Divest This! - Dear YNet: The Sky is not Falling

Jon
Divest This!
31 August '11

http://www.divestthis.com/2011/08/dear-ynet-sky-is-not-falling.html

With this the 300th entry to Divest This (can you believe there have been that many things to say about this subject?), I had planned to write a description of what the final failure of BDS might look like. But with publication of today's “Sacrebeu! BDS is On the March! We’ve Got to Do Something!!!!!” panic piece from Ynet, I thought it best to alert my reader that the sky is indeed not falling.

The first thing I noticed when reading over the Ynet article was that the author got nearly every single fact wrong.

Agrexco, Israel’s leading flower company, is going through financial problems not because of significant losses in exports, but due to a major drop in the domestic market (along with a host of general financial issues). Similarly 2009-2010 “divestment” from the Africa-Israel Corporation was not due to politics but to the company’s near hopeless debt situation, trigged by the 2008-2009 crash in the real estate industry. In both these cases, BDS activists have made claims that the financial problems these companies face were based on their boycott and divestment advocacy, but (as chronicled here and elsewhere), these claims were exposed as fraudulent time and time again.

The article also mentions Caterpillar Tractor without once mentioning that anti-Israel divestment targeting Caterpillar at universities, churches and the like have been going on for close to a decade without one share of Caterpillar stock ever being sold by one of these institutions for political reasons. And Caterpillar itself has all but told the BDSers to piss off after years of harassment at annual shareholder meetings.



As we move onto boycotts, the Park Slope Food Co-op is not going to approve a boycott of Israel products “soon,” for the simple fact that a decision on this matter is not even on their agenda. A group of local BDSers is pressuring the Co-op to put a boycott to a member ballot (which wouldn’t necessarily be binding), and even this so-far-unsuccessful campaign has been met with stiff resistance by members trying to avoid having the Middle East conflict dragged into their community.

The University of Johannesburg recently reversed its decision to break ties with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. Hudson Bay has made it clear that it did not pull Ahava products off the shelf at the urging of BDSers. DePaul University rejected (not approved) a boycott of Sabra hummus, and on and on and on. (I’m assuming the Ynet piece is an editorial vs. a regular news story, but even so how hard can it be to use this new Internet thingy to double check so many easily debunked claims?)

Even in situations where BDS “wins” documented in this story are not simply false or outdated, boycott or divestment “victories” can hardly be described as successes. Rockers like Elvis Costello cancelling their gigs in Israel have proven to be far more embarrassing to the performers than to Israel. The violent protests that led to the closure of an Ahava store in London or the ban on Israeli products (including books) by a local council in Scotland exposed BDSers and mindless thugs, incompetent ideologues or both. Recent attempts to reproduce such bully-boy tactics in Australia have managed to unite nearly the entire Australian political spectrum against the boycotters. So again, are we supposed to quake in fear of such BDS tactics, or simply continue to (successfully) fight against them?

I’m not familiar with the author of the story, and from what I can tell he seems to have sent up this signal flare in an attempt to alert his fellow Israel supporters to what he perceives to be a mounting danger. And there is something to be said about not becoming smug or assuming that if we just ignore BDS or other de-legitimization activities they will just go away.

But in this case, the real story is how most if not all of the problems he chronicles have been dealt with rather well. BDS financial hoaxes (such as those relating to Israel-Africa) are now exposed so quickly that the divestment cru rarely uses this tactic anymore out of (legitimate) fear of getting quickly cost and embarrassed. Even in harsh political environments (like U Johannesburg), sensible heads are prevailing. And this entire story of Israel’s alleged dire economic predicament due to boycotts ignores the fact that Israeli exports and the Israeli economy itself close to doubled during the decade when BDS is alleged to have forced it to its knees.

The motto on all these matters still holds: Don’t Panic, Don’t be Complacent. And while I welcome calls to avoid complacency, panic (especially one informed by so much mis-information) really doesn’t do anyone any good.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.