Some thoughts concerning Yediot Ahronot’s boycott festival

...In short, BDS is a problem but it remains a mosquito size movement, while Israel is a scientific, academic, business and cultural juggernaut. Consequently, the specter of Israel’s sequestration and boycott by the world is overblown. So what is going on here? Why are the Israeli political and media sectors suddenly so seized by panic over BDS? Why are influential public sector actors like Yediot Ahronot feeding the monster, and creating self-fulfilling prophesies about Israel’s “isolation”?

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
29 March '16..

Along with too-many thousands of other Israelis, yesterday I attended Yediot Ahronot’s much hyped mega-conference in Jerusalem on “fighting BDS.” I returned from the conference more concerned about the hype than the threat of boycott against Israel.

Yediot has been riding the boycott “threat” for more than a year, with intensive, sometimes obsessive, coverage of the BDS phenomenon worldwide, and a broad, pithy selection of commentary on how to tackle the “existential threat” to Israel.

The reasons for Yediot’s laser-like focus on the BDS issue are clear. Firstly, it sells newspapers; a lot of newspapers. Israelis are interested in, and duly concerned about, BDS attacks on Israel and Zionism. BDS is good business for Yediot.

Secondly, Yediot’s take on the BDS phenomena is heavily colored by the paper’s anti-Netanyahu agenda.

Many of the speakers at the conference yesterday bemoaned the Netanyahu’s government’s purported “pro-settlement” and supposed “anti-peace” policies, pointing to them as a key spur to the BDS movement. If only Israel were to cut a two-state deal with the Palestinians, the wind would be taken out of the sails of the movement!

Several foreign envoys who spoke at the conference made this argument explicitly too.
How politically convenient for Yediot.

The truth is that each for their own and opposite reasons, the Israeli political Left and the Right are deliberately inflating the threat to Israel from BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions.

In fact, the “threat” of a global boycott against Israel is so obsessively being talked about these days that you would think it a greater threat than, say, the danger of the Obama administration’s capitulation to Iran on the nuclear issue, or the Hezbollah-ISIS confrontation brewing on Israel’s northern border.

There are many reasons why the nightmare scenarios of BDS are inaccurate, ranging from the weakness of the Arab world, the declining clout of Europe, the resilience of Israel’s reputation amongst democratic elites in North America, to the robustness Israel’s structural ties to Western and Eastern technology and business hubs.

The fact is that far more global companies buy from Israel than boycott Israel; far more universities and scientists collaborate with their Israeli counterparts than shun them; far more churches support Israel than condemn Israel; far more entertainers perform in Israel than avoid Israel, and so on.

In short, BDS is a problem but it remains a mosquito size movement, while Israel is a scientific, academic, business and cultural juggernaut. Consequently, the specter of Israel’s sequestration and boycott by the world is overblown.

So what is going on here? Why are the Israeli political and media sectors suddenly so seized by panic over BDS? Why are influential public sector actors like Yediot Ahronot feeding the monster, and creating self-fulfilling prophesies about Israel’s “isolation”?

The World According to Shimon Shiffer and Others

...Only at Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz is Israel considered a foreign country in its own homeland -- the cradle of Jewish people. But if only "for the sake of fairness," at least read the data.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
05 March '14..

He doesn't understand. How did Obama embrace Netanyahu? Why, we were promised a cold shower and contempt in the interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. I am talking about Shimon Shiffer, the tireless analyst of Yedioth Ahronoth, the paper that once had a country. The only explanation he had for the hug was that Obama was "troubled by the situation in Ukraine" and so "left Netanyahu alone." What a shame. Shiffer is not alone. Zehava Gal-On, head of the Meretz party, released a statement complaining about the applause Netanyahu received at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. It's not enough they didn't crucify the prime minister, they even applauded him. They've gone mad.

This was not enough for Shiffer. In his column, he strengthened the Palestinian (and left-wing) narrative: Whatever happens, Israel is to blame for the absence of peace. It doesn’t matter that for 100 years we have been ready for a compromise or that over the last 20 years we have agreed to measures that any rational examination would see as a recipe for political and security suicide. And still, Shiffer's favorite moderate, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, fled in horror from agreements, even the most reckless of them, presented by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Just this week Gal-On heard those same songs of defiance in Ramallah. So what?

Because why isn’t there peace? Why has Abbas refused for 20 years to concede anything for the sake of his people? Here is Shiffer: "At the same time, the Central Bureau of Statistics released data that showed an increase in construction in the territory of the future Palestinian state." And therefore "so long as this is the situation, it is comprehensible why Abu Mazen [Abbas] and his people refuse to join the dancing." And his conclusion: "As long as there is there is no leader in Israel who can threaten the stability of Netanyahu's seat," there is doubt the two-state solution will ever happen. And this is the disgraceful reason of the paper's existence, a paper dedicated to one purpose: to wage war against the global threat named Benjamin Netanyahu.

But that already happened, Shiffer. Your beloved Olmert, who is currently spending time in the courts offered Abbas everything, and nothing changed. The only thing the left wing can do -- if it ascends to power -- is a unilateral withdrawal. Like in Gaza. God forbid.

It is worth noting the storyline Shiffer uses to rationalize the Palestinian defiance and which is hashed out in the media: The jump in construction in Judea and Samaria by 123 percent in 2013, compared to the rate in other areas in country. Had the certified analyst peaked at the charts provided by the CBS, he would have discovered the bluff.

Negligence, laziness and the total absence of basic journalistic norms. And the winner is...

Gonen Ginat..
Israel Hayom..
07 July '13..

Sometimes, fortuitous coincidences occur. Last Friday, we ran an article in Israel Hayom about the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth's tendency to publish unfounded stories that have no relation to the facts. And, as if by magic, just to prove our point, that very same day Yedioth Ahronoth published, prominently, a story about a person who doesn't exist.

The subject of the feature was a woman named Fatma Vardi, who was purportedly the first female Bedouin stand-up comic in Israel. According to the article, Fatma is not just any Bedouin comic, she is also one of her husband's four wives, a mother of 17 children and all kinds of other tall tales (including residence in a village that, as a superficial investigation reveals, does not exist in Israel).

As usual, Yedioth Ahronoth bought the whole story, hook, line and sinker. With a simple Google search they could have easily found out that the woman in question was actually a Ramat Gan resident named Gila Zimmerman. She has been performing for years as various characters, one of which is Fatma the Bedouin.

The journalistic work on that article was so shoddy that whoever wrote it didn't think to visit her home, meet her Bedouin husband, another wife, or any of her children. Nothing. She said whatever she said, and they printed it.