Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Divest This

Showing posts with label Divest This. Show all posts

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...