Israeli rabbi featured at J Street calls for boycott and divestment from Israel

“Anybody who is contributing to the Israeli economy should stop. Stop that contribution until the wind changes.” Noa Sattath, an Israeli rabbi and civil rights activist promoted by the liberal Zionist group J Street, called for crushing economic pressure on the new Israeli government during a webinar with Americans for Peace Now last week.

Sattath, director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said on January 4 that the new government is “a nightmare” for human rights groups and for Palestinians under occupation, and its plans to override the Israeli supreme court are fascistic measures. Israel is now in a “moment of shock and awe,” she said, and opponents of the new government are mobilized but need to take decisive action.

“The economy is the basis for everything this government does,” Sattath said, in urging Israeli businesses to “strike” and all those who contribute to the economy to stop doing so.

International pressure is something that can have a deep impact on Israeli policy. We have seen that in the past two months, very, very clearly. We need a lot more of that. And that’s where we need to partner together to create the change….I think that we are beginning to see the economic heart of Israel, the software industry and the data industry that have really been very silent in past years begin to mobilize and rise. It’s still in process. And one of the things that is on the agenda is a strike. And I think that that would be very effective. We can make it happen…

I think that anybody who is contributing to the Israeli economy should stop. Stop that contribution until the wind changes. I think that the center of Israeli society that is making the economy work– and the economy is the basis for everything this government does– is vastly opposed to these [Netanyahu government] measures and would be deeply impacted by them.

Sattath’s call for crushing economic pressure echoes the tactics of the BDS campaign, a Palestinian-led movement that has for 17 years called for economic pressure on the Israeli government to end the occupation and honor refugees’ rights. The BDS campaign is denounced as an “existential threat” by Israeli government leaders– and liberal Zionists in the U.S. have duly opposed it.

BDS is a red line for J Street, an organization that has several times put the Jerusalem-born Rabbi Sattath on its stage. J Street has said it is an “anti-BDS” organization and supported legislation that describes the BDS campaign as antisemitic.

Featured on the main stage at the J Street conference in December 2022, Sattath hinted then that she would call for U.S. government sanctions of the new government over Israel’s persecution of human rights groups.

This is a place where in the past the U.S. government has intervened and I’m wondering whether the U.S. government and other governments will intervene as well… We will be here to use every tool that we have in order to face the threats…. Israel is very used to taking American support for granted. And we now have a government that we’ve never had before, so it requires steps that have never been taken before. And I think that once becomes clear, the impact will be dramatic. Again we are in a blocking offensive here and that’s what we need to be focused on, thinking about the critical moments where we can use all the leverage we can and the U.S. government opinion, statements and action would be very very significant, as well as the reaction of the American Jewish community…

Just last year, Sattath opposed BDS while acknowledging that many young American Reform Jews support it. Citing a leftwing “narrative” that claims “that there is a huge moral problem with Israel’s oppressive treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and that the only appropriate response is boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS),” Sattath said, “Reform Jews, and especially younger Reform Jews, are buying into this narrative more and more.”

J Street’s base includes such Reform Jews. Last summer a Brown University student and official of J Street’s college organization wrote in an article on the Americans for Peace Now website that she and her father supported BDS. In that article, Eliana Blumberg said that progressives can’t reclaim terms like “pro-Israel” and “Zionist” these days without sending the message that they’re pro-apartheid. After I publicized her article, Americans for Peace Now took it down, saying that it was being used to attack J Street. While J Street ran two posts about Blumberg’s statements including one from the group’s CEO, Jeremy Ben-Ami, affirming his Zionism and opposition to BDS.