hound and shame them into divesting from Israel.
Nerdeen Kiswani - Founder of Within Our Lifetime
“We marched today, we took over the streets and we visited multiple Zionist settler foundations. Multiple. We let them know we know where they’re at. We know where they work. We’re gonna find out more about where they’re at too. And we’re gonna go after them.”
June 11, 2021, WOL and Strike MoMA Protest
Amin Husain - Founder of Decolonize This Place
“We want everyone to be resisting and to be insurgent and so the places of contact, just by our presence, could be that form of militancy and insurgency that provides for difference and possibility right now.”
April 22, 2022, Strike MoMA Zoom Session
WOL's protests have led to several violent assaults from its attendees. Read More...
How is the Mapping Project Antisemitic?
The Mapping Project is based on age-old antisemitic tropes including Jewish wealth, power and control; blaming the Jewish community for the world's problems and targeting Jewish leaders, institutions and synagogues for their support of Israel.
Wealthy Jews Control the World
Jews have been accused of controlling the world economy for centuries. This trope dates back to the Middle Ages when the only profession Jew were allowed to have involved money lending.
From the Mapping Project:
“We can directly tie the non-profit industrial complex to the colonization of Palestine, demonstrating that the united states tax code facilitates the laundering of wealth from the richest people in the united states to organizations supporting zionism and the genocide in Palestine"
"The staggering amount of money funneled from private united states citizens to facilitate the occupation of Palestine should be a wake-up call, and a reminder that non-profits are complicit in the very worst crimes imaginable.”
"Charitable giving is a way for rich people to amass money—power—and then grant it as they see fit personally, enriching their allies, and bypassing much-needed resource redistribution. The concentration of wealth in New England demonstrates the importance of combatting zionism locally."
Blaming Jews for the World’s Problems
For centuries, antisemites have used Jews as scapegoats. Jews were blamed for disease, wars, political strife and financial crises. The Mapping Project is the latest iteration of this trope. The project singles out Jews all of society’s harms: “policing, US imperialism, and displacement/ethnic cleansing.”
The Deadly Exchange - The anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace made up a blood libel against Israel which they called the “Deadly Exchange.” They blamed the Israeli military for police violence in the United States, claiming that the Israelis taught American police “militarized policing” and “racist policies.”
From the Mapping Project:
“Local police departments - from Boston police to a variety of university police forces - are also trained by the zionist entity in methods of counterinsurgency and criminalization. The tools and justifications for detaining Palestinians end up being used on this continent, while local police forces share their methods of criminalization with the zionist state.
“We recognize that the entities that constitute the infrastructure of zionist policing, prisons, and repression are the same ones that support carceral systems here on this continent.”
Anti-Jewish Boycott
Antisemites have waged boycotts against Jews for centuries, pushing Jewish people to the margins of society and excluding them from social, economic and political life. The BDS Movement against Israel is a modern day anti-Jewish boycott.
BDS Boston takes boycotts against Jews to the next level. It advocates not only for boycotts of the entire Jewish community but also of all those who interact with it.
The Mapping Project Supports Terror
The anti-Israel movement has moved away from any calls for peaceful dialogue. It has been replaced by the concept of “Resistance By Any Means Necessary.”
The Mapping Project is no different. They openly support terrorism and terrorists (which they euphemistically call “political prisoners). In October 2022, they showed open support for the "Lions' Den" terror group.
From the Mapping Project:
“The Mapping Project stands with the heroic Palestinian resistance and supports the ongoing demand to free all Palestinian political prisoners. Let's make our support for Palestinian political prisoners and those oppressed by carceral systems here more than just symbolic. Let's organize ourselves to disrupt the actual work of these oppressor institutions, wherever they are.
Glory to the martyrs!
Free Palestine from the River to the Sea!
Free All Political Prisoners!”
'Shut Down JNF' Initiative - Nov. 5, 2022
On Nov. 5, 2022, the Mapping Project BDS Boston, led a protest calling for the shutdown of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) outside the JNF’s 2022 National Conference at the Omni Hotel in Boston. The Mapping Project claims that the JNF is "Fundraising for Colonization while Indoctrinating Youth."
Demonstrators chanted for a new intifada (violent uprising). Posters at the protest promoted the “Lion’s Den,” a new, deadly Palestinian terrorist group in Nablus, and also lauded Uday al-Tamimi. Tamimi recently killed Noa Lazar, an 18-year-old female Israel soldier, and shot a civilian security guard in the head. He was killed by Israeli security forces while committing another terrorist attack.
Anti-Israel groups from the area attended this protest, including several local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters, Palestinian Youth Movement, and the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Wellesley News Editorial Board
On September 28, 2022, The Wellesley News editorial board endorsed the Mapping Project, writing, “We believe that the Mapping Project is providing a vital service.”
The editorial board continued, “Collecting data about these institutions, tracing their financial and political activity and publicizing this information is incredibly important.”
In the same editorial, the board also threw its support behind the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and the Wellesley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Both organizations have been denounced as virulently anti-Semitic. Both call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
In addition, the board also demanded that Wellesley’s administration “immediately withdraw any investments in entities based in Israel or those that support the apartheid regime.”
Wellesley President Paula A. Johnson condemned the editorial, specifically singling out the endorsement of the Mapping Project.
“Claiming that Jewish people and organizations are responsible for a host of societal harms and calling for action against them is, by definition, anti-Semitism,” Johnson stated in a letter to the Wellesley community.
Johnson further said the project “poses a significant threat to the physical security of the Jewish community of Greater Boston, including neighbors and partners of the College.”
After significant backlash in the press, The Wellesley News editorial board issued a partial retraction of their support for the Mapping Project, saying,
“We intended to use the Mapping Project only as a source of information about Wellesley College and its affiliated institutions. We apologize for not clarifying the nuanced nature of the Project’s inclusion, and we recognize that the impact of our citation may have differed from its purpose. We did not and do not endorse The Mapping Project.”
In the same statement, the board ironically doubled down on its endorsement of the BDS movement and Wellesley Students for Justice in Palestine while condemning anti-Semitism, “including the use of The Mapping Project for antisemitic rhetoric and actions.”
The Following Are Members of The Wellesley News Editorial Board:
