This week, June 8th-14th, one issue is overwhelming and dominates the website as it has Israeli media: the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign. Binyamin Netanyahu, and his sponsor, ‘casino mogul’ and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, have organised rich people and government services to combat BDS which they now see as a serious threat to Israel. Though as one commentator says, it’s not BDS which is ‘blackening Israel’s reputation’ – the Israeli government has done it very well itself. This comment is made by James Zogby who provides the first of four articles in this posting – including writers who oppose or are uncertain about the efficacy and political morality of BDS.
Hysterical over-reaction
Our signatory, Brian Robinson, reports his reluctant acceptance of the merits of the BDS campaign in the Signatories’ blog:
Political and moral identities
These questions, and others, are also raised in
Is BDS too blind and blunt?
If BDS is about what individual consumers, rather than states, can do then it hinges on correct labelling of the origin of products – Israel proper or the oPt.
Label, label, label – let the choice begin
Israelis setting up enterprises on Palestinian territory know they are ‘on the blacklist’ as one Israeli entrepreneur puts it. He has discovered a new market – the American evangelical Christians who are Israel’s greatest supporters and can be reached through online marketing.
Beat the boycott: sell online to evangelical Christians
Israeli attempts to gain more friends through ‘soft power’ (hasbara, propaganda) have not had good results and the exhibition being toured by Breaking the Silence will not help. Israeli embassies have been instructed to try to get the exhibition cancelled wherever it is booked. They succeeded in Cologne but not in Zurich.
Israeli embassies on seek and destroy mission
‘Boycott is all anybody can seem to talk about this week in Israel. But Israel still refuses to see that the occupation is the problem, and boycotters have yet to make any real gains.’
Crying ‘antisemitism’ is Israel’s comfort blanket
And coming to Israel’s aid on this is an assembly of the wealthy (not just Jews) brought together by gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson at the centre of gambling [forbidden by some branches of Judaism] Las Vegas. The aim – to pour millions into the combatting of advocates of BDS:
Adelson in Wonderland
Here’s a good example of press bias: a complaint from Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights about G4S breaching the OECD’s rules on observance of human rights was upheld in parts, rejected in others. But the business press reported that G4S had been ‘cleared’. Injustice piled on injustice.
G4S told to act on protecting human rights
Another institutional injustice was visited on Palestinians by the successful lobbying of Israel and the US to remove Israel from a UN list of states which harm children. The facts of Operation Protective Edge show that the IDF killed at least 540 Palestinian children and wounded 2,955 more. The Israeli government revolted – not because these facts of harm were wrong but because it would not be associated with other notorious child-harmers.
Pressure from US and Israel keeps IDF off list of those who harm children
On some days PM Netanyahu accuses the world of antisemitism, on other days his charge is ‘delegitimisation’. Ma’an news takes on the charge: John Whitbeck argues that if Israel is understood as the total ethnocentric, religiously exclusive state, rather than its unarguable territorial existence, it is being delegitimised – who wouldn’t oppose this as the basis for a state?
The legitimacy of “Israel”
And there will be more to come on this – a third flotilla to Gaza is assembling, in Portugal at the moment. We’ll keep you informed.
Flotilla 3 gathers its forces