Voltaire - anti-Semite that he was - should be alive today to mock the hypocrisy of the new high priests calling anathema on the heads of Jews in Israel.
So says Denis Macshane in a searing op-ed which marks “Buycott Israel” day. For what it’s worth, my personal view is that you should buy Israeli goods because they are worth buying - but as long as there’s a BDS campaign, initiatives like this one can play a valuable role. If you’re in the United States, visit here for shopping tips.
Last week the Philadelphia BDS movement claimed a small victory by apparently pressuring Strauss, the Israel-based co-owners of Sabra hummus, to remove from their English language website their statement of support for the IDF’s Golani Brigade.
I was ready to attack Strauss for this apparently shameful act, but today the support is back up.
Now if only they would bring back their spicy pickles.
Here’s my latest piece on The Huffington Post.
When I read this report on the Electronic Intifada website claiming that the largest pension fund in The Netherlands had divested from the Israeli companies in its portfolio, it struck me that the campaign to subject Israel to a regime of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions - BDS for short - had hit a milestone. No longer, I said to myself, is this a matter of campus gesture politics. The long-awaited South Africa effect is finally manifesting.
Then it occurred to me that the story might not be true. I contacted the fund’s managers, the Dutch company PGGM, and they confirmed my suspicions.
This one has been doing the email rounds rather feverishly today, and now Jeff Goldberg has run with it:
Well, this is certainly disconcerting: The New Israel Fund, a left-leaning organization I admire (it funds all sorts of civil liberties groups in Israel), states that, on the one hand, the anti-Israel boycott movement (the BDS movement, for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is pursuing a counterproductive and inflammatory strategy, but on the other, it will continue to fund groups that support BDS, so long as they don’t support BDS too much. Here are the weasel words, so you can judge NIF’s position for yourself:
The present government of Spain, a socialist government, in name at least, has:
increased by 34% the percentage of their income tax that citizens may give to the Catholic church,
abandoned proposals to reform the religious freedom law and hence leave the Catholic church to enjoy privileges denied to other religions,
This article is crossposted from the website of the Quebec-Israel Committee.
The Boycott-Israel conference that ended Sunday in Montreal was supposed to show the growing momentum for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. With barely 100 activists attending the closing plenary Sunday afternoon at UQAM, it is clear that the BDS movement has no noticeable traction or support in Quebec.
Continue reading ‘Crushing Defeat for BDS conference in Montreal’
Subscribe to the Z Word blog via RSS - click on the orange button below. For more information on using RSS, please read this helpful guide.
RSS