Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The head of Israel’s Yesh Atid party declared on Sunday that the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“The BDS movement is actually a puppet in a theater operated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” said Yair Lapid at the annual Jerusalem Post conference in New York.

Lapid questioned the motives of those behind Israel boycotts, and said, “We should go to the Europeans, we should go to American campuses and ask them ‘do you understand that you are not supporting the liberation of the oppressed, but are cheering for the people and values that brought 9/11 to this country. You are supporting people that kill gays and suppress women.’”

BDS organizers “cynically use bleeding-heart, so-called intellectuals, in order to promote the darkest version of Islam. They use well-intentioned liberals, who have no idea who they really serve, as camouflage for their campaign of death and destruction,” he said.

“This movement has nothing to do with the peace process, or Israel’s behavior in Gaza. These are just their excuses for racism, for their hatred of Jews,” said Lapid.

His comments came amid a recent controversy over cellphone giant Orange’s decision to end its contract with Israeli Partner Communications, apparently because it was bad business for the French multinational’s Arab interests.

Israeli Infrastructure, Energy and Water Minister Yuval Steinitz also touched on BDS efforts and devoted much of his concluding statements to censuring the dean of a university in Brazil for circulating a memorandum asking for a list of Israeli lecturers and students at the University of Santa Maria in Rio Grande do Sul.

Steinitz compared the situation to Nazi Germany in the run-up to World War II and the Holocaust, and wearing the yellow Jude star.