Israel fights the boycott and loses

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has said that the boycott of Israel poses a “great strategic threat” to the future of his country. I say: I should hope so.

The Arab world is not able to fully appreciate how much psychological and economic impact the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has had in the West. Many of the world’s top companies and universities – and even the European Union itself – have all participated in these campaigns, and the BDS movement has widespread public support in many Western countries.

There has been an increasing tide of news stories about the boycotts flooding both Western and Israeli media day by day. I have commented on many of these reports, and will do so once again after having read an article published by the Washington Post titled “How academic efforts to boycott Israel harm our students,” by Professor Jill Schneiderman from the prestigious Vassar College.

The article was published this month but speaks about an incident that occurred in March 2014 when the Earth Studies professor tried to take students from her faculty to the village of Auja in the occupied West Bank in order to study the Auja Spring, the village’s sole source of water. Members of the student coalition Students for Justice in Palestine at Vassar objected to this visit and launched a campaign to stop it, while a number of activists in the occupied territories said, “we don’t want you here.”

Professor Schneiderman, who is in my opinion moderate or at least better than other American Jews who “blindly” support Israel, believes that the boycott harms the students. Although I may not be a professor myself, I find this argument to be false and absurd. The ability or lack thereof to visit Israel cannot possibly harm Vassar College student because these students are able to freely visit any other place in the world; their academic and personal growth does not solely or inevitably depend on their visiting Israel or the occupied territories.

I went back to some material I have been keeping on the boycott and I was not surprised to find an editorial written by the Likud for the Washington Post in 2013. The editorial says that American university professors are misguided in their boycott of Israel. I ask the readers to reconsider the details with me: the American Studies Association (ASA), which consists of about 5,000 university professors, asked its members to vote on boycotting Israel. Two-thirds of the 1,252 voters supported the boycott – an overwhelming majority. However, the response of the Likud member writing for what is supposed to be a liberal newspaper was to say that all these university professors are mistaken and that he supports a state of terrorism and occupation.

The piece is despicable, just like the individual or individuals who wrote it, and is just as extremist as the state of Israel that it supports – the state that occupies, destroys and kills innocents, including children. The decision of the university professors to boycott Israel because it deprives Palestinians from their academic and human rights seems only logical within this context. The writer(s) are surprised by the professors’ decision because they believe Israel is a democracy with free press, an independent judiciary, and religious and ethnic diversity. I believe they are blind and lacking insight, as I see Israel as a state created on Palestinian land exercising terrorism and occupation, a state that kills men, women and children mercilessly and whose crimes are recorded across its heinous history.

Richard Cohen, a writer at the same newspaper, views the boycott of Israel as “ugly”. I say that Israel is ugly, not the boycott. I would like to point out that Cohen is “moderate”, unlike those who wrote the Washington Post editorial. He also says that he does not like Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank, nor does he agree with the state’s settlement policy and the great influence that religious parties have in the Israeli government. However, he refuses to criticise Stephane Richard, President of the French company Orange, for criticising Israel in Egypt and instead attacks President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. I only say to him that what is occurring in Egypt does not justify the killing of children in Gaza.

Better than all these commentators is Haila Dayan, the Israeli university professor who is actively calling for peace. In an Israeli academic conference, she announced her support for the boycott of Israel and she made a long speech stating the reasons. She is living in the situation and knows what no American Likudian or moderate writer knows: that as much as Israel and its supporters try to fight the boycott, justice will eventually prevail.

Translated from Alhayat newspaper, 13 July 2015.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.