Which Campaign to Wage?

November 29, 2010

The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs recently announced the launch of a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat the burgeoning boycott, divestment and sanctions (“BDS”) campaign aimed at Israel. The $6 million, three year initiative, to be called the Israel Action Network, will develop a rapid-response team charged with countering the BDS campaign, an increasingly global movement that uses tactics akin to those used against apartheid-era South Africa.

The Israeli government and a number of Jewish groups see the campaign as an existential threat to the State of Israel, second only, some say, to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Hence, the inauguration of what appears likely to be a no-holds-barred effort to fight boycott, divestment, and sanctions activities aimed at Israel, in all their shapes and forms.

But by directing their time and resources toward this initiative, and by painting with such a broad brush, are these major Jewish organizations really serving Israel’s best interests?

First, the initiative appears to ignore the wide range of perspectives and tactics encompassed within the amorphously-comprised “BDS movement.” To be sure, some who support BDS tactics also unambiguously challenge Israel’s right to exist. Those of us who care about Israel as the sovereign expression of the Jewish people’s right of self-determination – existing alongside a future Palestinian state as the sovereign expression of the Palestinian people – should vigorously confront such Israel-bashing. But broadly depicting all who support any aspect of BDS as anti-Semitic Israel-haters and even instigators of the next genocide is factually wrong and strategically wrong-headed.

For example, a number of individuals and groups (both Jewish and non-Jewish) support a boycott targeted against products manufactured in settlements east of the Green Line, Israel’s border before the 1967 war. Viewing these settlements as having been built in contravention of international law, they see the continued settlement project as a key obstacle to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, and, consequently, as a key obstacle to peace. Hence, they endorse the tactic of a limited boycott because they believe other efforts to alter Israeli policy in this regard have simply and regrettably been ineffectual. Many in this camp are hardly anti-Israel: they include those who passionately envision a vibrant, renewed Israel that is no longer mired in an endless, destructive occupation, and that instead exists in peace with its neighbor, a viable Palestinian state. Recently, a group of Israeli actors adopted a form of this tactic: they chose not to perform in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. That targeted boycott was endorsed by a list of American Jewish cultural icons that includes Theodore Bikel, a man not exactly identified with anti-Israel bias.

Vilifying proponents of settlement-targeted boycotts, and failing to distinguish them from those extremist BDS activists whose agenda includes Israel’s demise, only serves to further polarize a Jewish community that has yet to learn a language of civil discourse that can at least tolerate – if not embrace – a wide range of views on how best to move forward toward a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. And while there are ample strategic and tactical reasons for opposing even these targeted boycotts, those who support them – because in good faith they believe such actions are necessary means to achieve both a safe and secure Israel and a viable Palestinian state – do not deserve to be silenced or ostracized.

As we search for that most effective way forward, there’s good reason to conclude that the campaign to eviscerate all forms of BDS will serve only to treat the symptom (and with a meat cleaver rather than a scalpel) when the underlying condition is what cries out most desperately for attention.

That root condition is the failure of all parties to have achieved peace after decades of occupation, violence, and instability. Each passing day without progress feeds the BDS movement. Each newly-granted building permit in the settlements is grist for the BDS mill. Which is not, of course, to say that anti-Semitism and anti-Israel invective will disappear once a sovereign Palestinian state is established as Israel’s neighbor. But it can hardly be doubted that much of the fuel that stokes those fires will be dissipated once Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab world, finally reach resolution – a resolution whose essential and even detailed terms are well-known (see, e.g., the Clinton parameters and the Geneva Accord).

That resolution will require courage and political will on all sides. On the Israeli side, it will require the outspoken support – and, as appears necessary, the urging – of the American Jewish community. This is the central campaign American Jews – and their organizational representatives – must wage. When they do, and when they succeed in helping to make real a just and lasting peace in that troubled region, the BDS movement will have lost its reason to exist.

Which Campaign to Wage?

Michael Felsen

News and Politics