Lisa Levi tries to defend the undefendable boycott law at The Jewish Week. After making the old case that the Israeli boycott law is anything like the French or the American (simply false claim, as any form of the current boycott movement is perfectly legal in the United States. In fact, a Knesset research report, prepared during the work on the boycott bill, concluded that it couldn’t find examples of similar laws in Western democracies, and resorted to citing examples from countries such as Venezuela, Eritrea and Ethiopia), comes this bizarre paragraph:
Finally, it is essential here to keep in mind that the boycott movement has little to do with the settlements. Most Israelis participating in this boycott have no idea what it is, its origins and its goals. While they think they are actively showing their disagreement with the policy of their government on a specific issue, they are actually participating in a massive, well-orchestrated, international campaign of delegitimization aimed at demonizing and isolating the State of Israel, ultimately undermining Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Where do you begin to tackle this patronizing nonsense? I think that the handful of Israelis who support the BDS know exactly what is it about (read their website); but the important issue here is the settlements. I just love statements like “the boycott has nothing to do with the settlements,” or “settlements don’t hurt the peace process.” There is no way of backing them with facts, so they are just tossed into the conversation, not explanation or excuse added.
Because, as the authors of such propaganda pieces might know, settlements are a major issue, and boycott of the settlements is a years-long political practice in Israeli left, made illegal now by a government who wish to maintain the West Bank’s apartheid system forever. The boycott bill should therefore be seen in context: another step in the effort to criminalize or forbid all effective forms of opposition to the occupation.
This is what’s so new and troubling about the current government: That it takes active measures to make sure that Israeli citizen cannot challenge its most important policies. And yes, this falls under “anti-democratic.”
February 2, 2012
3:51 am
Support for boycotts and the like may be a laudable position to take and, when injustice and inhumanity become almost daily occurrences, this course of action can serve a purpose. But, in doing so, is the benefit geared more towards those doing the boycotting rather than those for whom it is done? Are boycotts an intellectual sop to consciences troubled by the lack of result in circumstances that should have been resolved long ago? Has any boycott measure throughout history displayed evidence of proven effectiveness? Do they remedy problems or serve, in many respects, to extend their duration?
It can be argued that boycotts do have a part to play in addressing certain situations and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict may certainly be classified as one of these. However, there is a time factor to consider here. How long will a boycott take to move matters in the right direction, always assuming such a thing can be determined? In that interval, just how many more people will die and be traumatised by a saga now well advanced into its sixth decade?
In other words, is this method the best and the fastest that human beings can devise and will it work for the optimum good of everyone concerned? Is there anything better we can use? If there is, then let’s bring it online and demonstrate to the world (and to ourselves) that no stone has been left unturned in the search for a solution.
Http://yorketowers.blogspot.com
If the object of the exercise is to slay the beast, it should be kept uppermost in mind that to do the job in the quickest way possible may also turn out to be the kindest.
February 2, 2012
10:54 am
‘And yes, this falls under “anti-democratic.”’
.
I would go further and say that Israel was never a true democracy to begin with, but rather a kind of ‘dictatorship of the majority’ system that blatantly oppresses Israel’s minorities under the guise of “security concerns”. Israel is the only western country (that I can think of) that has a secret police (shabak) that is dedicated to putting down any resistance to Israel’s dictatorship and apartheid systems vis-a-vis Arabs (including Israeli Arabs), even if those are through democratic means like a protest. The boycott law is just another brick in the (apartheid) wall.
February 2, 2012
12:41 pm
Maybe this is why BDS should not have listed “right of return” among their demands and argued that apartheid exists in Israel proper. Omar Bargouti has said very clearly that BDS would not end even if the occupation did – Lisa Levi’s claims about BDS motives are not without merit, and there’s enough obvious corroboration for what she’s saying that it seems a little disingenuous to act like she needs citations or something. I’m against the boycott law specifically because I’m against settlements, and agree that BDS definitely has a lot to do with settlements. But pieces like one that ignore the writing on the wall about BDS extremism just bolster the right-wing argument that anti-boycott law people aren’t addressing the facts or arguing in good faith. If BDS had just been about the territories, would the boycott law have passed? I kind of doubt it…
February 2, 2012
1:50 pm
Crazed exaggerated hate like the post two posts up are why stuff like the boycott law exists, I think.
February 2, 2012
1:52 pm
Jazzy is correct. The desire to destroy Israel is what causes the need for stuff like the boycott law. The people behind the “boycott Israel” stuff don’t really want peace between Israel and Palestinians, they want Israel to exist to exist, either from attack from Iran, or “right of return” (hah) so millions of people can flood into Israel to make Jews a minority there, or just undoing its existence some other way, etc.
Almost all the BDS leaders want a “one-state solution” that removes the world’s only Jewish state from existence. These are not peace activists. They are “undo Israel” activists.
February 2, 2012
4:27 pm
Steve: I disagree with you. The Boycott Law exists to advance political careers of Israeli politicians. Its about tough talk, not real threats. Even without the Boycott Law, BDS would not be a threat to the economic viability of the settlements, let alone Israel proper. The arguments for Boycotting the latter are too flimsy and the demands are too unrealistic. Its about scoring points with a settler-sympathetic constituency and creating a constituency of fear around the idea of delegitimization. I agree 100% with you that BDS wants the things you’d described, but that doesn’t mean it has any realistic chance of getting those things…
February 2, 2012
6:16 pm
I think the boycott law only exists because it’s quite clear that the people behind the boycott stuff are against Israel’s very existence, not merely for “fairness” and end of occupation as they pretend. Extreme actions call for an equal response
February 2, 2012
7:58 pm
Steve: there are parties in the Knesset against Israel’s existence. The point is that the BDS threat isn’t credible. The whole BDS/boycott law debate is basically irrelevant – the extreme lefties’ opposition to the boycott law is just self-flattery because they’re pretending that the law is actually preventing them from influencing people in a meaningful way (its not) and the right is pretending the same thing for different reasons…whether the law exists or not just isn’t an issue as far as ending the occupation is concerned.
February 2, 2012
8:13 pm
Jazzy said: “The point is that the BDS threat isn’t credible.”
I think many would disagree that a massive amount of the world trying to single out Israel more than any other is a credible threat, and some crazed extreme-left Israelis supporting it makes it an even bigger problem
February 2, 2012
10:56 pm
Israelis must be told what to think; they are part of corporate Israel and must conform, and laws will help them to the correct end. Deviation is a form of sickness. Expulsion or correction or incarceration are the medical tools at hand. The Soviets did this. Consider the hysteria behind the logic quoted in the post. The real fear is that people will think for themselves. In a corporate ideology, the person is important ony for the ends of the people. Stop this path.
February 2, 2012
11:53 pm
@Jazzy: note that the boycott law is not about BDS but any form of boycott against the occupation, for example, a case in which a group of parents don’t want to send their kids to a school trip in the settlements. this is what the JW article failed to mention.
Ironically, since the BDS movement is almost not present in Israel, the boycott bill is first and foremost on freedom of speech and political action in Israel proper.
February 3, 2012
10:44 am
Noam: I agree with your last comment – I guess I’m just saying it seems like your argument against Levi is incomplete because you don’t want to acknowledge that the BDS leadership are anti-Zionists – I guess you’re doing this because you think admitting this gives ammunition to the right. But ultimately I think its more persuasive to acknowledge the truth about this and simply explain that BDS anti-Zionists aren’t a credible threat to Zionism and that’s another reason why the boycott law is stupid. Maybe also you agree with BDS enough that you don’t want to put it down by saying this. OK, fine, but the Levi constituency thinks without any sense of proportion, without any nuanced sense of what really threatens their values and what doesn’t. If they’re your audience (maybe not but you are responding to Levi’s piece), going beyond the one-dimensional world of what ‘they’ ‘really want’ is probably going to be more effective. If you’re just trying to ridicule Levi for the amusement of people who already agree with you, yeah you’ve written the right piece. No offense…
February 3, 2012
11:40 am
@Jazzy: and if BDS is anti-Zionist (probably true) is that reason enough to outlaw it?
February 3, 2012
12:03 pm
Noam: I’m not Israeli, but if I were, I would say no, its not enough of a reason to outlaw it. Even if I were a right wing Israeli Religious Zionist, I wouldn’t want to outlaw it for any reason other than wanting to scare more people into voting for my political allies because I know that BDS is a non-factor as far as the viability of state Zionism is concerned. Does creating that fear have political benefits for me that outweigh the backlash from leftists and foreigners? Seems like it. Explaining this calculus is a better way to persuade moderate American Jews who are afraid of BDS to loosen up over the boycott law than just saying that the Israeli Boycotters aren’t really that anti-zionist or are being mis-labelled. Yes its a bit more complex an argument but maybe worth it…
February 3, 2012
12:24 pm
Noam & Jazzy- If I recall correctly, groups like Gush Shalom have been calling for a boycott of settlement products since the late 1990′s, well before the international BDS campaign began. I suspect an anti-settlement campaign like Gush Shalom’s will be far more impacted by the anti-boycott law than the handful of anti-Zionist Jews within Israel (For Palestinian-Israelis, it may very well be a different story – I honestly don’t know).
Of course, as Noam says, being anti-Zionist is no reason to be outlawed.
February 3, 2012
2:20 pm
Peter H: Agreed. We all agree that the boycott law is bad; I argue separately that even fervent Zionists shouldn’t feel threatened by it, and that explaining why would be worthwhile.
February 20, 2012
6:43 pm
Noam, I think one target of the boycott bill is the group of IDF veterans who have been opposing the occupation. Several Israeli vets who refuse to go back to the territories for miluim have been in the US in the last few years and the Israeli government probably wants to shut them up. Vietnam Veterans Against the War was a real thorn in the US government’s side in the early 1970s because they could not be smeared as draft dodgers and were actual witnesses to the war. Similarly, the current IDF refuseniks who are veterans are the biggest threat the occupation supporters face.