Airbnb blacklists Jewish apartments in Judea and Samaria – not Palestinian apartments, not apartments in Turkish occupied Cyprus, in Moroccan occupied Sahara, not in Tibet or the Crimea. Airbnb’s policy is the very definition of anti-Semitism. No one should use its services.
— Michael Oren (@DrMichaelOren) November 19, 2018
The popular vacation accommodation website Airbnb has banned Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, from listing their homes for rent.
Airbnb said in a statement it “concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, called Airbnb’s policy anti-Semitic.
“Airbnb blacklists Jewish apartments in Judea and Samaria – not Palestinian apartments, not apartments in Turkish occupied Cyprus, in Moroccan occupied Sahara, not in Tibet or the Crimea,” Oren tweeted.
“Airbnb’s policy is the very definition of anti-Semitism. No one should use its services.”
New York Post columnist David Harsanyi was in agreement, writing that Airbnb “has singled out Jews, and only Jews, as the one group in the world that is worthy of such censure.”
“That’s what makes its boycott a naked act of corporate anti-Semitism,” he wrote.
He cited an Airbnb blog post, which he said “sounds like it was written by some poli-sci freshman who just wrapped up his first Chomsky tome,” referring to the influential far-left professor Noam Chomsky.
Airbnb said: “Many in the global community have stated that companies should not do business here because they believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced.”
Harsanyi responded that the “global community” is “a euphemism for a conglomerate of theocrats and authoritarians, who use the Middle East’s sole democratic state as a distraction to deflect from their own transgressions.”
The bottom line, he said, is that Airbnb “wants a Judenfrei,” or “Jew free,” West Bank.
“In no other region in the world, and with no other conflict and no other ethnicity, race or faith, would Americans openly accept this kind of prejudice,” he said.
Harsanyi said Airbnb probably is not aware that Jews were forced out of the West Bank when seven Arab armies and other paramilitary groups attacked in 1948. And hundreds of thousands of Jews were displaced from Muslim nations in the years that followed Israel’s creation.
“Many of those nations continue to oppress and displace indigenous Christians, and Airbnb continues to do business with them,” he wrote.
After Arab nations in 1967 once again tried to destroy the Jewish state, Israel retook the West Bank from Jordan.
“Since that day, Israel has countless times offered autonomy and nationhood to the people living in vast swaths of that land in exchange for peace,” he said.
“The only reason Jews live in self-contained communities in the West Bank is because Palestinian authorities do nothing to stop the violence aimed at civilians. Actually, Palestinian authorities often spur the violence, not only threatening anyone who sells real estate to Jews but rewarding the families of their murderers with cash.”
The West Bank consists of three administrative divisions governed to varying degrees by the Palestinian Authority and Israel until a final status agreement is reached.
