‘The Forward’ has a good editorial saying it’s OK to want to boycott West Bank products. Another dividend of the disgraceful law the Knesset passed making it illegal to advocate boycott– boycott marches forward.
The Forward makes the usual stipulation that you have to love Israel to urge boycott. But what if you don’t love Israel? I don’t. I mean, I get the Jewish part, I think, Jews made it, that’s cool. But Jews made The Goodbye Girl and the song Feelings and the Shabbatei Zvi cult of the 1600s, and I don’t love them. (Get over it). Forward, using clever typography of transparent self-censorship:
We can understand why reasonable people could advocate a boycott of products made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank because those settlements are deemed illegal under international law and because a boycott is a peaceful way of expressing a moral concern— well, if we say something like that, we could be sued and held liable in civil court. …Unpack this for a moment. We didn’t boycott, we just expressed sympathy in a way that could be seen as advocacy without taking the leap from speech to action. We didn’t target a product manufactured in Tel Aviv or Hadera or within the undisputed borders of Israel…
We simply said that promoting a boycott of goods from the occupied West Bank could be a legitimate form of political protest by those who love Israel and therefore wish to see her survive as a democratic Jewish state with borders that allow for a viable Palestinian state next door.…
a boycott can be a legitimate use of non-violent protest to achieve a worthy goal
It could also be seen as a noble attempt to effect change.
Some boycotts are ruthless and discriminatory, true, but in other circumstances,
A boycott of West Bank products could fall into the first category.
