There was a rather unusual tweet posted to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Twitter account on Sunday, rankling some social media users in the process.
In what was an indirect referral to a Palestinian-driven movement intended to disrupt Israel’s social and economic policies, the post said, “Attempts to impose a boycott on the State of #Israel are immoral and unjust. Moreover, they will not achieve their goal.”
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement bills itself as being comprised of a “wide coalition of the largest Palestinian organisations, trade unions, networks and NGOs” created in 2005 to get consumers and companies to sever ties with all Israeli companies and institutions until the Jewish state reaches a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Though the tweet from the Israeli leader’s account could have been intended generically, it could also hint at the BDS movement, which claims several “victories.”
“Agrexco, Israel’s former largest exporter of agricultural produce, entered liquidation toward the end of 2011, following a campaign of blockades, demonstrations, lobbying of supermarkets and governments, popular boycotts and legal action in more than 13 countries across Europe,” its website stated. “The campaign against the company was a major factor behind the lack of investors’ interest to salvage it.”
It also takes credit for convincing the largest cooperative in Europe, the Co-Operative Group in the U.K., to stop taking produce from Israeli settlements. In another example cited, it claims its global call for academic boycotts swayed South Africa’s University of Johannesburg to sever ties with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University in 2011. And it led a sustained campaign against Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company located in an illegal Israeli colony, claiming it forced the company to close its flagship London store.
While the organization is certainly not on the highest priority of concerns for Netanyahu, he may have inadvertently raised the profile of the BDS movement itself. With the recent Oxfam-SodaStream-Scarlett Johansson controversy last week, the BDS movement had already become an acknowledged part of the dialogue relating to that story.
The Economist magazine noted some of that decision could have been more calculated than previously thought — maybe Johansson didn’t want to appear to be siding too closely with the BDS movement more than appearing pro-Israeli settlements.
“There would have been no way for Ms Johansson to drop SodaStream without appearing to lend support to the BDS movement, which even many liberal American Jews view as extremist and anti-Israel,” Vicky Cristina wrote in the Economist on Sunday. “That would be a very difficult move for a Jewish actress; even Peter Beinart, a liberal Zionist journalist and peace activist, has had trouble distinguishing his support for boycotting companies that do business in the territories from the more radical BDS movement.”
The group maintains it doesn’t pose any actual threat to the Israeli state and endorses only “non-violent means” to achieve their goals.
But how much is the BDS movement harming Israel’s economy? It’s fair to say Israeli authorities can no longer ignore the issue entirely.
Cristina noted that the pressure created by Israel’s policies led to a “decision by PGGM, a major Dutch pension fund, to cut off its tens of millions of euros’ worth of investments in Israel’s top five banks: it could not reconcile them with its corporate code of ethics. Other large European financial institutions are considering doing the same. Israeli infrastructure companies are equally unable to separate themselves from activities in the territories, and European infrastructure firms have now begun cutting off joint ventures with Israeli counterparts. Like Ms. Johansson, they are finally being forced to choose.”
At the same time the boycotts are happening, Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to broker peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian authority. The failure of those negotiations empowers the BDS movement, driving more people and institutions to its ethical perspective on the settlements’ issue and further isolating Israel in the process.
Omar Barghouti, in an opinion piece in The New York Times published Friday entitled, ‘Why Israel Fears the Boycott,’ put it this way: “If Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempts to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail because of Israel’s continuing construction of illegal settlements, the Israeli government is likely to face an international boycott ‘on steroids,’ as Mr. Kerry warned last August.”
Israel is a nuclear-armed nation, so why would it use Twitter as an avenue to dismiss a non-violent human rights group?
“Israel is deeply apprehensive about the increasing number of American Jews who vocally oppose its policies — especially those who are joining or leading B.D.S. campaigns,” Barghouti said. “It also perceives as a profound threat the rising dissent among prominent Jewish figures who reject its tendency to speak on their behalf, challenge its claim to be the ‘national home’ of all Jews, or raise the inherent conflict between its ethno-religious self-definition and its claim to democracy.”
One thing is for sure, the debate is at a peak right now, and the BDS Movement seems to be the one benefiting the most from the exposure. The ones not benefiting? — those trying to get a peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. Some feel the BDS Movement puts the Palestinian Authority in an awkward position by insisting it reject almost anything the Israeli state proposes toward peaceful resolution.
But that may be because the BDS Movement is firmly planted in why it was created in the first place: to fight oppression against the Palestinian people via the continued Israeli settlement construction and military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
It’s not a matter to be solved easily, and that’s why peace negotiations between the two sides are likely to be prolonged.