You Cannot Boycott Israel Only When It Is Convenient

The British Government’s decision to ban trade in goods produced in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria has been presented as a carefully calibrated measure: opposition to the settlements, not a boycott of Israel; pressure on a particular policy, not hostility towards an entire country. France, meanwhile, is pressing the European Union to impose similar restrictions, while Canada has warned its companies against economic involvement with Israeli settlements and joined Britain and France in imposing targeted sanctions connected to alleged settler violence.

The details differ, but the direction is unmistakable. Boycotting Israelis has begun to move from the slogans of activists into the policies of Western governments. The British ban may have only a limited direct economic effect. Trade in settlement goods represents a tiny fraction of the approximately £6 billion in annual commerce between Britain and Israel.

However, that is precisely why the measure is so revealing. It is designed less to change economic realities than to place an official badge of legitimacy on the principle of boycotting Jews depending on where they live.

Governments insist that a neat distinction can be maintained between Israel within the pre-1967 lines and Israeli communities beyond them. Experience tells us otherwise. For the international boycott movement, the settlements have always been the most politically acceptable point of entry.

First, boycott products from Judea and Samaria. Then exclude Israeli universities because they allegedly cooperate with the state. Boycott Israeli artists because they receive public funding. Target Israeli athletes because they compete under the Israeli flag. Pressure businesses because they operate anywhere in Israel. Eventually, the distinction between boycotting “the settlements” and boycotting Israel disappears altogether.

This is not a hypothetical slippery slope, it is the established pattern of the boycott campaign. Israeli academics who have no connection to the settlements have been excluded. Israeli performers have faced demands that their appearances be cancelled. Sporting bodies have been pressured to expel Israel. Businesses operating inside Israel’s internationally recognized borders have been targeted. Even individual Israelis have been attacked simply for having served in the IDF, as almost every Jewish Israeli is expected to do.

Recently, boycott activists even targeted an Adidas campaign featuring Shalev Biton, an Israeli amputee, while spreading false claims about his military service. Biton lost his leg in a motorcycle accident in 2021, two years before the present war began. None of that mattered. He was Israeli, he had once served in the IDF, and therefore he became an acceptable target.

That is where the supposedly limited logic of boycott inevitably leads. It does not remain attached to a postcode or a particular political dispute. It attaches itself to people.

There is also a profound hypocrisy at the heart of the entire enterprise. The same countries that publicly condemn, sanction and boycott Israelis continue to benefit every day from Israeli ingenuity.

Their hospitals use Israeli medical technologies. Their citizens rely on Israeli-developed treatments, diagnostic systems and medical devices. Their computers and mobile phones contain technology designed or refined in Israeli research centers. Their farmers use Israeli irrigation and agricultural innovations. Their banks, airports, utilities and government departments depend on Israeli cybersecurity expertise.

When terrorists plan attacks in European cities, intelligence supplied by Israel can help prevent bloodshed. When hostile drones and missiles threaten Western forces or allies, Israeli defense technology becomes extremely desirable. Governments that denounce Israel in public frequently seek its experience in counterterrorism, missile defense, cyberwarfare, border security and intelligence gathering in private.

Apparently, Israeli goods may be morally unacceptable on the supermarket shelf but Israeli intelligence is entirely welcome when it saves European lives.

Those calling for boycotts are rarely willing to follow their own reasoning to its honest conclusion. They do not stop using their smartphones to investigate which components or patents may have emerged from Israel. They do not ask hospitals to remove Israeli medical equipment. They do not demand that Western intelligence agencies reject warnings originating from Israeli sources. They do not refuse Israeli cybersecurity protection when their personal information or national infrastructure is under attack.

Their boycott ends precisely where their comfort, health or security begins. That is not moral consistency, it is political theatre.

Nor are settlements treated according to any universal standard. There are territorial disputes, occupations and contested borders across the world. Yet the international campaign to identify, label, isolate and economically punish individuals based on their address is directed with unparalleled intensity at the one Jewish state.

One may oppose Israeli settlement policy. Many Israelis do. One may argue about the future borders of Israel and a Palestinian state. Israelis have been doing so for decades. Nevertheless, legitimate criticism of policy does not require collective economic punishment, and it certainly does not justify creating a category of Israelis with whom commercial contact is considered morally contaminated.

The measures may also hurt the very Palestinians their advocates claim to defend. Israeli businesses operating beyond the Green Line have frequently employed Palestinians at wages and under conditions unavailable elsewhere in the Palestinian economy.

When such businesses are driven out, the consequences are not borne only by their Israeli owners. Palestinian employees lose their livelihoods as well. More fundamentally, boycotts do nothing to build the coexistence supposedly sought by their proponents. They discourage economic cooperation, punish shared workplaces and tell Israelis and Palestinians that separation, rather than engagement, is the international community’s preferred model.

Britain, France and Canada will argue that their actions are intended to preserve the possibility of two states. However, when they and a host of other countries recently recognized a Palestinian state for the same reason, this act of performative diplomacy failed to move the needle one iota.

Unilateral actions and punishment directed exclusively at Israel sends Palestinians the opposite message: that international pressure can deliver results without negotiation, compromise or recognition of Israel’s security needs. It rewards rejectionism while removing incentives for direct dialogue.

Palestinians are encouraged to believe that international isolation will eventually force Israel to concede everything. Israelis are shown that even friendly governments are prepared to turn economic discrimination against them into policy.

The West cannot have it both ways. It cannot increasingly legitimize the boycott of Israelis while continuing to benefit from everything Israel contributes to its health, prosperity and security. It cannot treat Israeli innovation as indispensable and Israelis themselves as disposable.

If Britain, France and Canada believe that boycotts are the appropriate response to political disagreement, they should at least acknowledge the precedent they are creating.

The first step may be labelled “settlement goods,” but the boycott movement has never hidden its ambition to travel much further.

Today it is a bottle of wine or a box of dates from Judea and Samaria. Tomorrow it will be an Israeli university, an Israeli artist, an Israeli athlete or an Israeli-owned company in Tel Aviv. Eventually, it is simply the Israeli.

The boycott movement understands this progression perfectly. It is time Western governments did too.