Activists are using images and text on Twitter to equate the Baltimore riots with the Palestinian cause. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Anti-Israel activists promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are hijacking the ongoing Baltimore riots in the latest attempt to connect such protests with the Palestinian cause, the blog Legal Insurrection reports.

For example, pro-Hamas activist Max Blumenthal posted on Twitter, “I hope Baltimore PD doesn’t use he brutal fighting style it adopted from the Israeli army on #FreddieGray protestors.”

Blumenthal claimed in a separate tweet that “a sound device used to disperse crowds in Baltimore, LRAD, was ‘tested on Palestinians.'” Legal Insurrection explains that Blumenthal’s source for this tweet is one of his own articles, in which he had acknowledged that LRAD is made in the U.S.

“This is the same propaganda tactic used in Ferguson, where the fact that Ferguson and Israeli police used the same brand of American-made tear gas was used to try to blame Israel for Ferguson police actions,”Legal Insurrection wrote.

Another activist, Rania Khalek, tweeted that “like most US police depts, Baltimore police received training in Israel,” alleging that police brutality in Baltimore can be blamed on Israel because some Baltimore police officers had attended an anti-terrorism seminar in Israel.

Many other activists directly equated images of the Baltimore riots with images of rioting Palestinians. “It’s about inequity. #Palestine #Baltimore,” one activist tweeted.

These anti-Israel tweets fall in line with a trend in other such cases of outbreaks of riots around the U.S., including during the Ferguson riots.

In particular, the #blacklivesmatter movement has been used many times to highlight the Palestinian issue. Activists like Students for Justice in Palestine member Kristian Davis Bailey are openly advocating for the equation of mainstreaming the BDS movement in this manner. Bailey spoke at an “End the Occupation” conference as part of a panel focused on “Mainstreaming BDS & Connecting Struggles.”

Legal Insurrection highlights further examples of this trend in the following articles:

• Intifada Missouri – Anti-Israel activists may push Ferguson over the edge
• Anti-Israel activist still stoking fires in #Ferguson
• “Pigs in a blanket” chanted in #Ferguson long before #NYPD executions
• The Anti-Israel, Anti-Police Alliance
• Partners in protest: The anti-Israel, cop-bash link
• Wow, Marc Lamont Hill drank the anti-Israel Kool-Aid