#BDS_Fail Why Netanyahu can snub his nose at Europe
In case you missed it, earlier this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that he is
suspending Europe's involvement in the 'peace process,' in response to Europe's decision to label (and effectively boycott) products originating in Judea and Samaria.
That sounds like a bold step by a small country against the European behemoth. Evelyn Gordon explains why it's a step that
Israel could afford to take.
The deputy prime minister of Vietnam visited Israel on Wednesday, prompting Jerusalem Post reporter Herb Keinon to delve into some fascinating trade statistics.
Bilateral trade between Israel and Vietnam totaled almost $1.1 billion
last year, a fivefold increase in just five years, and is now more than
double Israel’s trade with Austria and four times its trade with Norway.
In fact, Keinon later tweeted,
Israel’s trade with Vietnam now exceeds its trade with 21 of the
European Union’s 28 member states. And Vietnam is just one country;
Israeli trade with other Asian countries has also burgeoned. All of
which goes to show that one of Israel’s biggest Achilles’ heels – its
economic dependence on an increasingly hostile Europe – is swiftly
disappearing.
Taken as a whole, the EU is still Israel’s largest
trading partner, but its lead has been shrinking rapidly as Israeli
trade with other parts of the globe expands. Moreover, many of the
European countries most hostile to Israel are among its least important
trading partners. Norway, Sweden, and Ireland, for instance, would star
in any list of the most hostile countries, yet each of them conducts
less trade with Israel than Vietnam does. In other words, the countries
that are most hostile to Israel tend to be those with relatively little
ability to cause it economic harm.
Israel has long since ceased to count on Europe for
diplomatic support. In international forums, many European countries
reflexively back even the most outrageous anti-Israel resolutions, while
even Israel’s best friends in Europe rarely do more than abstain. This
past May, for instance, every EU country voted for
a UN resolution declaring Israel the world’s worst violator of health
rights (perhaps they think Israeli hospitals should stop treating Syrian
war victims or cancer patients from Hamas-run Gaza?).
Nor does Israel depend on Europe militarily. As Haaretz reporter Anshel Pfeffer pointed out
after Britain threatened to suspend arms exports to Israel during last
summer’s Gaza war, such threats are so old hat that Israel long ago
dropped Britain as a major military supplier. Ditto for most other
European countries (the two exceptions being Germany and Italy). Today,
Israeli defense imports from Britain consist mostly of spare parts that
it could easily obtain elsewhere if necessary.
Read the whole thing.
Shabbat Shalom everyone.
Labels: BDS, Binyamin Netanyahu, European anti-Semitism, European Union, free trade, Israeli economy
The Obama-Kerry State Department comes out in favor of BDS
Read the statement in the tweet below, and it becomes quite clear that the Obama administration has come out in favor of boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel.
No, this administration is different than previous administrations. Previous administrations (with the exception of Carter) may have referred to Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria as 'unwise' and may have called it 'illegitimate.' But only the Obama and Carter administrations have called it 'illegal.' (Which it's not). And the Bush administration did support some Israeli 'settlement' and did issue a letter saying that it expected that some of those 'settlements' would be made apart of Israel as part of a final agreement with the 'Palestinians.' But then came the Obama administration and
disavowed the letter.
More importantly, every administration until the Obama administration has said that peace between Israel and the 'Palestinians' must come about as a result of a negotiated solution. Only the Obama administration - in a mad rush for a 'Palestinian state' that would immediately be consumed by terrorists - has attempted to impose a solution on Israel. Only the Obama administration has forced Israel to release terrorist murderers from its jail. And only the Obama administration has forced a 'settlement freeze' on Israel.
No, this is not the same as every other US administration.
Here's more on the
State Department statement quoted above:
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday punched a big hole in Israel-led
efforts to induce the Obama administration to regard boycotts of
settlements as identical to boycott
of Israel proper. In doing so, it provided the Israeli government and
the pro-Israel lobby with yet another painful lesson in the pitfalls of
being too clever by half and biting off more than one should chew.
A special statement issued by the State Department
Press Office on Tuesday afternoon made clear that while the
administration “strongly opposes” any boycott, divestment or sanctions
against the State of Israel, it does not extend the same protection to
“Israel-controlled territories.” Rather than weakening efforts to
boycott Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, as Israel
supporters had planned, the State Department was actually granting them
unprecedented legitimacy.
The statement came in the wake of President Obama’s
signing of the Trade Promotion Authority bill, which grants him the
authority he had sought to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership
accord. But as the bill deals with free trade agreements in general, a
clause was inserted in the Senate by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and
Republican Senator Rob Portman and by Representative Peter Roskam in the
House of Representative that instructs American diplomats to include
opposition to any boycott of Israel - or of persons from “territories
controlled by Israel” - in their free trade negotiations with the
European Union.
The State Department statement, however, makes clear
that the bill will not change U.S. policy towards the settlements. “The
U.S. government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements or
activity associated with them, and, by extension, does not pursue
policies or activities that would legitimize them,” it said. It went on
to note: “Administrations of both parties have long recognized that
settlement activity and efforts to change facts on the ground undermine
the goal of a two-state solution.”
This anti-Israel administration cannot end soon enough. 'Most pro-Israel administration evah' my tuches.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, BDS, boycott divest sanction, free trade, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Peter Roskam, settlement product boycott, settlements, settlements are legal, US State Department
How the American Studies Association shot itself and the BDS movement in the foot
Greetings from Boston, where I am working for the next week or so.
The US House and Senate passed and sent to President Obama on Wednesday Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) which constitute by far the most effective way of combating BDS: They
bar trade agreements with countries that boycott Israel. That's you, Europe!
Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL), who has been instrumental in anti-BDS legislation, issued the following statement today:
Today, Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06), co-chair of the
House Republican Israel Caucus, released the following statement after
House and Senate passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation,
which includes bipartisan language Roskam authored to combat the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. These
provisions, which were originally introduced as Roskam’s H.R. 825, the
U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, were unanimously
adopted into the House and Senate versions of TPA in April.
“Today, for the first time in nearly four decades, Congress sent
legislation to the President’s desk to combat efforts to isolate and
delegitimize the State of Israel. The recent wave of boycotts
originating in Europe, including French telecom company Orange’s
decision this month to sever ties with Israel, demands a robust response
from the United States. This is that response. The bipartisan TPA
provisions I authored are simple: if you want free trade with the United
States, you can’t boycott Israel. After today, discouraging economic
warfare against Israel will be central to our free trade negotiations
with the European Union. Congress will not be complicit in the
marginalization of our ally Israel by watching these attacks from the
sidelines. Instead, we have decided to fight back against the BDS
movement and ensure the continued strength of the U.S.-Israel
relationship.”
Those trade provisions, however, did not just happen.
The Jerusalem Post
accurately traces the passage today of trade legislation with strong
anti-boycott language directly to the ASA boycott (emphasis added):
“Four decades have passed since Congress last agreed on a
law pushing back against boycotts of Israel worldwide. That streak was
broken by the Senate Wednesday, at a moment perhaps prescient, as
European capitals consider new measures to highlight and punish Israel’s
continued “occupation” of the West Bank….
TPA, which passed through the Senate and landed on the president’s
desk, includes roughly 150 trade negotiating objectives – requirements
of the president, as mandated by Congress, to raise specific US
priorities in its negotiations.
One of those objectives is to push back against efforts within the EU
to sponsor the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement
against Israel….
The process began
with a December 2013 op-ed in Politico Magazine written by Michael Oren,
then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, which challenged
Congress to respond to the American Studies Association’s decision to
boycott Israel – by no means the first protest of its kind, but an early sign of what was to come from similar organizations based in Europe.
A letter of support circulated around Capitol Hill, signatures were
collected, and a bill was ultimately passed reinforcing Congress’s
commitment to academic freedom. But the concern lay in the tactic.
What if measures taken by ASA were used by other organizations
against Israel as a form of economic warfare? Several congressmen,
including Roskam, made note that the first free trade agreement signed
by the US was with Israel. They sought a legislative solution with
teeth: a bill that would establish any future trade pact with foreign
nations boycotting Israel as being in direct contravention of the
existing US-Israel Free Trade Agreement.
That’s right folks, the ASA boycott may not have hurt Israel much,
but it led directly to the trade legislation which has dealt a damaging
blow to the BDS movement.
For more on the ASA's pivotal role in this legislation,
read the whole thing.
Labels: American Studies Association, BDS, boycott divest sanction, boycott Israel, epic fail, free trade
