Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign during a cabinet meeting on Sunday, saying his country faces an “international campaign to blacken its name.”
Following the FIFA Congress in Zurich where Israel avoided a vote on its expulsion from the body, Netanyahu “warned that such efforts to boycott Israel continue.”
According to the premier, the global campaign targeting Israel “is not connected to our actions; it is connected to our very existence.” He additionally compared the Palestinian-led boycott campaign to historical antisemitism.
“The last thing that we need to do is bow our heads and ask where we erred, where we went wrong”, Netanyahu said. “We do not need to justify ourselves. We just need to say the truth.”
Yuval Rotem, a senior official in Israel’s foreign ministry responsible for countering international isolation, acknowledged to The New York Times over the weekend that the BDS campaign is picking up steam around the world.
It’s a new spectrum of arenas, it’s a new spectrum of battlegrounds, that takes us to all those trade unions, to all those churches, to all those campuses and universities, and all those conferences of sciences, all museums and art exhibitions. Every element of Israeli activity is basically challenged.
Meanwhile, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth led on Monday with the headline “Combating the boycott”, announcing that the publication is “mobilizing for war” against BDS.