Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Divest This

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Monday, December 23, 2019

Taking a Break (Divest This!)

Divest This will be taking a break for a while to focus on work and family.

Before going on a previous hiatus, I paused to reflect on what the whole BDS project and the fight against it meant in the context of the wider war against the Jews and their state. This ended up a nine-part Bigger Picture series that should still be relevant to anyone fighting the good fight who wants to better understand what we’re up against.

Since knowing who you are fighting only gets you so far, I used that understanding after returning from hiatus to look at the strategies and tactics needed to defeat not just BDS but the militant movement BDS is simply one part of.

Those are both longish series/documents, and I never expected everyone to read them in full and act accordingly. But the principles they lay out are still relevant and can be summarized as:

· Far from being a peace movement, BDS represents the propaganda arm of a war movement, one designed to weaken the Jewish state so that others can do the dirty work of eliminating it.

· The war movement of which BDS is a part relies on language carefully selected to convince progressive-minded individuals and groups that the anti-Israel cause is a virtuous fight against racism, imperialism and other contemporary sins.

· Because the societies that back BDS represent the greatest enemies of the progressive values listed above, BDS advocates must militantly police the left end of the political spectrum it is trying to coopt in order to ensure everyone stays in line. This is why, for example, feminist groups must bow down before the (mostly male-dominated) Palestinian cause, but anyone pointing out the inherent sexism and homophobia within that cause is immediately hounded out of “the movement.”

· BDS itself is not a movement, but simply a tactic designed to paint the Jewish state as the inheritor of South Africa’s mantle as the world’s worst human-rights abuser. So even when BDS loses this or that battle, even if the Israeli economy tripled in size during the BDS decades, the campaign continues since its propaganda goals are met every time people are exposed to the Israel = Apartheid narrative (especially young people who were not even born when South African Apartheid existed).

· The fight against BDS is stymied by debates over whether we are “just playing defense” vs. “going on the attack.” Missing from this binary choice is an analysis of how offense and defense represent different aspects of a military strategy – each required at different times. But because we do not treat the fight against Israel’s detractors as a military campaign (rather than an argument to be won or lost), we end up fighting with each other over which ineffective defensive or offensive tactics everyone should be using.

· Treating our fight as a military campaign requires recognizing the nature of the battlefield, the relative strengths and weaknesses of each side, including the fact that one side (ours) does not want to ultimately see our enemies destroyed. Given this, we should adopt tactics associated with siege warfare, switching to pitched battles and other tactics only when they are militarily prudent (or required).

This is just a quick summary of what is contained in the material linked above, the bottom line of all of which is that patience is the most potent military and political force in the universe. While it is painful to see Israel smeared from coast-to-coast, and the rise of anti-Semitic movements and parties (especially in the West) is enormously frightening, we should also look at and learn from positive long-term trends.

For example, one need only compare Israel, which has thrived and grown richer and more powerful since 1948, with the chaos and decline that characterized her enemies during this same period. While there is always the chance that his chaos will expand to engulf far more than just the Middle East, the best defense against this trend is an Israel that is militarily powerful, economically independent and allied with others fighting the same fight.

Please reach out via the contact form at Divest This if anything comes up while I’m taking a break from blogging, and enormous thanks to Elder for letting me participate in his fabulous site over the last several years.

Onward!

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Cognitive war veterans (Divest This!)

In our modern age, we tend to think of the outcome of warfare being decided primarily by technology and logistics, with armies able to deploy and utilize complex weapons systems in the land, sea and air being superior to those who cannot. Even when you look at asymmetrical warfare, which tends to utilize roadside bombs, terror tactics and propaganda instead of aircraft carriers and robot drones, success in this field requires mastery of technical and political skill, rather than fighting experience.

But if you look back throughout the thousands of years of history when war was conducted primarily with the same hardware (swords, spears, bows, shields, armor and the like), the factor marking the difference between a successful and unsuccessful army was the experience of the soldiery.

Troops loyal to Julius Caesar, for example, were not referred to as “Caesar’s Soldiers” or “Caesar’s Legions,” but “Caesar’s Veterans,” highlighting the fact that soldiers who spend decades fighting side-by-side provided the edge in battle even against far larger armies.

Even the strategic genius of a commander is frequently the result of a general himself being the veteran of numerous campaigns, providing him the chance to try different things at different times and experience both victory and defeat.

I bring this up since another strength BDS warriors bring to battle (along with Internet-enabled communication skill and complete indifference to the needs of others) is their experience waging their propaganda campaigns over many years and even decades. For most of us, the thought of engaging in a divestment debate in our student union or town hall is appalling not just because of the nature of the subject matter, but because few of us have experience engaging with (in this case) aggressive political warfare that is likely to create tension and conflict (the very things many of us spend our lives trying to avoid).

But years of experience battling against the boycotters eventually provides us the veteran’s perspective, helping turn what might have originally felt like distasteful conflict into a battle we eagerly anticipate for the thrill it provides (especially in victory – the familiar result for pro-Israel activists engaged in a BDS fight).

I can attest to this personally as someone addicted to the rush of watching a BDS go down to defeat. And my eagerness to mix it up with Israel haters/BDS propagandists derives from longing to engage in arguments I’ve been writing about for years.

But the veterans’ experience can also be seen in the wider Jewish community ready to fight back unapologetically against defamers of the Jewish state. As time goes on, more experience should drive more success and success will drive our desire to obtain more experience, creating new generations of vets capable of continuing to stare down the BDS threat, regardless of the ruthlessness of our adversaries.

As a final note, I’d like to pay a tribute to a veteran of many wars who lost out to the one enemy none of us can avoid forever eight years ago yesterday. Christopher Hitchens may have never been a great friend to the Jewish state. But he was a great friend to others who earned his sympathy (such as the people of Iraq) and Hitchens fought for their cause, regardless of what previous friends and allies had to say on the matter. While I am sad that this iconoclast of great wit and letters passed away without embracing the justice of Israel’s cause (or the Jewish world of which he was a part), I still miss him and his words, even (or especially) the ones with which I disagreed.

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Inglorious Basterds (Divest This!)

Director Quentin Tarantino’s recent decision to play an active role in Israeli life (or at least the creation of more of it) got me thinking back to his 2009 actioner Inglorious Basterds (a film which, like his most recent Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, took a few small liberties with the historic timeline).

I’ve been a fan of Tarantino since he first came on the scene with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, not because he was the last decade’s reigning film hipster, but because we shared a film vocabulary (I spent much of the '80s and '90s ferreting around video stores in ethnic neighborhoods for Hong Kong action flix, Filipino Batman musicals, and other treasures while he was screening the same films in the video stores he haunted).

Tarantino's gift for dialog is usually the first thing reviewers remark on, but I've always appreciated his patience as a film maker. In an age when Hollywood pictures ban any scene lasting for more than twenty seconds, Tarantino's can stretch out 15-20 minutes and consist of nothing more than characters interacting with one another in complex ways (admittedly, with many such scenes ending in some spectacular bout of violence). This aspect of Tarantino's skill became apparent in Kill Bill, a four-hour bloodbath/extravaganza which contains fewer individual scenes than ten minutes of a Michael Bay picture. That patience is even more on display in Basterds (something I confirmed during a recent screening with the kids).

For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, Basterds abandons the time-travel tricks Tarantino played in films like Pulp Fiction for parallel linear narratives. In one, a group of Jewish operatives under the leadership of Shabbos-goy Brad Pitt are working behind enemy lines during World War II to terrorize the Nazis. In another, Shosanna Dreyfus, a Jewish girl who escaped the massacre of her family at the hands of Nazi Jew Hunter Hans Landa (played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) is living in Paris and runs a cinema where the upcoming premiere of Josef Goebbels’s latest propo film will be attended by the top Nazi brass (including Hitler himself). This sets the stage for separate Dirty Dozen-style mass-assassination plots by both Shosanna and the Basterds.

Another Tarantino strength is his willingness to kill off characters mid-picture, including characters you're convinced are central to the plot. This unpredictability left audiences (or at least me) wondering whether the joint schemes to kill off the Nazi leadership would succeed, clash or cancel each other out.

As with his other pictures, Tarantino uses this work to show off his film knowledge, with multiple references to pre-war German and French cinema. The potential pretentiousness of the film-maker's indulgence is blunted, however, by the fact that Basterds has much more to do with 1940's American WWII shlock actioners than with the work of Leni Riefenstahl. My personal favorite film in this category - whose name I've forgotten - features a group of Chicago gangsters sent behind enemy lines where they manage to use Tommy guns and getaway cars to kidnap Hitler, tricking the SS into shooting their own Fuehrer by shaving off Hitler's moustache ("But I AM the fuehrer!" "Shut up you swine! " Pow!)

Sorry, where were we? Oh yes, onto politics!

When the film first came out, there was controversy over a picture that features Jews taking glee in their brutal behavior towards their victims. But since those victims are all uniformed Nazis (not German civilians), this complaint only made sense if you were willing to make a moral distinction between plain old Army Nazis and Gestapo Nazis (a la Hogan's Heroes). Besides, as the aforementioned Dirty Dozen showed us years ago, decadent Nazis and their entourages at play (at a dinner party or film opening) are fair game.

At least one critic was suspicious over the amount of German financial backing for the film, highlighting that both Shosanna and the Basterds play into a "vengeful Jew" mythos permeating German society. I won't pretend to understand German culture enough to say whether this trope is as widespread as that critic thought, but I will point out that the first Jewish image in the film (consisting of a family of Jews hiding under the floorboards of a French house in justifiable fear for their lives) has been played out endlessly for film audiences over the last six decades, something that doesn't seem to have blunted European appetite for anti-Jewish fear and paranoia. If once every two generations a film features a Jew emptying a machine gun clip into Adolph Hitler's face, I can't say I see the harm in that.

Especially since we're talking about an exploitation film, the type of movie which invites you to welcome the opening credits with a cry of “Pander to me!” arms thrown out. After all, African American audiences got to spend a decade enjoying Black Belt Jones and other Blaxploitation heroes delivering roundhouse kicks to the head of bigoted Southern sheriffs. Is it too much to ask for Jews to be gifted a similar jolt at the movies once in the 75 years since the Holocaust?

I'll admit that many audiences, Jew and Gentile, didn’t quite know what to make of depictions of Jewish strength, power and heroism, especially when such strength involves use of a gun or a knife. Which is one more thing I appreciate Quentin Tarantino for challenging us with, even if he did so merely with the intention of delivering up some explosive kicks.

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BDS and “Loose Change” (Divest This!)

Loose Change. That's the term fringe political movements use to describe people who join their organizations or show up to their events, not because such people believe in what the group stands for, but because such people want to be doing something, anything, to demonstrate they care about an issue.

For example, over the last two decades, several far-right European political parties found success among voters who didn’t care for the right’s political and economic policies, but who wanted to “make a statement” on Europe’s challenging immigration issues. In the US during that same two decades, people who came out to protest the war in Iraq, or joined Occupy or the anti-Trump “resistance” found themselves at rallies and marches where the messages from the podium or on banners and signs seemed to go far beyond the issue that brought them into the streets.

To the uncomfortable European voter or the bewildered American marcher, he or she was trying to take a stand about issues they found important. But to the organizations that claimed those voices as their own, these well-intentioned people were just so much loose change.

To see the relevance of this "loose change" in BDS debates, consider the many college campuses where BDS votes have taken place in student government and consider the outcomes (bad or good) that could come about if such those resolution wins the day.

Practically speaking, the BDS votes have no economic impact. College administrators who have had divestment pressed on them over the last decade have shown no interest in politicizing their investment strategies, especially based on lopsided and fact-free characterization of the Middle East conflict.

But if the practical repercussions of such resolution are small, the symbolic impact is more significant. For, whenever the BDSers win some student government vote, even by a small margin after a long string of defeats, that success if presented as the student body as a whole standing four-square behind the divestment movement’s real message: that Israel is a racist, apartheid state alone in the world deserving of punishment. One need only look at how such controversies play out on campus to see that, far from helping students better understand complex issues, divestment is helping to rub political, religious and ethnic wounds raw.

Given the limited practical potential and significant downsides of BDS activity, we are left searching for who benefits from such activity. And thus we are left with a handful of student leaders, some of them cynical ideologues, but many of them sincerely concerned about problems in the Middle East, and desiring to do something, anything, to make a statement. Even when they have no electoral mandate to make such statements, much less take action on international issues, a "Yes" vote gives them the feeling that they are doing something virtuous, even though the actual effects will be all bad for those they represent, as well as the Middle East. It would turn leaders trusted to do what's right for the students they represent into a handful of loose change in the pocket of the worldwide boycott Israel movement

There are times, most times, when we want our leaders to lead, to think about and act on issues on which the rest of us have entrusted them. There are also times when we want our leaders to follow, or at least listen to the people who have elected them more than the few month's preceding an election cycle.

Acting like loose change, however, does not represent either leading or following. It consists of being manipulated into taking harmful action in order to make oneself feel good. Another term for this would be "sucker" and while it is always sad to see people waste their own money or reputation taking a sucker's bet, it’s far worse once you realize they are betting with someone else’s name and reputation, an asset they are not empowered to sell.

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Apartheid oil (Divest This!)

As Israel gets closer to not just energy independence but to becoming an actual energy exporter, I’m reminded of a move the BDSers took once Israel entered the energy game to try to generate interest in a new phrase: “Apartheid Oil.”

Might this refer to the Apartheid policies towards women, gays and religious minorities in the Arab petro-states? Or the cover those wealthy oil states provided countries like Sudan as they murdered millions of black Africans? Or the robust oil-for-gold trade between the real Apartheid South Africa and the Gulf states?

Heavens no! For the champions of human rights and justice have suddenly got religion on oil politics once Israel was on the verge of having some.

Discoveries of shale and natural gas in Israel (coupled with recently developed extraction techniques) are what has led the nation to reach beyond energy independence over the last few years. And while such finds present environmental concerns (not to mention the risk of the oil curse), these are not the issues critics of “Apartheid Oil” are really troubled about (although they occasionally hide behind them).

No, their problem is not that oil and gas is being extracted from the earth (with all the upside and downside that brings) but who gets to benefit from it. When it was simply Qatar or Iran using oil money to fund police forces dedicated to beating women for exposing their foreheads or exporting Islamist ideology around the world (or Saudi Arabia, before they become a less dependable BDS ally), they could live with that. But now that it is Israel that may finally get a piece of the action, suddenly the link between oil wealth and human rights rockets up their priority list.

The use of the term “Apartheid Oil” is particularly rich, given that the BDS movement itself is the inheritor of investments made in the 1970s and ‘80s by the very petroleum tyrannies who maintained massive trade with Apartheid South Africa during all the years they were falsely claiming to partake in an energy embargo of the country.

After all, one of the few mineral resources South Africa lacked was oil. Yet somehow they managed to maintain a modern, oil-driven economy during the Apartheid years. And as far as I know, Saudi Arabia is distinctly lacking in gold mines. And yet they had (and have) shopping malls dedicated solely to the sale of gold (including South African gold) during the Apartheid era.

And while this oil-for-gold alchemy was going on, these same Middle East states used their wealth and power to condemn Israel for its (far more minimal) trade ties with South Africa, going so far as to get the United Nations to condemn Zionism as a form of racism during debates over Apartheid.

The African nations that were asked to line up behind the Arab states on these condemnatory UN votes were none too pleased that their own concerns about banning trade with South Africa were being ignored, with the Kenyan Daily news summing things up nicely when it pointed out: “Arabs are buying South African gold like hotcakes, thus helping to sustain that country’s abominable practice of Apartheid.”

Even now when South Africa’s Apartheid system is just a memory, with truth and reconciliation hearings come and gone, the fact that Apartheid stayed afloat on a sea of Middle East oil remains a topic beyond discussion within the BDS community. And yet, this same BDS community exists as the inheritor of the propaganda campaigns, the UN condemnations, and the corruption of the human rights community and vocabulary bought with blood gold traded for with genuine (not imagined) “Apartheid Oil.”

Confront a BDSer with these facts and (just as they do when confronted with any genuine human rights issue) they will simply ignore you and move onto their next accusation against Israel. But the next time you see them marching in the streets comparing Israel to South Africa, keep in mind that it is BDS, not the Jewish state, that exists because of the legacy of Apartheid economics.

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Setback in the EU labeling decision

One of the keys to strategic thinking is to never ignore or pretend away things that are objectively true, even if they represent a setback for your cause.

With that in mind, there is no way to consider last week’s decision by the European Union to uphold labeling of products originating in disputed territories as anything other than a setback. While it is not clear how EU member nations will respond to this latest outrage from regulators in Brussels, or whether such a labeling process will have any actual economic impact on the Jewish state, the notion that EU officials would bend their own rules in order to enact something so manifestly unfair is not a good sign regarding Israel’s relationship with the continent (currently its largest trading partner).

In many ways, the decision is quintessentially European, illustrating the chasm between the principles its leaders profess and the ones elites on the continent actually live by.

If you were to ask anyone who claims faith in multi-national governance, they would no doubt wax poetic about how the EU has replaced rule of force by rule of law, turning a continent that was once the focal point of global mayhem into a set of states ready to negotiate, rather than go to war over political differences. Yet by voting to label goods from one and only one “occupied” territory (with those same bureaucrats determining what that words means) and never even considering using that decision to establish a general principle (which could get them into trouble with powerful nations like China and Turkey – a country that occupies the soil of an EU member) the EU has effectively walked away from the rule of law that is its reason to exist.

Taking action against the truly powerful usually brings immediate consequences, which is why the “courageous” leaders of Europe tend to avoid ticking off those who might respond in forceful or costly ways. China, after all, has far more economic clout than does tiny Israel (regardless of the Jewish state’s recent economic success) and has shown willingness to come down hard on anyone who criticizes them. And Turkey not only continues to occupy European territory in Cyprus but has already threatened to flood the continent with refugees if their political behavior is punished in any way.

In contrast, Israel can only lodge complaints alongside similar ones voiced by diaspora groups pointing out the hypocrisy of Europe’s latest foray into Middle East politics. Even with high levels of support in the White House and, at least for now, Congress, it is unlikely the US will prioritize creating a price tag for Europe’s latest outrage against both Israel and the rule of law. This leaves Israel and her supporters relying on forceful arguments and moral suasion in a fight against bureaucrats using those words to dress up a power play.

Now there are other cards Israel and her friends can play in such a situation. For example, the recent labeling attack on Israel might be a way to give European leaders cover as they continue to reevaluate decades of investment in their Palestinian “partners” through massive infusions of cash into organizations like UNWRA. In an era when the US and several European countries have decided that corrupt organization no longer warrants support, we might be reaching a moment when UNWRA’s long-overdue abolishment (or folding of the organization into the other UN refugee agency UNHCR) might actually be on the table.

For NGOs and others pushing such an agenda, the EU’s labeling decision could be used as leverage to push the EU into investigating UNWRA funding by claiming such an investigation would give the Union the opportunity to demonstrate “balance” given their seemingly one-sided take on the labeling issue.

Another strategy would be to present the recent labeling decision not as an attack on Israel, but as an attack on the very principles that underlie the credibility of the EU itself. Given the mayhem caused by one nation (Britain) deciding that it no longer wants to have its affairs managed by Brussels, getting more European countries to question the legitimacy of EU dictates would be a consequence even the most anti-Israel bureaucrats would find hard to ignore.

At the end of the day, there is but one Jewish state and a mere twelve-million Jews worldwide, most of whom are not mobilized for war against even those who have declared war against us. This means we should not fantasize about having options only available to the more numerous, rich, powerful, and highly mobilized enemies. We will not be able to get the UN to pass dozens of resolutions condemning our foes on an annual basis, nor are we likely to get Europe to start using our vocabulary (such as “disputed” vs. “occupied”) by leveraging our numbers or our power, both of which are highly limited. Nor should we ever expect those institutions to fess up to, much less act to reverse, their hypocrisy.

But we can use what influence we have strategically, just as the Israeli military has combined its military power with creative precision to defeat far more numerous and powerful enemies for generations. For victory goes not to those who win every battle, but to the those who wins the most important ones (including the last one).

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Unpacking the PACBI Excuse (Divest This!)

Last time, I pointed out the various excuses the boycott-Israel crowd uses when forced to confront their clear double-standard on human rights stances (i.e., Israel deserves to be boycotted for building a fence to keep suicide bombers from its cities, but Syria and China should not be boycotted since they merely killed 3-500,000 or 70,000,000 of their own people).

As noted, most of these excuses have the distinction of being both transparently self-serving and unbelievably lame. But one “reason,” the one claiming that the call to boycott Israel wells up from Palestinian civil society and is thus unique, begs for a more careful review.

The claim that BDS is a response to boycott calls originating from people in the region is based on the 2004 Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (or PACBI). Whenever Naomi Klein or some other boycott advocate talk about a boycott call endorsed by over 200 Palestinian civic organizations, the groups on the list of original PACBI signatories is what they’re talking about.

Within that original list of participating organizations (which I can no longer find now that PACBI has been folded under a general BDS Web umbrella), 10-15% of the signatories were identified as originating outside Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, including over 20 organizations from surrounding countries (13 from Syria, 6 from Lebanon and 2 from Jordan) and another 9 from Europe or North America. Now it may be that some of these (as well as some of the organizations not identified by location) are refugee or Diaspora groups. But given the large Syrian contingent on PACBI’s original roster, the notion that we’re talking entirely about un-coerced volunteers becomes shaky.

Second, as the name implies PACBI stands for an academic and cultural boycott (the least popular form of BDS, by the way), meaning those who signed up in 2004 were not necessarily joining a movement for wholesale economic isolation of the Jewish state. So those claiming that PACBI is the origin for broad-based BDS activities may be putting words into the mouths of Palestinian agricultural, medical and industrial unions/organizations, many of whom may not be that excited about economic boycotts that punish them as well as Israel.

On more meatier matters, the first group that topped the list of “Unions, Associations, Campaigns” supporting the PACBI boycott call is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, a coalition that includes Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and some of the more violent sub-sets of Fatah. Call me crazy, but I suspect that it’s much easier for this Council to get the Palestinian Dentist’s Association (also a PACBI signatory) to agree to its requests that vice versa.

The potential that the PACBI boycott call arises from coercion within Palestinian society (vs. being a consensus welling up from the grass roots) also points out an interesting paradox. The claim that Israel uniquely deserves the BDS treatment is, to a certain extent, based on Israel supposedly being exceptional with regard to its level of human rights abuses (vs. Iran, China, North Korea, etc.). And yet the members making up PACBI can only be seen as legitimately representing Palestinian civic society if Israel’s “repression” does not extend to eliminating such civic space in both Israel and the West Bank.

Like the claim that Israel is inflicting a “Holocaust” on a Palestinian population that is simultaneously experiencing a population explosion, the very existence of PACBI demonstrates that the level of repression found in countries ignored by BDS activists (Sudan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) does not exist in Israel. And thus we are led back to the conclusion that the best way to avoid being a target of alleged “human rights” activists pushing boycott, divestment and sanction is to actually be a repressive dictatorship that crushes civic society rather than letting it exist to sign boycott petitions.

Finally, a note on dates. PACBI, as stated on their own Web site, made its “plea” for academic BDS in 2004, years after divestment programs originating at the 2001 Durban conference were well underway in North American and European universities, unions, churches and municipalities. In other words, the PACBI call was the result of the success BDS was seeing between 2001-2004, and being the result it could not have simultaneously been the cause.

Time travel underlies much of the BDS project, as is underlies much of what passes for analysis of the Middle East. My favorite example of this is the projection of today’s US support for Israel (which didn’t really kick into high gear until the 1970s) back to 1948 and beyond in hope of finding a US-Zionist conspiracy going back to before the founding of the Jewish state.

If ignorance is bliss, then the folks behind the PACBI excuse for BDS are either the happiest people on earth, or at least the most manipulative.

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Excuses (Divest This!)

One of the most common challenges to the Divest-nista crowd is why they don’t call and march for divestment against Sudan, China, Syria or any of the totalitarian dictatorships whose daily human rights abuses dwarf anything Israel could have possibly done over the course of 60 years.

Generally, their first response is to ignore the question and move onto their next accusations (real or imagined) against Israel, hoping that no one will peek behind the curtain. While such stonewalling can work for a while, those trying to sell BDS to the general public must eventually explain the apparent double standard whereby Israel must be punished while its dictatorial critics are left alone. Some of the more easily dismissed excuses I’ve seen from US-based divestniks include:

· Israel is a democracy and thus our protests can have an impact there (ignoring the obvious corollary that the best way to avoid the wrath of these alleged “human rights” champions is to be a dictatorship)

· Israel is an ally of the US, and thus as Americans we are obliged to criticize our friends more than our foes (ignoring the obvious question as to why their limitless hostility does not extend to other US allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt)

· “Israel receives [pick your sum, ranging from three-billion to eleventy-jillion dollars] in US aid so as a US citizen it’s the use of my tax dollars I’m protesting” (never specifying why a country like Egypt, which receives 2/3 as much US aid as Israel - a formula calculated at Camp David decades ago - receives <1 66="" against="" boycotters="" direct="" hostility="" israel="" o:p="" of="" rather="" than="" the="">

Clearly, these are just excuses or rationalizations for people who have a political agenda (hostility towards the Jewish state) who feel a need to dress up their attitudes in the ill-fitting garments of legitimate principle. Yet even if such hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue, the excuses BDSers use to explain their obvious double standards only stretches so thin, often with embarrassing results.

My favorite example of over-reach in an effort to explain away the double standard was the UK academic boycotters who claimed their effort to sanction Israeli universities would be particularly effective because of the Jews unique love and respect for learning. Needless to say, this implied dissing of the scholarly passions of non-Jewish societies did not go over well with the boycotters' third-worlder constituency.

Within this rickety pile of excuses, the only one that is backed by enough fact to not be immediately dismissed as a smoke screen is the claim that the call for boycotting Israel welled up from the Palestinians themselves in the form of a 2002 boycott call from the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (or PACBI). Because the PACBI BDS call (unlike so many divestment hoaxes) actually exists, poking holes in this argument takes a little more effort. But not much…

To be continued…

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Logic (Divest This)

It’s often be helpful to boil down debates over Israel, the Middle East and anti-Semitism to their logical core in order to best understand the actual arguments being made (or dodged).

For example, discussion of who gets to determine whether someone’s behavior is anti-Semitic is based on this general argument, widely accepted in most circles:

Premise 1: Minority groups are victims of discrimination and bigotry

Premise 2: Victims of discrimination and bigotry best understand when it is directed against them

Conclusion: Minority groups best understand when discrimination and bigotry is directed against them

Note that this is a valid argument, in that accepting the premises requires you to accept the conclusion (the definition of logical validity).

One of the useful results of distilling an argument (especially one written originally in more lengthy or complex prose) into a structured, valid argument is that it requires you to write premises in a way that exposes their strengths and weaknesses. This is important because, to be any good, an argument must be both valid and sound with soundness defined as having premises that are either true or something a reasonable person would accept as highly likely to be true.

In the case of the valid two-premise argument above, the first premise is a statement of fact, and the second one also seems like something most people would agree is reasonable, so this argument is both valid and sound. But looks what happens if we add one more premise to the argument:

Premise 1: Minority groups are victims of discrimination and bigotry

Premise 2: Victims of discrimination and bigotry best understand when it is directed against them

Premise 3: Jews are a minority group

Conclusion: Jews best understand when bigotry and discrimination [i.e., anti-Semitism] is directed against them

This too is a valid argument and the new premise we just added is also a statement of fact, as strong or stronger than Premise 1 that appears in both versions of the argument.

Yet those who say that Jews use accusations of anti-Semitism as a smoke screen to cover up the crimes of the Jewish state must reject this three-premise argument in order to claim that Jews are not allowed to determine when anti-Semitism is and is not taking place.

One way to do this is to reject our new premise that says that Jews are a minority, which is the reasoning behind attempts to portray Jews as “white,” a status that would eliminate them from the category of “minority group.” As just noted, however, it is a fact that Jews ARE a minority and, as history shows, a minority that has been victimized by bigotry and discrimination, up to and including attempted genocide.

In light of this, moving Jews into the “white” column requires a separate argument that might run something like:

Premise 1: Many Jews, especially in America, enjoy wide success

Premise 2: Any group in which members enjoy wide success is not a discriminated-against minority

Conclusion: Jews are not a discriminated-against minority

This argument is also valid, but notice that one could easily substitute other minority groups in premise one to justify eliminating them from the role of victims of bigotry. Reactionaries who claim every accusation of racism is a form of “race hustling,” for example, would justify their claim based on a version of this argument that swaps out Jews with another minority group. Yet it is doubtful anyone embracing this argument when applied to Jews would welcome a version that follows the same principle but applies it to other minorities.

This isolates the fact that Jews are being singled out as a special case (a form of argumentation called “special pleading”) best distilled into this final version of our (really their) argument:

Premise 1: Minority groups are victims of discrimination and bigotry

Premise 2: Victims of discrimination bigotry best understand when it is directed against them

Premise 3: Jews are a minority group

Premise 4: Jews, and only Jews, cannot be trusted when it comes to determining discrimination and bigotry directed against them

Conclusion: Minority groups, except for Jews, best understand when bigotry and discrimination is directed against them

Notice that in this special pleading, our new Premise 4, which is designed to eliminate Jews – and Jews alone – from the category of minorities allowed to determine when they are targets of bigotry, is itself a textbook example of anti-Jewish bigotry (i.e., anti-Semitism).

So one argument for claiming Jews, and Jews alone, cannot identify bigotry directed against them would leave every minority group defenseless, while the other requires actually embracing bigotry. Perhaps this is why those advocating this and other self-serving anti-Israel positions spend so much time shrieking, accusing and threatening since, in their heart of hearts, they know they have no argument.

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Just the Facts? (Divest This!)

One of the things Israel's supporters rely on to try to get our message across are arguments supported by facts.

Our reliance on fact and argument is not a function of our being Israel supporters, nor does it derive from our ethnicity, religion, or nationality (any more than it derives from our race, class, age or gender). Rather, facts and arguments form the basis of our case for the simple reason that we live in a society where persuasion is a reasonable alternative to coercion.

I choose the word "reason" with great care, since our belief that differences can be settled through discussion, argumentation and debate can only be sustained if, through repeated personal experiences, we come to see that people routinely get their way by virtue of having the strongest arguments (vs. the biggest gun).

While it is an extraordinary thing to live in a society where reasoned discourse stands even the slightest chance over raw power, there is a downside to living in such a society: the assumption that those we engage with politically must share our devotion to reason.

The trap this leads to is a belief that if we can just construct the perfect argument, one which builds unchallengeable, objective facts into a framework of air-tight logic, presented with the most compelling rhetoric, we can win the day. You can see this on this site, or in the countless newspapers, magazines and web sites offering editorial opinion (i.e., persuasive arguments) in support of the Jewish state.

But as we have seen again and again, Israel's opponents are not even interested in objective facts, much less strong arguments built on them.

To cite just a few examples, while we are fond of describing the Middle East conflict as complex (because it is) there are some facts that are just too powerfully supported to wish, deny or shout away.

The Jewish historic connection to the land of Israel is one such fact (a fact which does not deny other people's parallel historic connections to the same land, by the way). Similarly, the fact that Israel's neighbors attacked the newly born Jewish state in 1948 is as apparent as the marching of thousands of Arab troops into the territory can be.

More recently, it is an objective fact that Israel made substantial offers of land to the Palestinians at various negotiating tables in order to settle the conflict. One can argue from our side as to whether such offers were wise or foolish, just as the other side can argue whether such offers were worth giving up other things (such as the so-called "Right of Return") in exchange. But pretending that such offers were never made (or were not significant – never mind generous) requires just that: pretending, not refutation.

I could continue on through the various "genocides" Israel has been accused of (from Jenin to Gaza) where the low ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was unprecedented in the history of warfare. But by now you should be getting the idea that facts do exist – even in a place where the environment in which such facts play out might be extraordinarily complex.

But it is just at this level of fact that Israel's critics stake so much on their own refusal to acknowledge objective truth. Palestinian denial of Jewish history is as long documented as it is absurd and obscene. But just take a look at what lengths supporters of the Palestinians go to deny facts such as military invasions, peace offers and the cause and result of wars. Books are published demonstrating that black is white. Conferences are held where panels discuss how night is day. Journals run for decades publishing article after article proving that up is down. All in an effort to destroy any basis of fact upon which argumentation can proceed.

When I and others point out that our arguments are directed not at the Israel haters themselves but to a broader, uncommitted public, we acknowledge an understanding that Israel's opponents play by a different set of rules. And it's all well and good that we don't waste our time trying to argue with people who insist they get to rewrite the rules of reality to suit their purposes.

But even if we are trying to convince a different audience by following our rulebook, our opponents are trying to convince that same audience by using theirs. Which makes it all the more important that we understand where they are coming from since simply dismissing them as hypocrites and liars may not give us the information we need to achieve genuine understanding of what we're up against.

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