Sharona Schwartz at The Blaze reported comedian and actress Roseanne Barr turned on her friends on the Left as a keynote speaker at a Jerusalem conference discussing the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on Monday. She began by noting she mocked racism, sexism, and classism like a "good socialist, like my father." But Israel is another matter:
“Everything I’d ever believed about the left was severely shaken, and the scales began to fall from my eyes in many ways.”
“I had to admit that many of those I considered comrades were naked bigots who had absolutely no interest in peace between Israel and Palestinians Arabs at all as I did,” said Barr, who has become an outspoken advocate of Israel on social media.
“It was shocking to realize that what I considered criticism of Israel many, many times gave way to the garden variety anti-Semitism that I’d heard all of my life, which is basically the code-word ‘Rothschild’” Barr said, referring to the well-known banking family of Jewish origin often used in anti-Semitic memes.
The Times of Israel offered more coverage:
During her speech, Barr said she’s been privy to anti-Semitic comments and opinions for most of her life.
“People didn’t know I was Jewish because I’m not the American stereotype,” said Barr, who played herself on Roseanne, a television sitcom about a working-class American family that was broadcast for nine years starting in the late 1980s. “I was privy to hearing things that people say about Jews that they wouldn’t say if they knew I was Jewish.”
She didn’t want to say Israel was perfect:
“I’m not here to defend the indefensible,” said Barr. “Israel has many thing that need correction, like many other states. I pray that all that’s wrong is being corrected now....”
“We Jews can be rude, commanding and somewhat more intransigent than others at times,” she said. “And yet Jews don’t care what religions other people are, and would never deny others the right to worship.”
With that thought, Barr led into the BDS portion of her speech, calling the movement fascist, and linking it to the Spanish inquisition, Nazis and Hamas.
“Make no mistake,” she stated. “BDS activists are paid directly or indirectly by Judenrein Arab states.
“Pharaohs and fuehrers never leave the Jewish people for very long,” she continued. “BDS doesn’t want peace, doesn’t want peace negotiations. It uses occupation as a code word.”
She mentioned the theater of social media and college campus “BDS factories” as places that “work hard to silence” non-BDS voices, rather than “lead to civil communication, which could work.”
