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Monday, July 12, 2010

BDS a loser

I follow this stuff, and if you had asked me what the results of the BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement against Israel are, even I would not have come up with this.
Jon Haber, who runs the website “Divest This!” (divest-this.com), reported in the Jerusalem Post that despite nearly a decade of BDS activism, not one college or university has sold even one share of a company identified as a supporter of Israel. The divesters are good at attracting crowds, writing manifestos, passing motions and getting their opinions onto TV. But they get few results.

In May, the divesters were cheered by news that Deutsche Bank had sold its shares in the Israeli company Elbit. However, this news was closely followed by Deutsche Bank’s announcement that it was untrue – the bank had no Elbit shares to sell. Curiously, during the period when enemies of Israel were doing their best to cut its economic lifelines, Israel’s economy remained in much better shape than equivalent economies elsewhere. Of all the OECD nations, Israel was the last to show signs of recession and among the first to begin recovering.
Two words describe the BDS movement: Epic Fail. Heh.

4 Comments:

At 9:46 PM, Blogger Shawarma said...

Perhaps it isn't a loser if their real goal is to stir hateful emotions and antagonism against Israel. Abduct debate at schools and unions even if at the end there's no actual impact on Israel.

 
At 10:15 PM, Blogger NormanF said...

The real aim of BDS is to change the public perception of Israel in the same way the anti-apartheid movement successfully changed the public's perception of South Africa. In the latter case, the boycott had no lasting effect on Africa's largest economy. But the country's deepening isolation forced its leaders to change course. BDsers in the long run hope the same will happen with Israel.

 
At 5:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

NormanF,

If so, then they have no chance of it. The years 1993-2005 saw our leaders go most of the way in enacting the changes the anti-Zionists want, from the Oslo Accords to the Dejudeization of Gaza, as well as steps toward becoming "a state of all its citizens." Today's leaders would be hard-pressed to top those years. More importantly, the BDS crowd fail to take the effect of BDS on the Israeli Jewish populace into account: BDS, in combination with Arab intransigence, is a radicalizing force, a generator of right-wing sentiment among Israeli Jews.

One day our leadership will no longer be composed of the Mesozionist branzha (Mesozionism = the classical Herzlian Zionism that wishes to do away with Jewish exceptionalism; today fast decaying into Post-Zionism) and instead rise from the ranks of Neozionism (today's new strain that embraces Jewish exceptionalism and doesn't care much for what the non-Jews think), Israeli Jews who have seen, and internalized the lessons of, the October 2000 Intifada, the firing of Kassam rockets from dejudeized Gaza, the Second Lebanon War and all the rest of those events that prove this conflict to be an existential one, against an enemy that knows no moral compunctions. I hope the new leadership will be in place before we pay too heavy a price.

 
At 9:30 PM, Blogger Juniper in the Desert said...

Long live Neozionism!!

No more land for anything!

Except when we TAKE BACK Gaza, Judea, Samaria and SINAI!

 

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