Everything you need to know about fighting BDS and the assault on Israel’s legitimacy. Find us on Facebook here.
Today’s Top BDS Stories:
1 IsraellyCool shines a spotlight on the company Cinematic Strings for refusing an educational discount to an Israeli Jew on the grounds of support for BDS. Hours after the blog post was published, the company backed down in order to avoid the appearance of discrimination.
2. Just in time for Israel Apartheid Week, New York Times’ Thomas Friedman looks at a high-level collaboration between Israel’s Technion and an Arab Israeli professor. The piece focuses on a new online program in Arabic that is reaching thousands across the Arab world. Friedman uses the story to put into perspective how the BDS has it wrong about Israel.
I know what some readers are thinking: nice bit of Israeli propaganda, now could you please go back to writing about Israel’s ugly West Bank occupation. No. This story is a useful reminder that Israel is a country, not just a conflict, and, as a country, it’s still a work in progress. It has its lows, like the occupation and economic discrimination against Israeli Arabs, and its highs, like the collaboration between Haick and the Technion, which is providing a tool for those in the Arabic-speaking world eager to grasp the new technologies reshaping the global economy. Those, like members of the B.D.S. — boycott, divestiture, sanctions — movement who treat Israel as if it is only the sum of how it deals with the West Bank and therefore deserves to be delegitimized as a state, would do well to reflect on some of these complexities.
3. It didn’t take long for someone to try refuting the unambiguous comments from Benjamin Netanyahu and others calling BDS the latest manifestation of classic anti-Semitism. But the utterly unconvincing take on why BDS is not anti-Semitism by Emily Hauser in the Forward only seems to bolster Netanyahu’s claim. In fact, Hauser admits that “some members of that movement are unrepentant anti-Semites — just as some members of the Greater Israel movement are unrepentant racists and Islamophobes.” She just doesn’t seem to care.
Other BDS-Related Content:
* Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu offers 14 Ways to Shut Up BDS.
* BICOM has produces an impressive document fighting off accusations of apartheid against Israel. Well worth saving as a resource.
* Ami Kaufman, a writer for the left wing +972 website who promotes the apartheid smear, gloats over the fact that Israel’s establishment is taking BDS seriously for the first time. However, he’s right that business is business.
Let’s be clear: Deutsche Bank, Danske Bank and the others are not joining BDS because they care about Palestinians. They are huge financial entities with only the bottom line on their mind. They fear losing business, as any good capitalist should. With the number and sheer importance of these European firms over the past three months, and seeing as how Europe is Israel’s largest trade partner, combined with knee-jerk Israeli reactions, it is now safe to say that Israel and the occupation have become an economic liability.
See yesterday’s Fighting BDS Roundup.
