• Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

News Infinitum

Infinitum.tech operates seven days a week. On our website you will find attractively presented lifestyle content.

The boycott-Israel movement – BDS – is based on a “lie industry” against Israel – and harms the Palestinians

Dec 16, 2018
BDS-vokser-fra-Industry-of-Lies

I am pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli and pro peace. That’s why I’m against the anti-Israel campaign in general and BDS in particular ( B oycott, D ivestment and S anctions , ie B oykot, A development of activities and investment and S actions)

Many people believe that BDS harms Israel. Wrong. BDS mainly harms the Palestinians and peace. Economically, the effects of the BDS campaign on Israel are about zero. When it comes to culture, very few artists cancel their tours to Israel. That is all. The greatest damage strikes the Palestinians because BDS is one of the main obstacles to achieving peace. It does not solve the unfortunate situation of the Palestinians. It prolongs it indefinitely.

To understand why, we should start at the beginning.

Come and hear Ben-Dror Yemini and Rabbi Carlos Tapiero talks about
combating attacks on Israel’s legitimacy in Copenhagen
Sunday afternoon, January 6, 2019

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not very complicated. On the contrary. Most of the people who deal with this problem support a solution that should result in two states for two peoples. In recent decades, several proposals in this direction have been made by an entire army of officials and statesmen and by a large number of private actors. All these proposals and initiatives have one particular common denominator: recognition of the right to self-determination for both peoples. Even in 1947, this formed the basis of the UN Partition Plan – a Jewish state side by side with an Arab state.

There is another common denominator that links these initiatives together: they have always, always been rejected by the Arab and Palestinian sides. The Arab states refused to accept the Partition Plan in 1947. Between 1949 and 1967, there was no occupation, and yet no Palestinian state was formed. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, the Arab world rejected any attempt to achieve peace and expressed in the Khartoum Resolution the “Three Times No” (no to peace, no to recognition of Israel, no to negotiations) .

When a new opportunity arose with the signing of the Oslo Accords, the first of which was signed 25 years ago (13 September 1993), it seemed that peace was within reach. In 1999, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak proposed cooperation/' target='_blank'>cooperation-documents-were-signed/' target='_blank'>for the first time both the formation of a Palestinian state and the partition of Jerusalem during the Camp David summit with then-US President Bill Clinton as mediator. The Palestinians rejected every proposal they were presented with.

Following the collapse of the summit, Prime Minister Barak and President Arafat called on President Clinton to put forward a US proposal. That was in December 1999. President Clinton presented a draft (which to this day bears his name): Israeli withdrawal from 94-96% of the territories, exchange of territories as compensation to the Palestinians, a division of Jerusalem that enabled a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, and an international initiative to address the refugee issue. The Israeli government accepted the draft.

On his way to the White House, Arafat met with the ambassadors of the Arab states, led by Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. The prince made it clear that the Arab world supported President Clinton’s proposal, adding: “If we miss this opportunity, it is not a tragedy. It’s a crime. ” But Arab pressure did not help. Arafat chose both the tragedy and the crime and rejected the plan.

Instead of working for peace, the Palestinians unleashed a murderous Intifada. It was at this point, in the early 2000s, that attempts to boycott Israel began. Even at that time, the boycotters claimed that the Palestinians resorted to violence and boycott only because they had no prospect of a feasible diplomatic solution and had no hope. That, of course, was not true. They had just been offered a state with East Jerusalem as their capital and an international solution for the refugees.

In 2005, the boycotts became a more institutionalized movement, with dozens of Palestinian organizations signing a joint manifesto, which became the founding document of the BDS campaign. The leaders of this new movement made no attempt to hide their intentions and repeatedly expressed their opposition to any peace agreement that entailed a recognized state of Israel within any borders – an absolute and total rejection, contrary to international law and internationally agreed resolutions concerning this conflict.

Omar Barghouti, one of the prominent leaders of the BDS, declared : “In the definite, in the absolute definite, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine”. Professor As’ad AbuKhalil, another BDS leader, also made it clear that : “… BDS ‘real goal is to overthrow the state of Israel… It should be stated as an unequivocal goal. There should be no ambiguity on this issue. “Ali Abunimah, a third BDS leader, stated :” There will be no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “. The list goes on. There is numerous examples .

This is BDS, though perhaps not all of its supporters are fully aware of the destructive and anti-peaceful course of campaign leaders. The very main demand of the BDS movement, the right of return, is in fact an official and public demand to annihilate Israel. For such a right does not actually exist. BDS leaders repeatedly claim that they are striving for justice. But what we need to be able to create peace is compromise. Not justice.

Many millions of people became refugees after the fall of the empires, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the right to self-determination, as well as the formation of several nation states. All of these events inevitably caused population mass exchanges. And in all cases, there were more Jews who were expelled or fled from Arab states than Arabs from Israel. The “Jewish Nakba”, which is almost never discussed, was far more catastrophic. These Jews do not demand their “right to return,” just as millions of others do not demand theirs. There is thus a built-in contradiction between the ambition to achieve a peace agreement and the demand for return.

Palestinians have the right to self-determination alongside Israel. Not in place of Israel. And those who support BDS do not understand that they support the annihilation of one particular state among all the nations of the world, and this certainly does not promote the chances of peace. Needless to say, a “one-state solution” with “equal rights” for all is the equal path to endless war. It did not work in the former Yugoslavia, nor in Czechoslovakia, and many Arab countries are collapsing due to internal strife between rival societies. Why does anyone think it would work between Jews and Arabs when it does not work between Arabs and Arabs?

Some activists are using Israel’s recent confrontations with Hamas on the Gaza border to justify BDS. We should remember that the siege or blockade of the Gaza Strip should have ended a long time ago. The problem is that Hamas refuses to accept the Quartet’s demands (on behalf of the international community) and prefers a death industry to development and welfare. Hamas leader Yahu Sinwar has admitted that he ordered his militias to drop their uniforms and send them to the border. It must be clear that we are not talking about peaceful demonstrations here. We are dealing with provocations and the result is that people get hurt. Some of the protesters even wore swastikas . This should come as no surprise when one considers that Hamas’ TV channel calls for the defeat of Jews, Christians and Communists “to the last man”.

Israel wanted no sacrifices and every single sacrifice is regrettable. Hamas, on the other hand, sought to maximize the number of casualties to lubricate the wheels of the anti-Israel campaign. Sinwar admitted this when he said that the goal was “to transform what is our girlfriend – the bodies of our women and children – into a dam that prevents the collapse of Arab reality”. Sometimes we need just listen. Moreover, we should recognize the reality: wherever radical Islam gains influence or control, from Afghanistan to Somalia, from Nigeria to Gaza, from Iraq to Syria – the result is destruction and bloodshed. This is exactly the caseone with Hamas, which has made the Palestinians victims.

Israel is not exempt from criticism. It is a democracy that is today shrouded in a fierce and energetic debate on the policies of the current government. Settlement policy can and should be criticized. But support for the BDS means support for the annihilation of the state of Israel, support for the stubbornness of the extreme Palestinian right, and, more than anything else, support for the perpetual prolongation of Palestinian suffering.

A series of surveys show that there is a narrow majority on both sides to create an agreement, based on Clinton’s draft. It can be done. We should not lose hope. The problem is that on both sides we have some extremists who do not recognize the other party’s right to self-determination. The Palestinians, even more than the Israelis, need hope and a solution. When BDS runs a campaign against mutual recognition, when BDS rejects the two-state solution, when BDS convicts the Palestinians that they have the right to end Israel’s existence through a fantasy of “right of return”, then BDS is an enemy of reconciliation, of peace, of a solution, of hope. The BDS, like the extreme right wing in Israel, is against a decent solution. And in that way, the BDS prolongs the suffering of the Palestinians indefinitely.

Compromise is needed. Peace is needed. There is a need to end the suffering. BDS stands in contrast to all this.

BenDror-Yemini-miffno-1-150x150

Ben-Dror Yemini is i.a. columnist for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Communication, Bar-Ilan University , and author of INDUSTRY OF LIES : Media, Academia, and the Israeli-Arab Conflict (ISGAP, 2017) – a very in-depth analysis of the lie industry against Israel.

Translation by Mette Thomsen.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *