BDS is not about Israel’s ‘crimes.’ It’s about Israel daring to exist
“So, tell me, Ms. Freud, when did you first develop an aversion to your world-famous great-grandfather’s Jewish heritage?”
Or perhaps the fashion designer Bella Freud, does not have an aversion to her world-famous great-grandfather’s Jewish heritage but only an aversion to the world’s one Jewish state which she has expressed on social media with apparent support for those who appear to oppose Israel’s right to exist, and for those who favor boycotting the world’s one Jewish state. Indeed, she appears to be – or to have been – a firm supporter of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
While in our free democratic society, the great-granddaughter of the Jewish founder of psychoanalysis is fully entitled to hold and express such views, I – and I imagine many other Jews – could not fail to observe the irony of an outspoken critic of Israel and supporter of BDS tying up with with Marks & Spencer for a fashion “collab.”
Such a “collab” would be ironic in light of the unwavering support of M&S’s founding families for the Zionist dream, but is infinitely more ironic because of the role played by the founders personally, and by the High Street leviathan corporately, in fighting anti-Israel boycotts. From Israel’s earliest days, M&S invested heavily in textiles, fashion and agriculture. Its financial support and product development initiatives provided Israel with an economic lifeline when its enemies were attempting to destroy it economically.
Here, I am going to give most supporters of boycotts of Israel (including Ms. Freud) the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are not motivated by Jew-hate. I am going to assume they believe – and excuse me while I pick myself up from the floor where I was rolling with laughter – that supporting boycotts puts them on the “right” side of history and makes them “compassionate” humans.
I also assume they believe – and again, excuse me while I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes – that boycotts are an “appropriate” response to what they see – or more accurately, what they’ve been persuaded to see – as Israel’s “crimes” such as its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Or maybe they think boycotting Israel is “justified” because – as they’ve been repeatedly told in a Palestinian narrative comprising lies, libels, half-truths and omission – the Jews “stole” the “Arab” land of Palestine. Of course the boycotters have no idea that all that is not just untrue but impossible since there never was an “Arab” land of Palestine – though there was a Jewish land to which Arabs migrated and in which Jews and Arabs co-existed for centuries.
Or maybe they think boycotts are punishment for Israel’s “oppression” of Palestinians through acts such as, say, erecting a barrier wall across fields and orchards that was cleverly framed by Palestinian spin-doctors as “an apartheid wall” – a framing slavishly replicated by a compliant or actively biased media. Thus, they wouldn’t know that this barrier wall was the only way to put an end to a five-year murder spree during which Palestinian terrorists slipped across fields and orchards to murder some 1,000 Israeli men, women and children.
I will also assume that they think boycotts against Israel were instigated comparatively recently as a “response” to all of Israel’s above-mentioned “crimes.”
Er, no.
Boycotts are definitely not a new weapon against Israel. Its enemies launched an international boycott in 1945. Let me repeat that date: Nineteen Forty Five. The Jews were then “occupying” only the tiny slice of their own ancestral homeland that had been given to them under the terms of the British Mandate.
In other words, the weapon of economic destruction began to be used 20-plus years (or more than two entire decades) before Israel “occupied” the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. That boycott was launched – somewhat counter-intuitively, perhaps, in light of the antisemitic trope about Jews “controlling” capitalism – by the Arab League which used its eye-watering oil-wealth to operate a powerful, multilateral, multi-layered primary and secondary boycott aimed at crushing the Jewish state even before it became a state.
I suspect the BDS bunch also cling to the fond belief that anti-Israel activism is not antisemitic. Let me stop laughing again so that I can point out that the original boycott included boycotting companies that had Jewish employees. Today’s BDS campaign hasn’t gone that far – yet – but it is definitely guilty of bullying and intimidation in its efforts to have Jews excluded from Arts events, festivals, etc.
But then the Useful Idiots in today’s BDS campaign have not only failed to spot that anti-Israel boycotts are racist and discriminatory, they also continue to hold the deluded belief that their anti-Israel activities are about “helping” Palestinians. And, again, no.
The ugly, racist, discriminatory “Arab Boycott” of the 1940s had nothing whatsoever to do with “helping Palestinians” since it began before there were Palestinian refugees, and at a time when Palestinians had before them the offer of a homeland. And today’s ugly, racist, discriminatory BDS campaign has nothing whatsoever to do with “helping Palestinians” – though, as always, they are a handy feint and fig-leaf . Then, as now, boycotting Israel is about achieving a geo-political objective: the destruction of the Jewish state which has the temerity to exist in a place where Jews have lived continuously for thousands of years (and even as a majority in Jerusalem until they were ethnically cleansed by Jordan).
While I don’t expect the street mobs in Khartoum or Cairo to re-think their position on boycotting Israel and in future demand only Israeli GPS systems or avocados, I do think it’s high time that deluded boycotters such as Ms. Freud woke up to how (and why) they are being used.