Your enemy’s grudging admission of failure is almost as sweet as your own success.
Finally, after lying through their teeth that they have “defeated” or “buried” the BDS movement, Israel’s far-right government and its lobby groups in the west are now admitting that they have failed to stop the impressive growth of the movement’s impact on Israel’s regime of oppression.
From the Forward:
In a new report circulating privately in Jewish policy circles this month, two leading pro-Israel groups charge that Jewish communal efforts against the BDS movement have largely failed.
The report, issued by the Anti-Defamation League and the Israel-based Reut Institute, claims that Jewish groups’s investments in fighting what they call “the assault on Israel’s legitimacy” has grown twentyfold since 2010, but that “results remain elusive.”
It is worth noting that the BDS movement for Palestinian rights has for years held that Israel’s desperate efforts in fighting it have failed. But never to be bothered by the verifiable and undisputed facts, most of the mainstream western media, for obvious reasons, have persistently parroted the Israeli propaganda claims, uncritically and without a hint of professional fact checking, let alone attempting to obtain the views of “the other side,” as it were.
And Israel’s failure cannot possibly be attributed to lack of trying or lack of investing appropriate resources. Indeed, Israel and its lobby groups have spent untold tens of millions of dollars in the past 2 years alone in fighting BDS.
The numbers that we know already indicate how staggering the hidden cost of Israel’s war on BDS may be.
Well, AIPAC’s budget is some $70 million. A chunk of that goes to fighting BDS, directly and indirectly, including “buying” lawmakers’ loyalty to push for anti-BDS legislation in Congress and state legislatures and maintain Israel’s impunity. This “buying” of loyalty is admitted even by Thomas Friedman!
The Israeli government has allocated $26M in its 2016 budget to anti-BDS activities. And this is only the money that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs gets directly for fighting BDS.
Other Israeli ministries and departments spend a lot more on fighting the movement and related solidarity work, especially on the “Brand Israel” related activities. This includes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Tourism.
Also, Israel has admitted mobilizing its intelligence services in fighting BDS, spying on activists, “tarnishing” their reputations, bullying, smearing, cyber — and other forms of — sabotage against their internet-based resources, etc.
Israeli intelligence minister Yisrael Katz last year told an anti-BDS conference that the Ministry of Intelligence is “absolutely” part of Israel’s efforts to tackle BDS and that the Israeli intelligence services collaborate with other intelligence services regarding the BDS movement.
Who knows how much all that costs.
This is not to mention the tens of millions of dollars spent by Israel’s lobby groups in the US, Europe and elsewhere to fight BDS, including by inviting many celebrities to visit Tel Aviv, funding trips by thousands of younger Jewish-Americans, sending Israeli bands and scientists to international fora to show Israel’s “prettier face,” etc.
To fight BDS on US campuses alone, a staggering $50m fund was raised by Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, et al.
The striking investigative report by Aljazeera, “The Lobby,” reveals how Israel’s lobby in the UK bribes politicians and MPs and conspires to “take down” those who do not support the extreme policies of the Israel government. And that’s the UK … imagine how the lobby operates in the US!
Regardless, despite its best and most repressive, well-oiled, McCarthyite efforts to suffocate the BDS movement, Israel has miserably failed. And this is now admitted by two important organizations that are part and parcel of Israel’s war on BDS.
Western reporters would do well — to serve the truth and their own professional reputations — to listen also to what the BDS movement has to say, next time they hear about Israel “crushing BDS” or “winning the war” against it, as is often claimed by this or that Israeli leader or lobby figure.
Finally, in fresh news that further underlines this failure, the US National Football League Seattle Seahawk’s Michael Bennett has pulled out of a planned propaganda trip to Israel. An appeal by human rights groups and leading figures (of the caliber of Angela Davis, Danny Glover and Alice Walker) had been sent to Bennett urging him to cancel.
Australian-British singer Natalie Imbruglia has become the latest celebrity to cancel her Tel Aviv concert, which was scheduled to take place in two weeks! BDS activists and partners groups had appealed to her to cancel.
I suppose Israel’s regime will soon have to settle for D-list names to try to whitewash its crimes and suppress BDS . . .
“I suppose Israel’s regime will soon have to settle for D-list names to try to whitewash its crimes and suppress BDS .”
Well, as Israel is a D-list nation , it is appropriate .
The only A-list Israel is part of , is the list of most hated nations on the planet.Right up there with North Korea.
http://www.abcnewspoint.com/top-10-list-of-most-hated-countries-in-the-world-2015/
Thanks very much for this article, Omar. May BDS continue to flourish and prevail!
“Why is CNN spreading fake news about BDS?
… Defamation
Last Sunday, CNN host Fareed Zakaria interviewed French pundit and ardent Israel apologist Bernard-Henri Lévy about the rise in anti-Semitism.
Zakaria allowed Lévy to casually link Nazism to the Palestinian BDS movement without a challenge.
“I want to say to the sincere followers [of] this BDS campaign … I’m not sure they know it, [but] this is an anti-Semitic campaign,” Lévy claimed. The interview can be seen in the video posted above.
“This campaign takes its root [from] a long time ago, 60 years ago, in the fringes of the dying Nazism,” he added without offering a shred of evidence.
Lévy went on to assert that the first time that boycott “was recommended against Israel” was by “Nazis escaping Germany, taking shelter in Iraq or in Syria, and building this campaign of BDS.”
These assertions against today’s global BDS movement are complete fantasy.
The BDS campaign was founded by Palestinian civil society which, in 2005, launched an international call, rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to hold Israel accountable for its violations of Palestinian rights.
It is inspired by the global campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa, and boycott is a time-honored tactic that has been deemed constitutionally protected speech by the US Supreme Court in a landmark case stemming from the civil rights movement.
The origins of – and reasons for – the BDS campaign are no secret, nor do they have a connection to any vestiges of a European Nazi-era anti-Semitic conspiracy.
Linking Palestinians to Nazis is a gross and defamatory distortion of history. It is a tactic that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used in 2015 when he exonerated Hitler of conceiving of the extermination of the Jews in order to try to pin the blame on Palestinians. …
Platform
Lévy, who recently labeled anti-Zionism a “cosmetic” for anti-Semitism, used his platform on CNN to disparage the growing BDS movement in France and on “the west coast of America.”
When Zakaria asked how Lévy would respond to someone who wants to challenge Israel’s policies against Palestinians, Lévy clumsily asserted that Israel is a thriving “democracy” but lashed out against anyone who would “demonize, delegitimize or stigmatize” Israel as “a Jewish state.”
It is no surprise that Israel advocates like Lévy would find an open pulpit for his anti-BDS views on CNN.
Like Zakaria himself, the cable network has been unwilling to challenge anti-BDS claims or to offer a platform to anyone who could.
Lévy has hurled similar smears at BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti and against The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah.
Barghouti has sharply refuted them in writing, but neither he nor Abunimah, nor any other prominent supporter has been invited on to a CNN panel to talk about BDS.
A search of the Lexis-Nexis news database returned no examples of a proponent of the boycott movement appearing on a live CNN interview, while those opposed to it, including Israel-aligned US politicians and Israeli officials, have been featured at least seven times since February 2014 to condemn BDS and its activists without a debate. …”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/why-cnn-spreading-fake-news-about-bds
Here’s a bit of a breakthrough. Rashid Khalidi was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his Sunday GPS program, yesterday, and allowed to rebut Levy’s claims (see at 4:00 on video): It was a bit of an afterthought as the segment was previewed as a discussion about the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem (first 4 minutes of segment).
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/02/12/exp-gps-0212-khalidi-bds.cnn
Khalidi was very articulate and convincing (on both topics). Why doesn’t he have a major presence in the MSM as an expert on the I-P issue? He certainly has the credentials.
Zakaria sheepishly claimed that CNN was balanced on the issue but used “sequential balance” as opposed to “simultaneous balance.” He also said he received a great number of angry emails from viewers concerning Levy’s claim that BDS is antisemitic.
A chink in the armor? We’ll see what happens next.
Incidentally, it was very difficult to find the segment on line although the Levy segment was highlighted on google searches of the GPS program.
So under this successful BDS campaign Israel’s current account balance (the surplus of exports over imports) has increased from $6.8 billion in 2006 to $13.6 billion in 2015. Much better than the region see http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BN.CAB.XOKA.CD?contextual=region&end=2015&locations=IL&start=2006&view=chart .
I’d hate to see what would have happened if BDS had failed!
This is good news but forgive me for being skeptical. Where is the evidence for the growth in BDS? Can someone please provide financial numbers? Is Israel truly taking a hit? I am the only person I know in my social circle (and I know a lot of progressives) who boycotts Israeli products. So I find it hard to believe that Israeli opponents of BDS are quaking in their shoes. But I would love to be proven wrong.