Development Site - Changes here will not affect the live (production) site.

Pro-Israel Organizations, Not the Knesset, Should Lead the Fight against BDS

April 4 2017

The recent Knesset legislation that bans activists affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement from entering Israel has sparked condemnations from a variety of corners in the Diaspora, including from the Anti-Defamation League and a number of liberal Zionists. While sympathetic to the rationale for the law, and for other legislative attempts to fight the activities of anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Gerald Steinberg argues that Israeli politicians have the wrong approach. (Free registration required.)

To their critics, [such] restrictions are assaults on democracy [or] worse. But for Israeli politicians on the right and center of the political spectrum, the BDS visa law, like other measures, was a necessary response to the ugly political war being waged against the Jewish state. Such policies provide headlines for the politicians and show determination to defeat the demonization campaigns that libel [Israel] and cavalierly accuse IDF soldiers of war crimes. Similarly, Israeli politicians repeatedly denounce groups like Breaking the Silence and B’tselem, whose leaders travel the world condemning the IDF, annoying large segments of the Israeli public (not only the right). These attacks are largely ineffective, [however,] and they allow the NGOs to portray themselves as victims of a witch-hunt.

Similarly, for many Zionists around the world who are not interested in domestic Israeli politics, the BDS legislation and similar policies are entirely counterproductive. The use of legislation (especially measures that will not pass scrutiny by the courts), regulations, and other [political] approaches causes significant damage to Israel’s international image. The picture that emerges is one of a powerful, aggressive government harassing weak NGOs. . . .

[I]nstead of attempting to use state power against the NGOs that lead BDS and lawfare campaigns [against the Jewish state], Israeli politicians should leave the counter-attacks to the [pro-Israel] NGOs that have proven effective on this front. In this “soft-power” conflict, NGOs have a major advantage over governments: [they] do not have to please voters and are able to build alliances with different actors in Israel and abroad.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: BDS, Israel & Zionism, Israeli politics, Knesset, NGO

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic