Yesterday I suggested that Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation was coming close to boycott language in comments he made at the Middle East Institute. Levy says I’ve distorted his meaning, and clarifies:
My comments were neither in anger at the lack of a breakthrough at the lack of a settlement freeze, nor were they new. I have previously used the terminology of “drawing a red line at the Green Line”. However, I have not and I do not call for a boycott. It is factually wrong to describe my policy prescriptions as falling in the boycott category. Terminology matters, and has practical implications, and just because one likes the idea of a boycott, one cannot loosely throw around the term where it doesn’t fit. For instance, for Europe or the U.S. to, as you put it, “refuse to trade goods” of products in the settlements is not a call to boycott products from the settlements—it would simply mean that those products would not benefit from the provisions of the relevant free trade agreements and would be subject to appropriate tariffs. In fact, this would simply be the accurate implementation of said free trade agreements given that those agreements apply to Israel and not the Occupied Territories . Likewise, making donations to settler activities beyond the Green Line non-tax deductible (not charitable gifts) is not a boycott—it is simply that such activities should not benefit from a charitable gift status. I know it treats policy as a more complicated thing than the simplistic slogans of BDS, but I am quite clearly not calling for a boycott and to imply otherwise is a misrepresentation of my position.
