As with previous pieces I’ve written on what BDS does to civil society, it’ll take a couple of paragraphs to get to a recognizable point. So bear with me if you can stand it…
For the fourth year in a row, I attended the variety show at my kid’s elementary school. Neither boy performed (although my older son did share the MC role with another fifth grader). While most numbers are what you would expect (a lot of piano, some Hanna Montana-inspired song and dance numbers, the Star Wars theme on cello), there were a few nice surprises (including a killer kindergartener Hula Hooper and two groups dancing to the closing theme of Slumdog Millionaire).
Best of all, the show was a mere 36 acts (as opposed to 52 last year, with a legendary 90-act show in the distant past that ended only when a group of parents gouged out their own eyes with a vaudeville hook).
Now while I sat at rapt attention for the entire 90-minute performance, I’m forced to confess that my mind started to wander at around the half-hour mark, mostly towards the subject of what I could do to mess with next year’s show. (Getting my seven year old to read Ginsberg’s Howl in its entirety was what I eventually settled on.)
Needless to say, this was a fantasy, a goofy way to focus a wandering mind, not a real plan for the future. After all, dozens of kids and even more parents put a lot of time and effort into this show (and all sorts of other school events) all year long, which exist for the entire community, not for my subversive amusement.
But what if I could somehow convince myself that subverting this event was not simply an act of self-centered manipulation, but was – in fact – an unquestionable act of valor and virtue? What if, instead of having my kid read Howl, I had them read a treatise about how we’re destroying the world with Global Warming? Or re-enact the controversial pro-life commercial that appeared at this year’s Superbowl? Or sang Hatikvah while passing out donation cups for the Children of Sderot? Or performed a Palestinian dance number that symbolized the anguish of Israeli occupation?
I thought about this over the weekend as members of a food co-op in Davis, California were busy fighting against one of the first boycotts of Israeli goods in the US. I’ll have more on this subject as news arrives from the West Coast, but for now I can relate that the one thing the boycotters have been successful in doing (the one thing they’re always successful doing) is creating conflict and misery in a civic institution that never asked to become a battlefield in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
I remember the phenomena all too well from 5-6 years ago when divestment came to my then hometown of Somerville, MA (an event which led directly to – among other things – this Divest This blog).
Just as is happening now at Davis, in Somerville a group of local anti-Israel activists wanted to stuff their message (that Israel is an Apartheid state alone in the world at deserving economic punishment) into the mouth of a respected institution (in this case, a major municipality) in order to leverage that city’s reputation to allow the BDSers to punch above their own meager political weight. And – as with all BDS subversion attempts, whether in cities, churches, unions, schools or food co-ops – any tactics is permissible to the boycotters, regardless of what the long-term negative impact might be to the organization they are trying to exploit.
With that as backdrop, the notions posited earlier regarding turning a kid’s talent show on its head suddenly seem less ridiculous and more ominously (or at least potentially) real. After all, haven’t anti-Israel activists already tried to force their message into public schools (including elementary schools), just as they’ve tried to force themselves onto Somerville or Davis with nary a thought to what damage this could cause a community?
Most of us have internal controls that keep our fantasy life from escaping to the wider world. And even if we don’t, we are surrounded by others who – not sharing our fantasy – can talk us down from what might be inappropriate courses of action.
But what if such internal and external controls are non-existent? What happens if you get a self-contained group so assured of their own righteousness, so oblivious to the world outside of their own narrow cause that anything is permissible? Well then you get the BDS movement, soon to be defeated (again) at Davis, but by no means undeterred from exploiting a civic institution near you.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Running the Numbers
Given that the theme of this year’s increasingly fraying “Israel Apartheid Week” is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), I thought it might be useful to summarize the progress of the BDS movement since it began a decade ago. Because so much of the BDS project is based on words, including competing claims of success and failure, I thought it best to provide a summary based primarily on numbers which (as I recall from my business days) are the only things that tend to get preserved as information travels up or through an organization.
Since these numbers need to be “scored” against some criterion, I’ve decided to abandon my usual critique of the BDS narrative and, in this instance, accept as a given their primary thesis: that economic activity related to Israel translates to political approval or disapproval. Now some people may say this is overly generous in that it allows them to continue to claim that purely economic decisions are actually fueled by partisan considerations. But if we accept (albeit temporarily) their founding principle on a micro level, then they must also be willing to be judged along the same criteria on a macro basis. And regarding that macro basis, here is Exhibit A:
Since these numbers need to be “scored” against some criterion, I’ve decided to abandon my usual critique of the BDS narrative and, in this instance, accept as a given their primary thesis: that economic activity related to Israel translates to political approval or disapproval. Now some people may say this is overly generous in that it allows them to continue to claim that purely economic decisions are actually fueled by partisan considerations. But if we accept (albeit temporarily) their founding principle on a micro level, then they must also be willing to be judged along the same criteria on a macro basis. And regarding that macro basis, here is Exhibit A:
My goodness! During the very period when BDS was supposedly on the march, the size of Israel’s economy (as measured by GDP) nearly doubled from $110B to $190B. Now given that the BDS project is based on their activity having economic consequence for the Jewish state, the takeaway from this chart seems to be that such consequence has been an explosion of growth in the Israeli economy.
Now no doubt some divestniks will cry foul and insist that their “movement” is concentrated outside of Israel and is based on getting individuals and organizations to stop buying Israeli goods or investing in Israeli companies (or in companies that in some way benefit Israel). In which case, the numbers that would be more relevant would be Israel exports, not GNP. While this information was harder to obtain based on a US dollar metric, the following table (based approximately on constant 2000 Israeli Sheckls) shows a trend similar to GDP growth:
In other words, Israeli exports are growing rapidly and fueling the hot Israeli economy that the boycotters have spent the better part of a decade working tirelessly to bring to its knees. And as far as divestment (i.e., stopping the flow of investment dollars into Israel) goes, as has been recently documented the European venture capital markets currently invest more in Israel than they do in any single European country. In other words, even in Europe (which has been the target of even more aggressive boycott and divestment activities than the US) the BDS formula that translates investment and divestment into political support indicates overwhelming enthusiasm for the Jewish state.
Now I suppose the divestment crew can always retreat to the unstated fact that the whole BDS enterprise is really a propaganda exercise, more concerned with getting their anti-Israel narrative made part of the public record within companies, schools, churches, unions and other institutions targeted by divestment activists. If that’s the case, the goal is BDS could be said to not be immediate economic punishment, but a gradual erosion of public support for Israel which may someday lead to effective boycotts, divestment programs or actual sanctions a la South Africa.
If that’s the case, the last numbers the BDS crew has to deal with are these ones:
Yes, as it turns out, after nearly ten years of BDS-related propaganda targeting Israel’s most important ally, the United States, support for Israel has grown almost 20 percentage points.
It’s easy to get lost in the rhetoric of accusation and counter-accusation, claims of success and fraud, questioning of motives, etc. that so-much characterizes the debate over BDS. But when you simply look at the numbers, and take as granted the causal connection between economics and political support the boycotters insist we must do, it’s hard to find a movement that has been more counter-productive to its own aims than boycott, divestment and sanctions.
After a decade of tireless efforts on the part of champions in the cause of BDS, Israel has become more economically successful (wildly so), with exports from and investment in the Jewish state growing rapidly and showing no signs of slowing. And despite (or possibly because) of their non-stop attempts to insert the Arab-Israeli dispute into every civic institution in the land, general public support for Israel is today at an all-time high.
Which leaves we supporters of Israel with an interesting conundrum. Should we continue to fight against BDS or simply stand back and let a movement so successful in shooting itself in the foot continue to fuel the success of the Jewish state?
Discuss…
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Now They've Done It: JCPA/JCRC vs. BDS
Some interesting news out of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) last week. By a unanimous vote, the organization decided to confront the issue of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), and urged the constituency of the organization (which includes Jewish Community Relations Councils across the country) to make thoughtful but forceful confrontation with the issue a top priority.
As I had a small role in the drafting of this resolution, I thought it might be valuable to let you, my reader, know something about its significance. JCRCs form the backbone of Jewish community life in many parts of the country, especially with regard to interaction between Jewish groups and the wider world. Outreach to local government officials, minority groups and religious organizations frequently flows through a local JCRC.
In general, JCPA/JCRCs tend to compartmentalize between domestic and foreign-policy positions, focusing on what they refer to as “social justice” issues (such as healthcare and civil rights) domestically while dividing their international activity between Israel-related matters (most recently how to deal with a nuclearizing Iran) and the needs of Jewish communities in the Diaspora (JCRC’s have played a particularly important role in revitalizing Jewish towns in the former Soviet bloc, for example).
These positions are not without their controversy (debate over gay marriage, for example, has divided more than one JCRC). But putting those debates aside, an important aspect of last week’s vote is that it marks an important fusion of often-disconnected domestic and foreign-affairs agendas. Simply put, the JCPA vote recognizes in no uncertain terms that BDS – the propaganda campaign to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the American public as well as internationally – is a domestic threat to American Jews and a threat to the State of Israel that must be confronted and defeated.
As people who have been following this blog know, BDS has always been more about noise than actual success. In fact, during the last decade when BDS has been the strategy of choice among Israel’s opponents, support for the Jewish state as well as economic success of that Jewish state have both skyrocketed, attesting to the enduring failure of boycott and divestment as an actual economic threat.
But the wider Jewish community now recognizes that as a propaganda threat, BDS must be challenged head on. While it’s easy to mock and ridicule a “movement” that has accomplished so little after so much effort, we should also not stop confronting it (a confrontation that will include continued ridicule of its pretenses and fiascos) until the boycott/divestment does what Israel haters always do once a decade: realize their latest campaign has been a flop, slink away to lick their wounds before coming up with another nasty strategy to inflict on the public for another decade.
What does this mean for American Jews? Well, at the very least it means that the fight against BDS is now on the radar and part of the mainstream Jewish agenda (always a good thing, especially after divestment took people largely by surprise 7-8 years ago). Among other things, this means that activists working on local campaigns can point to the unanimous JCPA resolution when trying to get the support of local synagogues, Hillels or other community organizations.
And how about the BDSers? Well no doubt they will declare the fact that JCPA has noticed them enough to pass a resolution condemning their activity as yet another triumph (it’s hard to find anything that happens anywhere that the boycotters don’t consider a victory). Yes, the noise level of BDS has finally reached the point where mainstream Jewish organizations are no longer ignoring it. But as I’ve said before, considering that a success is similar to a loud drunk measuring his sexual prowess by how many women tell him to piss off in a single night.
Having spent years screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their metaphorical privates around in order to catch someone’s notice, the divestment crew can hardly complain once last week’s vote turns into actions that continue to ensure BDSers ongoing reputation as a L-O-S-E-R.
As I had a small role in the drafting of this resolution, I thought it might be valuable to let you, my reader, know something about its significance. JCRCs form the backbone of Jewish community life in many parts of the country, especially with regard to interaction between Jewish groups and the wider world. Outreach to local government officials, minority groups and religious organizations frequently flows through a local JCRC.
In general, JCPA/JCRCs tend to compartmentalize between domestic and foreign-policy positions, focusing on what they refer to as “social justice” issues (such as healthcare and civil rights) domestically while dividing their international activity between Israel-related matters (most recently how to deal with a nuclearizing Iran) and the needs of Jewish communities in the Diaspora (JCRC’s have played a particularly important role in revitalizing Jewish towns in the former Soviet bloc, for example).
These positions are not without their controversy (debate over gay marriage, for example, has divided more than one JCRC). But putting those debates aside, an important aspect of last week’s vote is that it marks an important fusion of often-disconnected domestic and foreign-affairs agendas. Simply put, the JCPA vote recognizes in no uncertain terms that BDS – the propaganda campaign to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the American public as well as internationally – is a domestic threat to American Jews and a threat to the State of Israel that must be confronted and defeated.
As people who have been following this blog know, BDS has always been more about noise than actual success. In fact, during the last decade when BDS has been the strategy of choice among Israel’s opponents, support for the Jewish state as well as economic success of that Jewish state have both skyrocketed, attesting to the enduring failure of boycott and divestment as an actual economic threat.
But the wider Jewish community now recognizes that as a propaganda threat, BDS must be challenged head on. While it’s easy to mock and ridicule a “movement” that has accomplished so little after so much effort, we should also not stop confronting it (a confrontation that will include continued ridicule of its pretenses and fiascos) until the boycott/divestment does what Israel haters always do once a decade: realize their latest campaign has been a flop, slink away to lick their wounds before coming up with another nasty strategy to inflict on the public for another decade.
What does this mean for American Jews? Well, at the very least it means that the fight against BDS is now on the radar and part of the mainstream Jewish agenda (always a good thing, especially after divestment took people largely by surprise 7-8 years ago). Among other things, this means that activists working on local campaigns can point to the unanimous JCPA resolution when trying to get the support of local synagogues, Hillels or other community organizations.
And how about the BDSers? Well no doubt they will declare the fact that JCPA has noticed them enough to pass a resolution condemning their activity as yet another triumph (it’s hard to find anything that happens anywhere that the boycotters don’t consider a victory). Yes, the noise level of BDS has finally reached the point where mainstream Jewish organizations are no longer ignoring it. But as I’ve said before, considering that a success is similar to a loud drunk measuring his sexual prowess by how many women tell him to piss off in a single night.
Having spent years screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their metaphorical privates around in order to catch someone’s notice, the divestment crew can hardly complain once last week’s vote turns into actions that continue to ensure BDSers ongoing reputation as a L-O-S-E-R.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Speaking of Apartheid
Given that the organizers of this week's so-called "Israel Apartheid Week" (actually two weeks - they can't even tell the truth when saying the word "week") has dedicated itself to my obsession, BDS, I thought I'd cross-post something from my pal Sol's site here. So, without further ado...
Speaking of Apartheid
Students who will be exposed this week to the so-called "Israel Apartheid Week" need to understand that the entire framework behind the Israel-Apartheid accusation is based on a cover up.
During the 1980s when the Apartheid government of South Africa needed 15 million tons of oil to fuel its military and its economy of repression, virtually all of that oil was imported to Apartheid South Africa from the Middle East. South Africa paid a premium – in gold mined by black slave labor – for that oil, the lifeblood of their racist regime. As the Kenya Daily Nation said at the time "Arabs are buying South African gold like hotcakes, thus helping to sustain that country’s abominable policy of Apartheid."
It was during this period that the accusation that Israel was an "Apartheid State" was born, an accusation designed to throw the unknowing off the track as to who was truly oiling the wheels of Apartheid.
Flash forward to today when organizations like Hamas regularly incite genocidal hatred, yet simultaneously accuse Israelis of doing what they openly advocate (at least in Arabic). For these organizations, the legal segregation of Jews from the rest of the world (their own version of global Apartheid best exemplified by their so-called "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" or BDS program) is of less interest than outright extermination.
Those who join in the activities surrounding Israel-Apartheid Week in the name of devotion to human rights seem to have adopted intentional or unintentional ignorance regarding who really practices Apartheid in the Middle East today. Repression of women (or gender Apartheid) is enshrined in national and even religious law in one Arab country after another. Brutality against homosexuals (or sexual Apartheid) has been behind legalized murder of scores of gays and lesbians across the Muslim world. The repression of religious minorities (or religious Apartheid) is considered legal (even sacred) by those who accuse Israel of repression and racism. And speaking of racism, the practice of slavery directed against Black Africans still finds a home in the 21th century in Sudan, a nation which is a proud member of and protected by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
And so the cover up of who truly supports and practices Apartheid continues behind an incessant propaganda campaign directed against the only country in the Middle East that has free speech, free elections, an independent judiciary, human rights for women and homosexuals, and the most varied population of racial and ethnic types in the world: Israel.
Unless and until those behind this month’s Israel Apartheid Week’s activities take the time to explain these contradictions, students are free to assume that everything taking place on campus this week and next are simply exercises in low-rent propaganda based on Apartheid Week advocates’ assumption that students are nothing more than a bunch of ignorant suckers.
Note to Apartheid Week’s organizers: We’re not!
Speaking of Apartheid
Students who will be exposed this week to the so-called "Israel Apartheid Week" need to understand that the entire framework behind the Israel-Apartheid accusation is based on a cover up.
During the 1980s when the Apartheid government of South Africa needed 15 million tons of oil to fuel its military and its economy of repression, virtually all of that oil was imported to Apartheid South Africa from the Middle East. South Africa paid a premium – in gold mined by black slave labor – for that oil, the lifeblood of their racist regime. As the Kenya Daily Nation said at the time "Arabs are buying South African gold like hotcakes, thus helping to sustain that country’s abominable policy of Apartheid."
It was during this period that the accusation that Israel was an "Apartheid State" was born, an accusation designed to throw the unknowing off the track as to who was truly oiling the wheels of Apartheid.
Flash forward to today when organizations like Hamas regularly incite genocidal hatred, yet simultaneously accuse Israelis of doing what they openly advocate (at least in Arabic). For these organizations, the legal segregation of Jews from the rest of the world (their own version of global Apartheid best exemplified by their so-called "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" or BDS program) is of less interest than outright extermination.
Those who join in the activities surrounding Israel-Apartheid Week in the name of devotion to human rights seem to have adopted intentional or unintentional ignorance regarding who really practices Apartheid in the Middle East today. Repression of women (or gender Apartheid) is enshrined in national and even religious law in one Arab country after another. Brutality against homosexuals (or sexual Apartheid) has been behind legalized murder of scores of gays and lesbians across the Muslim world. The repression of religious minorities (or religious Apartheid) is considered legal (even sacred) by those who accuse Israel of repression and racism. And speaking of racism, the practice of slavery directed against Black Africans still finds a home in the 21th century in Sudan, a nation which is a proud member of and protected by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
And so the cover up of who truly supports and practices Apartheid continues behind an incessant propaganda campaign directed against the only country in the Middle East that has free speech, free elections, an independent judiciary, human rights for women and homosexuals, and the most varied population of racial and ethnic types in the world: Israel.
Unless and until those behind this month’s Israel Apartheid Week’s activities take the time to explain these contradictions, students are free to assume that everything taking place on campus this week and next are simply exercises in low-rent propaganda based on Apartheid Week advocates’ assumption that students are nothing more than a bunch of ignorant suckers.
Note to Apartheid Week’s organizers: We’re not!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Giving BDS the Fingers
A recent commenter left a note which struggled with a central question many of us deal with in our activist lives, namely: how do we contend with a movement like BDS which is perfectly comfortable bending the truth and shredding the rules of propriety to get its way?
Should we become like them and try to exploit the civic and religious organizations to which we belong, dragging them into the Middle East conflict for our benefit, regardless of the pain that might cause other people? Should we infiltrate and trash other people’s cultural events, assuming that our political projects trump every other imaginable human need? Should we throw pies at anti-Israel speakers or assault them verbally (or even violently) and then hide behind rhetoric that says destroying other people’s ability to be heard is a matter of our free speech rights?
The thing is, every Israel supporter I’ve ever dealt with just does not have it in him or her to behave in the same selfish, irresponsible and dishonest way that Israel’s attackers often do. And I don’t think this is a bad thing. Yes, it means that we frequently have to respond to the other side’s nonsense rather than take the initiative ourselves. But if you look at the state of Israel (free, successful, united on the big things) vs. it’s opponents (unfree, failing in all possible measures, murderously divided), you begin to see that refusing to play by the rules of civic society comes at a very high cost.
Which is not to say that we can’t take the initiative ourselves and have fun doing it, especially when confronted by the same old dreary assaults that Israel’s demonizers trot out year after year after year, such as the shrill but discredited BDS movement and the long-in-the-tooth Israel Apartheid Week (yawn).
Take the latter for example (please!). For, as it turns out, those Apartheid Week clowns have scheduled their campaign right smack-dab at the beginning of Buycott Israel Month!
Buycott Month is actually a little project cooked up by some local activists working together with the hugely successful Buycott Israel program in Canada. As you can see from the Success Stories section of the Buycott Month site, there’s not been a single instance of boycott directed at Israeli products that didn’t end up turning into a massive sellout of Israeli goods and an equally massive humiliation for the forces of BDS.
With Buycott Month, we decided to ratchet the fun level up another notch, asking people to send us their own stories of buying and enjoying Israeli products, breaking a boycott, making an investment or taking part in a counter-protest of Apartheid or BDS activity during the month of March. And tying these tales together will be the “Finger-B,” (shown above) a gesture you can make to let the world know that you’re not just enjoying what Israel has to offer, but giving BDS “The Fingers” in the process.
The site provides an easy way to send in your pictures and stories, and it would be great if we can fill it up with 20-30 or more tales during the month of March.
So stop by, act up, spread the word, tell us your story and – most of all – remember, always remember that we’re not only right compared to the endless wrongs of BDS, but that we also know how to do our activists activities with panache.
Should we become like them and try to exploit the civic and religious organizations to which we belong, dragging them into the Middle East conflict for our benefit, regardless of the pain that might cause other people? Should we infiltrate and trash other people’s cultural events, assuming that our political projects trump every other imaginable human need? Should we throw pies at anti-Israel speakers or assault them verbally (or even violently) and then hide behind rhetoric that says destroying other people’s ability to be heard is a matter of our free speech rights?
The thing is, every Israel supporter I’ve ever dealt with just does not have it in him or her to behave in the same selfish, irresponsible and dishonest way that Israel’s attackers often do. And I don’t think this is a bad thing. Yes, it means that we frequently have to respond to the other side’s nonsense rather than take the initiative ourselves. But if you look at the state of Israel (free, successful, united on the big things) vs. it’s opponents (unfree, failing in all possible measures, murderously divided), you begin to see that refusing to play by the rules of civic society comes at a very high cost.
Which is not to say that we can’t take the initiative ourselves and have fun doing it, especially when confronted by the same old dreary assaults that Israel’s demonizers trot out year after year after year, such as the shrill but discredited BDS movement and the long-in-the-tooth Israel Apartheid Week (yawn).
Take the latter for example (please!). For, as it turns out, those Apartheid Week clowns have scheduled their campaign right smack-dab at the beginning of Buycott Israel Month!
Buycott Month is actually a little project cooked up by some local activists working together with the hugely successful Buycott Israel program in Canada. As you can see from the Success Stories section of the Buycott Month site, there’s not been a single instance of boycott directed at Israeli products that didn’t end up turning into a massive sellout of Israeli goods and an equally massive humiliation for the forces of BDS.
With Buycott Month, we decided to ratchet the fun level up another notch, asking people to send us their own stories of buying and enjoying Israeli products, breaking a boycott, making an investment or taking part in a counter-protest of Apartheid or BDS activity during the month of March. And tying these tales together will be the “Finger-B,” (shown above) a gesture you can make to let the world know that you’re not just enjoying what Israel has to offer, but giving BDS “The Fingers” in the process.
The site provides an easy way to send in your pictures and stories, and it would be great if we can fill it up with 20-30 or more tales during the month of March.
So stop by, act up, spread the word, tell us your story and – most of all – remember, always remember that we’re not only right compared to the endless wrongs of BDS, but that we also know how to do our activists activities with panache.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Descend Tutu
My son started taking ballet lessons about a year ago. I suspect he might not continue it forever, but I can attest to the fact that all of his physical activities (most recently his skiing ability) have improved markedly since he first donned the leotard, and he’s really enjoyed the professional ballet performances he’s gone to in the last twelve months.
Which is why I’m glad we don’t live in Vermont.
A bit of a non-sequitor? Well consider this. Last weekend, the BDS “community” in Burliington, VT seems to have had a revelation. Yes, their attempts to get colleges and universities to divest over the last ten years have ended in nothing but failure. Yes, the Mainline Protestant churches that once flirted with divestment have since abandoned BDS, with democratic majorities of church members turning down divestment by margins of 10-20:1. Yes, every progressive community in North America where BDS has been proposed has rejected those proposals, reducing the boycotters to creating pretend victories in the absence of real ones. But the Divestniks still have one ace up their sleeves: They can still behave like assholes.
In the present case, this assholiness manifested itself in a series of protests in several American cities where the Israeli Ballet Company was performing. In Worcester, MA and Brooklyn, NY this took the form of protests and a little street theater outside the avenues where the group was visiting. But in Vermont, the anti-Israel partisans had the “courage” to stand up during the performance, wave their banners, shout their slogans and live to blog about their “brave and subversive” assault on The Man (or, in this case, several men wearing tights).
If one had to invent a form of political activism that promised zero risk and negative results, you’d be hard pressed to come up with anything better than badgering the attendees of a ballet performance.
As a physical, unspoken art form, dance demands a certain quiet appreciation from audience members, and the long, somewhat rarified history of ballet means those who attend are more likely than most to understand and value the virtues of respectful, appreciative silence. Which is why jumping up and shouting “Free Palestine” in a crowded ballet theater demonstrates nothing so much as the BDSers single most valuable asset: their utter lack of propriety.
Why is it that so many anti-Israel propaganda events involve shredding the fabric of civil behavior? Activist teachers dragging propaganda organizations into their classrooms; churches being morally blackmailed into lending their name to political stances completely out of touch with member’s desires; the trashing of artistic events; the booing of pro-Israel speakers off-stage; these are the hallmarks of BDS as we enter the first year of its second decade.
No doubt, those who choose to behave in this manner can construct a self-serving chain of logic that justifies their activity. The Israeli government subsidizes the country’s ballet. Israelis want their country to be known for something other than the Arab-Israeli conflict. So, QED, those who chose to shout down ballet dancers are simply ensuring that “The Conflict” stay front and center whenever Israel is involved in any conversation.
But if the personal (or, in this case, the cultural) must always be political, what limits does that place on anyone’s behavior? And can anyone follow this twisted line of reasoning? Should I be allowed to stand below a mosque minaret with a megaphone, shouting condemnations of Islam’s treatment of women and homosexuals whenever the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer? How about showing up at a Muslim circumcision ceremony, waving a banner and screaming at the top of my lungs the moment the knife is hitting flesh?
Needless to say, the type of disruptive activity that happened in Vermont (and the mental gymnastics needed to justify it) is pretty much a one -way street. For those that have dedicated their lives to delegitimizing the Jewish state, nothing matters more than their fantasy self perception as edgy and subversive warriors dedicated to “direct action” (even if – or especially if – such action is directed against people who are guaranteed to never return the favor).
Which is why I’m glad we don’t live in Vermont.
A bit of a non-sequitor? Well consider this. Last weekend, the BDS “community” in Burliington, VT seems to have had a revelation. Yes, their attempts to get colleges and universities to divest over the last ten years have ended in nothing but failure. Yes, the Mainline Protestant churches that once flirted with divestment have since abandoned BDS, with democratic majorities of church members turning down divestment by margins of 10-20:1. Yes, every progressive community in North America where BDS has been proposed has rejected those proposals, reducing the boycotters to creating pretend victories in the absence of real ones. But the Divestniks still have one ace up their sleeves: They can still behave like assholes.
In the present case, this assholiness manifested itself in a series of protests in several American cities where the Israeli Ballet Company was performing. In Worcester, MA and Brooklyn, NY this took the form of protests and a little street theater outside the avenues where the group was visiting. But in Vermont, the anti-Israel partisans had the “courage” to stand up during the performance, wave their banners, shout their slogans and live to blog about their “brave and subversive” assault on The Man (or, in this case, several men wearing tights).
If one had to invent a form of political activism that promised zero risk and negative results, you’d be hard pressed to come up with anything better than badgering the attendees of a ballet performance.
As a physical, unspoken art form, dance demands a certain quiet appreciation from audience members, and the long, somewhat rarified history of ballet means those who attend are more likely than most to understand and value the virtues of respectful, appreciative silence. Which is why jumping up and shouting “Free Palestine” in a crowded ballet theater demonstrates nothing so much as the BDSers single most valuable asset: their utter lack of propriety.
Why is it that so many anti-Israel propaganda events involve shredding the fabric of civil behavior? Activist teachers dragging propaganda organizations into their classrooms; churches being morally blackmailed into lending their name to political stances completely out of touch with member’s desires; the trashing of artistic events; the booing of pro-Israel speakers off-stage; these are the hallmarks of BDS as we enter the first year of its second decade.
No doubt, those who choose to behave in this manner can construct a self-serving chain of logic that justifies their activity. The Israeli government subsidizes the country’s ballet. Israelis want their country to be known for something other than the Arab-Israeli conflict. So, QED, those who chose to shout down ballet dancers are simply ensuring that “The Conflict” stay front and center whenever Israel is involved in any conversation.
But if the personal (or, in this case, the cultural) must always be political, what limits does that place on anyone’s behavior? And can anyone follow this twisted line of reasoning? Should I be allowed to stand below a mosque minaret with a megaphone, shouting condemnations of Islam’s treatment of women and homosexuals whenever the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer? How about showing up at a Muslim circumcision ceremony, waving a banner and screaming at the top of my lungs the moment the knife is hitting flesh?
Needless to say, the type of disruptive activity that happened in Vermont (and the mental gymnastics needed to justify it) is pretty much a one -way street. For those that have dedicated their lives to delegitimizing the Jewish state, nothing matters more than their fantasy self perception as edgy and subversive warriors dedicated to “direct action” (even if – or especially if – such action is directed against people who are guaranteed to never return the favor).
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Results
Apologies to my reader for the quiet around here the last week. In addition to vacation, I’ve been working on a little project that should be of interest to the anti-BDS community which I’ll be writing about sometime next week.
In the meantime, some quick thoughts about a topic I’ve mentioned here before: how to best measure the success (or failure) of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) “movement.”
In thinking about this subject, I was reminded of the one and only performance review I ever received at work. Having led my own company for 20+ years, I was anxious to be on the receiving end of one of the external reviews I had been giving others for so long once I sold my company and now had a (what’s the word for it?) oh yes, a “boss.”
It helped that I was growing fond of this relatively new supervisor, and was sure she’d be impressed by the fact that my division was the only one in the company that had managed to hit its numbers in the midst of the 2008 economic meltdown.
Imagine my surprise when that achievement was met with a grade of “Meets Expectations.” Her explanation was simple: we had promised to hit a certain threshold of revenue, we accomplished that goal, and thus we met the expectation we had set for ourselves. The fact that we had done so under extremely challenging economic conditions, and were the only group to have accomplished this goal in the company did not change the fact that the results we had obtained were no more than what we had set out to do at the start of the year.
I think about this lesson in consistency and the importance of measureable results when looking at how the BDS movement not only asks it be graded on a steep curve, but also demands that it be allowed to constantly change the terms under which its’ success is to be judged.
After all, the BDS “movement” started close to ten years ago at the now notorious Durban I conference. And during that period, it certainly achieved some early successes (raising the profile of BDS on college campuses and getting divestment passed within Mainline Protestant churches), only to see those successes collapse as colleges across the country rejected their divestment calls, and churches voted down divestment by margins of 95-100%.
So what did divestment advocates do? They simply erased those troubling first five years of their project, and now claim that all of their activity was inspired by “a request from Palestinian Civic Society,” by which they mean the PACBI organization which began in 2005. Now I’ve have issues with PACBI which I’ve discussed in detail here and here, but even putting those aside, a restart of BDS in the second half of the last decade turns out to be an ideal way to flush half a decade of failure down the memory hole.
Divest-niks also seem to want to be given not an E, but an A+++ for effort rather than be graded based on any actual success.
They spend a decade calling for colleges and universities to divest. None do. But then the BDSers insist their movement be judged by the fact that they still have people on the ground pushing their project after so many years of failure.
Boycotts target Israeli products in the US and Canada. Counter-boycott activities drive up sales of Israeli goods by hundreds of thousands of percentage points. And yet the Internet is strewn with stories, photos and videos of boycotters hailing not any achievement, but simply their own existence. And whenever they do announce (or, more frequently, thunder) a “triumph” (like Hampshire College), more often than not this turns out to be a complete fraud.
When you add it all up, the BDS crowd seems to want to be given credit for simply talking, writing and doing stuff, in hopes that no one will peer behind their curtain of words and hand-waving and notice what a bust their “movement” has been, even after a decade of intense effort.
So here’s a challenge the divestment crew can take up if they want to prove the potency of their squalid little project. In December of last year, Israeli exports were up 30%, representing billions of dollars in new income for the Jewish state. Now by the boycotters own standards (which says economic activity translates to political support), the world loves Israel several billion dollars more than it did in November of last year (when the BDS movement was telling us all their support was exploding worldwide). That being the case, perhaps the divestment crew can tell us what they accomplished in December to match this figure. Comments remain open for their input.
In the meantime, some quick thoughts about a topic I’ve mentioned here before: how to best measure the success (or failure) of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) “movement.”
In thinking about this subject, I was reminded of the one and only performance review I ever received at work. Having led my own company for 20+ years, I was anxious to be on the receiving end of one of the external reviews I had been giving others for so long once I sold my company and now had a (what’s the word for it?) oh yes, a “boss.”
It helped that I was growing fond of this relatively new supervisor, and was sure she’d be impressed by the fact that my division was the only one in the company that had managed to hit its numbers in the midst of the 2008 economic meltdown.
Imagine my surprise when that achievement was met with a grade of “Meets Expectations.” Her explanation was simple: we had promised to hit a certain threshold of revenue, we accomplished that goal, and thus we met the expectation we had set for ourselves. The fact that we had done so under extremely challenging economic conditions, and were the only group to have accomplished this goal in the company did not change the fact that the results we had obtained were no more than what we had set out to do at the start of the year.
I think about this lesson in consistency and the importance of measureable results when looking at how the BDS movement not only asks it be graded on a steep curve, but also demands that it be allowed to constantly change the terms under which its’ success is to be judged.
After all, the BDS “movement” started close to ten years ago at the now notorious Durban I conference. And during that period, it certainly achieved some early successes (raising the profile of BDS on college campuses and getting divestment passed within Mainline Protestant churches), only to see those successes collapse as colleges across the country rejected their divestment calls, and churches voted down divestment by margins of 95-100%.
So what did divestment advocates do? They simply erased those troubling first five years of their project, and now claim that all of their activity was inspired by “a request from Palestinian Civic Society,” by which they mean the PACBI organization which began in 2005. Now I’ve have issues with PACBI which I’ve discussed in detail here and here, but even putting those aside, a restart of BDS in the second half of the last decade turns out to be an ideal way to flush half a decade of failure down the memory hole.
Divest-niks also seem to want to be given not an E, but an A+++ for effort rather than be graded based on any actual success.
They spend a decade calling for colleges and universities to divest. None do. But then the BDSers insist their movement be judged by the fact that they still have people on the ground pushing their project after so many years of failure.
Boycotts target Israeli products in the US and Canada. Counter-boycott activities drive up sales of Israeli goods by hundreds of thousands of percentage points. And yet the Internet is strewn with stories, photos and videos of boycotters hailing not any achievement, but simply their own existence. And whenever they do announce (or, more frequently, thunder) a “triumph” (like Hampshire College), more often than not this turns out to be a complete fraud.
When you add it all up, the BDS crowd seems to want to be given credit for simply talking, writing and doing stuff, in hopes that no one will peer behind their curtain of words and hand-waving and notice what a bust their “movement” has been, even after a decade of intense effort.
So here’s a challenge the divestment crew can take up if they want to prove the potency of their squalid little project. In December of last year, Israeli exports were up 30%, representing billions of dollars in new income for the Jewish state. Now by the boycotters own standards (which says economic activity translates to political support), the world loves Israel several billion dollars more than it did in November of last year (when the BDS movement was telling us all their support was exploding worldwide). That being the case, perhaps the divestment crew can tell us what they accomplished in December to match this figure. Comments remain open for their input.
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