About two lifetimes ago, when I was a journalist covering Margaret Thatcher’s third election victory in Great Britain, I remember tuning into the annual conference of the Trade Union Council (or TUC), the umbrella group which encompasses most of the British union movement (an even bigger tent than America’s AFL-CIO).
A vote was cast and the speaker announced the results: 6,453,211 for and 3,290,150 against (or something thereabouts). “That must be one big conference hall!” I said to someone, before they corrected their Yank, rube colleague by pointing out that it’s the union leaders who attend the conference and their votes are tallied as the vote of the entire union they represent. In theory, these leaders will only do what the membership wants, but in practice there is little to prevent a decision made on the floor of the TUC as being “voted on” by millions of workers who have never even been presented with the issue.
Thoughts of this structure came flooding back to me when I heard that the BDS crowd in the UK had finally, after several years of failed attempts, gotten the British Trade Union Council to pass some type of resolution supportive of a boycott of Israeli goods.
The vote was highly qualified, and only achieved after a huge amount of rancor and back-room politics, but it would be unfair to call this one a hoax, like the Hampshire College or TIAA-CREF frauds that have characterized most BDS “successes” this year. As I’ve mentioned before, Europe is different than the US with regard to support for divest-from-Israel projects (and attitudes towards the Arab-Israeli conflict in general). In fact, I’ve often wondered why calls for “even-handedness” in this conflict are always directed at countries (like the US) that are generally supportive of Israel, rather than nations or organizations (such as the UN) whose un-even-handed support for just one side of the conflict (and not the Israeli one) are never asked to budge in their beliefs.
Back to the TUC vote, this will no doubt be used by divestment activists around the world in the coming months as “proof” that British labor stands against Israel (with the corollary that other unions and similar institutions should do the same and boycott the Jewish state). And while those battling boycotts abroad can point to the qualified and non-binding nature of the TUC’s boycott call, we cannot make the case that BDS has not worked its way into TUC policy (at least between now and when the group meets again in twelve months).
In this respect, the TUC is not like Hampshire College (which BDS activists claimed was a supporter when it actually wasn’t). Rather, they resemble the Presbyterian Church in the US (PCUSA) which found itself making the same mistake just made by the TUC last week (Britain tending to follow American fashion trends about five years late).
Like the PCUSA, the TUC had divestment forced onto their agenda by a small, militant group (in this case the Fireman’s union of all people) with a partisan agenda, but no actual stake in the Middle East conflict. And like the PCUSA, they felt that a measure that included mild boycott recommendations represented a compromise between opposing request of the membership. Like PCUSA, they will soon be surprised that their efforts at compromise with single-issue radicals will be portrayed around the world as “the TUC agrees that Israel is an Apartheid state.” And like the PCUSA, they will have to deal with the anger of “comrades” (such as Britain’s Labor Party leadership and fellow unionists in Israel, the US and even Europe) over what they’ve done not to Israel, but to the labor movement.
It’s interesting that declining organization (such as the shrinking and aging Mainline Protestant churches or the struggling union movement in the UK) seem to be the ones that grasp at the Middle East conflict as a way to make themselves seem internationally relevant. For the truth is that these attempts to portray partisan hostility towards Israel as an example of solidarity (with fellow Christians or fellow union members) - while ignoring the plight of those same comrades in places like Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia (not to mention Gaza) - simply points out the hypocrisy and irrelevance of those who, like the TUC, managed to be tricked into thinking their deeply immoral position is an example of virtue.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
A commenter correctly corrected me with regard to the Africa-Israel Group (which I have been inadvertently calling Israel-Africa). She also pointed me to one of those “divestment-is-on-the-march, wind-at-its-back” stories which noted that protests against the company (which I’ll now call A-I) have actually been taking place for several years. This, I suppose, was meant to counter my assertion that the call by 50 TIAA-CREF members to divest from the Israeli company came after the company had already divested, and thus could not be the cause of that decision.
Given that the Adalah group (the organization which organized the push to get TIAA-CREF to divest from Africa-Israel as a form of political protest) has already admitted that its call took place after CREF’s financial decision to divest had already been made, and given that TIAA-CREF itself has made it absolutely clear that its decision to sell A-I shares had nothing to do with politics (either its own, or the politics of outside protestors), I think we can pretty much put the “TIAA-CREF has joined the BDS campaign” story to bed.
But wasn’t Africa-Israel already controversial before the TIAA-CREF decision? And couldn’t some of the general BDS protest against the company have affected CREF’s investment choices earlier this year? Here we have entered the realm of what is known as a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. This translates roughly to “before, thus caused by.” In other words, it makes the case that since one event preceded another, then the first event must have caused the second.
If you’ll pardon my reduction ad absurdum, this is the fallacy behind the argument that the cock crowing causes the sunrise. No one can argue that a cock’s crow preceded the sun coming up, but to prove that this noise is responsible for the sun rising one must prove (not simply assert) causality (ideally providing a mechanism whereby one event triggers another).
Clearly, Africa-Israel (like many Israeli companies or US and European companies doing business in Israel) has been subject to harassment by boycotters for years, with calls to divest from Israel being broadcast on and off for decades. And during that period, some investors have both bought and sold stocks in these targeted companies.
In the case of Africa-Israel, we now know that Adalah’s specific protest could not have caused TIAA-CREF’s sell-off (unless one is ready to believe the argument that a later event caused an earlier one). My commenter has asserted that other protests took place before TIAA-CREF divested and that this provides proof that CREF’s decisions were BDS-related and political. But could there be another, simpler explanation? Might the fact that A-I’s shares plummeted in price due to the company’s huge debt be a more likely explanation as to why TIAA-CREF and other investors have rid themselves of A-I shares (many via automatic indexing mechanisms)?
It strikes me that much of what passes for BDS “success” in 2009 falls under the category of post hoc fallacy, frequently picked up by an uninformed media. Students ask Hampshire College to divest from Israel. Hampshire College changes its divestment portfolio in ways that impact some (but not all) Israel-related investments. Ergo “Hampshire has divested” (disregarding the fact that the college maintains investments in other Israeli companies and has said specifically that its choices had nothing to do with Israel). People picket Motorola. Motorola sells a business unit to Israel. Thus Motorola has followed BDS dictates (regardless of the fact that plans to sell the unit were already in the works before protests ramped up, and that Motorola has made it clear that this was a simple business decision to sell an orphan unit to a partner). Etc., etc.
Now to be fair, I’ve made the assertion that a year of this type of fallacy laden fraud may represents a specific strategy by the BDS crowd to claim victory for decisions that had nothing to do with their efforts, all in an effort to manufacture momentum for a divestment movement that has been in retreat for the last five years. It remains to be seen if my argument of fraudulence following failure is a post hoc fallacy or simply a reasonable theory that requires further evidence to confirm.
Given that the Adalah group (the organization which organized the push to get TIAA-CREF to divest from Africa-Israel as a form of political protest) has already admitted that its call took place after CREF’s financial decision to divest had already been made, and given that TIAA-CREF itself has made it absolutely clear that its decision to sell A-I shares had nothing to do with politics (either its own, or the politics of outside protestors), I think we can pretty much put the “TIAA-CREF has joined the BDS campaign” story to bed.
But wasn’t Africa-Israel already controversial before the TIAA-CREF decision? And couldn’t some of the general BDS protest against the company have affected CREF’s investment choices earlier this year? Here we have entered the realm of what is known as a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. This translates roughly to “before, thus caused by.” In other words, it makes the case that since one event preceded another, then the first event must have caused the second.
If you’ll pardon my reduction ad absurdum, this is the fallacy behind the argument that the cock crowing causes the sunrise. No one can argue that a cock’s crow preceded the sun coming up, but to prove that this noise is responsible for the sun rising one must prove (not simply assert) causality (ideally providing a mechanism whereby one event triggers another).
Clearly, Africa-Israel (like many Israeli companies or US and European companies doing business in Israel) has been subject to harassment by boycotters for years, with calls to divest from Israel being broadcast on and off for decades. And during that period, some investors have both bought and sold stocks in these targeted companies.
In the case of Africa-Israel, we now know that Adalah’s specific protest could not have caused TIAA-CREF’s sell-off (unless one is ready to believe the argument that a later event caused an earlier one). My commenter has asserted that other protests took place before TIAA-CREF divested and that this provides proof that CREF’s decisions were BDS-related and political. But could there be another, simpler explanation? Might the fact that A-I’s shares plummeted in price due to the company’s huge debt be a more likely explanation as to why TIAA-CREF and other investors have rid themselves of A-I shares (many via automatic indexing mechanisms)?
It strikes me that much of what passes for BDS “success” in 2009 falls under the category of post hoc fallacy, frequently picked up by an uninformed media. Students ask Hampshire College to divest from Israel. Hampshire College changes its divestment portfolio in ways that impact some (but not all) Israel-related investments. Ergo “Hampshire has divested” (disregarding the fact that the college maintains investments in other Israeli companies and has said specifically that its choices had nothing to do with Israel). People picket Motorola. Motorola sells a business unit to Israel. Thus Motorola has followed BDS dictates (regardless of the fact that plans to sell the unit were already in the works before protests ramped up, and that Motorola has made it clear that this was a simple business decision to sell an orphan unit to a partner). Etc., etc.
Now to be fair, I’ve made the assertion that a year of this type of fallacy laden fraud may represents a specific strategy by the BDS crowd to claim victory for decisions that had nothing to do with their efforts, all in an effort to manufacture momentum for a divestment movement that has been in retreat for the last five years. It remains to be seen if my argument of fraudulence following failure is a post hoc fallacy or simply a reasonable theory that requires further evidence to confirm.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The divestment virus
Having spent quite a bit of time over the last five years tracking and, in some cases, battling those trying to mainstream boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, it’s interesting to note changes in divestment’s target list over the last several years.
When I first got into this game, divestment seemed like a genuine threat. The Presbyterian Church had just voted yes on a divestment resolution at its 2004 bi-annual conference, and many other Mainline Protestant churches were following suit. A divestment petition drive at Harvard and MIT created similar “copy cat” petition-driven divestment projects on campuses across the country. But it took divestment coming to my own home (at the time Somerville, MA) to make me realize that this virus had to be taken seriously.
Fortunately, a number of people took the issue seriously enough to do something about it. While many of us may have been asleep at the switch when divestment was plying its way into various well-known civic organizations, hoping desperately to be able to stuff the BDS mantra of “Israel is an Apartheid state” into the mouth of a famous school, church or city, we were able to quickly make up for lost time. I’d like to say that it was the effort of pro-Israel activists that turned the tide, but we soon discovered that the most powerful anti-divestment force out there were the members of the organizations divestment advocates were trying to subvert. Once members of a school, church of municipality became aware of what was being done in their name, they collectively gave BDS the heave-ho in some of the most lop-sided defeats I’ve ever seen in an organization.
Divestment was rejected by 95% of the Presbyterians, by 100% of the Methodists, by all of Somerville’s leadership. And at universities, anti-divestment petitions out-signatured pro-divestment ones by margins of 10:1. Since ’06 when divestment came off the agenda of the Mainline Protestant churches, it seemed like it would be all downhill for BDS from then on.
And, to a certain extent, it has. Just this year, two more divestment stalwarts (the UCC in Canada and Episcopalians in the US) added their names to the long list of people who wanted nothing to do with BDS. And divestment champions seemed to have to go further and further afield to find something they could characterize (or mis-characterize) as a victory.
Thus we find ourselves at an interesting juncture where divestment forces are trying to build momentum on the back of outright fraud (Hampshire, Motorola, TIAA-CREF), or on choices made not by institutions, but by individuals. Artists refusing to take part in relatively little known festivals (such as the recent dust up at the Toronto International Film Festival) seems to be tactic cropping up of late. This is understandable, given that it takes a lot less effort to get an individual to do something than an institution.
Yet even at this small scale, the BDS virus demonstrates its ability to do damage. In the case of the Toronto festival, one artist boycotted, divestment claimed a victory, sensible voices protested, Israeli films (the subject of the boycott) were sold out, and dozens of good people who thought they were created a welcoming cultural event instead ended up presiding over a political circus and found themselves cleaning up wreckage left from a BDS crew that had long since left town, laughing at yet another institution they’d suckered into their orbit.
I have little doubt that divestment will run its course, only to be replaced by a new tactic that, we can hope, will be equally unsuccessful. But between now and then, I can only sigh at the amount of pain the self-righteous champions of divestment will cause to countless civic organizations whose only crime is too much sincerity which prevents them from knowing they are being played.
When I first got into this game, divestment seemed like a genuine threat. The Presbyterian Church had just voted yes on a divestment resolution at its 2004 bi-annual conference, and many other Mainline Protestant churches were following suit. A divestment petition drive at Harvard and MIT created similar “copy cat” petition-driven divestment projects on campuses across the country. But it took divestment coming to my own home (at the time Somerville, MA) to make me realize that this virus had to be taken seriously.
Fortunately, a number of people took the issue seriously enough to do something about it. While many of us may have been asleep at the switch when divestment was plying its way into various well-known civic organizations, hoping desperately to be able to stuff the BDS mantra of “Israel is an Apartheid state” into the mouth of a famous school, church or city, we were able to quickly make up for lost time. I’d like to say that it was the effort of pro-Israel activists that turned the tide, but we soon discovered that the most powerful anti-divestment force out there were the members of the organizations divestment advocates were trying to subvert. Once members of a school, church of municipality became aware of what was being done in their name, they collectively gave BDS the heave-ho in some of the most lop-sided defeats I’ve ever seen in an organization.
Divestment was rejected by 95% of the Presbyterians, by 100% of the Methodists, by all of Somerville’s leadership. And at universities, anti-divestment petitions out-signatured pro-divestment ones by margins of 10:1. Since ’06 when divestment came off the agenda of the Mainline Protestant churches, it seemed like it would be all downhill for BDS from then on.
And, to a certain extent, it has. Just this year, two more divestment stalwarts (the UCC in Canada and Episcopalians in the US) added their names to the long list of people who wanted nothing to do with BDS. And divestment champions seemed to have to go further and further afield to find something they could characterize (or mis-characterize) as a victory.
Thus we find ourselves at an interesting juncture where divestment forces are trying to build momentum on the back of outright fraud (Hampshire, Motorola, TIAA-CREF), or on choices made not by institutions, but by individuals. Artists refusing to take part in relatively little known festivals (such as the recent dust up at the Toronto International Film Festival) seems to be tactic cropping up of late. This is understandable, given that it takes a lot less effort to get an individual to do something than an institution.
Yet even at this small scale, the BDS virus demonstrates its ability to do damage. In the case of the Toronto festival, one artist boycotted, divestment claimed a victory, sensible voices protested, Israeli films (the subject of the boycott) were sold out, and dozens of good people who thought they were created a welcoming cultural event instead ended up presiding over a political circus and found themselves cleaning up wreckage left from a BDS crew that had long since left town, laughing at yet another institution they’d suckered into their orbit.
I have little doubt that divestment will run its course, only to be replaced by a new tactic that, we can hope, will be equally unsuccessful. But between now and then, I can only sigh at the amount of pain the self-righteous champions of divestment will cause to countless civic organizations whose only crime is too much sincerity which prevents them from knowing they are being played.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
TIAA-CREF Divestment Hoax: Case Closed
Just to confirm the fraudulence of the “TIAA-CREF divested from Israel” storyline still making its way around the Internet, TIAA-CREF has issued a second press release clarifying that the sale of Israel-Africa shares was done months before the organization received any communication from divestment activists as part of a “routine part of the indexing investment process.”
That note about “the indexing investment process” makes claims that TIAA-CREF’s decision has anything to do with the policies of the Israeli government vis-à-vis settlements (or anything else) even more absurd. As any investor (which includes most of us) know, indexing is a process whereby a group (or “index”) of stocks is purchased based on a formula, with stocks in new companies added or removed, also based on a formula. The simplest case would be an S&P 500 Index fund which buys shares in every company on the S&P, selling (or “divesting”) those shares if the company in question is taken off the S&P, and adding shares in new companies that join.
Israel-Africa was part of an MSCI Emerging Market Index which TIAA CREF tracks. While fund managers usually hold their indexing formulas close to the vest, one would guess that Israel-Africa’s stock price and debt woes over the last year automatically placed them on a sell list. In other words, not only was the decision to “divest” in Israel-Africa not motivated by politics in any way, it looks like this was a decision that could have been made by a computer following MSCI’s indexing algorithm with no human decision making (political or otherwise) involved.
Just to add insult to injury, the press release informs us that “…TIAA-CREF funds and accounts had investments in companies in Israel and around the world” (including hundreds of millions invested in Israel, as of their June report).
If we were following the BDS rules, the headline should read: TIAA-CREF confirms its continued support for the Jewish state in the face of pressure by those calling for it to divest in Israel. That certainly comes closer to the truth than what’s being peddled online by a divestment “community” desperately seeking something they can pretend is a victory, in the face of nearly universal defeat here on planet earth.
That note about “the indexing investment process” makes claims that TIAA-CREF’s decision has anything to do with the policies of the Israeli government vis-à-vis settlements (or anything else) even more absurd. As any investor (which includes most of us) know, indexing is a process whereby a group (or “index”) of stocks is purchased based on a formula, with stocks in new companies added or removed, also based on a formula. The simplest case would be an S&P 500 Index fund which buys shares in every company on the S&P, selling (or “divesting”) those shares if the company in question is taken off the S&P, and adding shares in new companies that join.
Israel-Africa was part of an MSCI Emerging Market Index which TIAA CREF tracks. While fund managers usually hold their indexing formulas close to the vest, one would guess that Israel-Africa’s stock price and debt woes over the last year automatically placed them on a sell list. In other words, not only was the decision to “divest” in Israel-Africa not motivated by politics in any way, it looks like this was a decision that could have been made by a computer following MSCI’s indexing algorithm with no human decision making (political or otherwise) involved.
Just to add insult to injury, the press release informs us that “…TIAA-CREF funds and accounts had investments in companies in Israel and around the world” (including hundreds of millions invested in Israel, as of their June report).
If we were following the BDS rules, the headline should read: TIAA-CREF confirms its continued support for the Jewish state in the face of pressure by those calling for it to divest in Israel. That certainly comes closer to the truth than what’s being peddled online by a divestment “community” desperately seeking something they can pretend is a victory, in the face of nearly universal defeat here on planet earth.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
TIAA CREF Divestment Hoax – Are you seeing a pattern?
I don’t know how I missed it (the August doldrums I suppose), but the TIAA CREF divestment hoax turns out to have been the second time (at least) that BDSers have pulled the same stunt of trying to dress up normal, financial business decisions regarding the struggling Israel-Africa company into a story of major financial institutions caving in to the political demands of the divest-from-Israel crew.
While it is true that Israel-Africa company is involved with some small construction projects in controversial areas (such as Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood), it’s also true that the company announced a $340 million loss in Q2 of this year and was unsure how it was going to deal with $2 billion in outstanding debt. And, as you might guess, decisions by global financial institutions regarding whether to hold or sell Israel-Africa shares were being driven by the latter (financial) rather than the former (political) reasons.
Less than a month ago, it was the UK Investment firm Blackrock that was being touted by divestment champions as their latest and greatest win, claiming that the financial giant’s choice to shed its Israel-Africa shares was some kind of vindication of their BDS agenda. Needless to say, Blackrock firmly denied that their decision to sell shares in the struggling Israeli-Africa had anything to do with politics. This, apparently, did not prevent more press releases going out claiming another divestment “victory.” Nor did it prevent the BDS-niks from dipping into this well again by claiming another normal business decision (this time by TIAA CREF) to sell shares in a money-losing company was somehow done at the behest of divestment advocates.
One fraud (Hampshire) does not a trend make. Two frauds (Hampshire and Motorola) at least give us two dots to connect. But now we’re up to four dots (Hampshire, Motorola, Blackrock and TIAA CREF), not to mention the hilarious mis-interpretation of the words of the CEO of Caterpillar Tractor which clearly establishes not just a pattern, but the latest strategy of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions “movement.”
Having failed to get a single college or university to divest in the Jewish state, having lost their few attempts to win a divestment victory with municipalities and unions, and now having lost the support of the Mainline Protestant community (once the flagship for the BDS enterprise), “Team Divestment” has been reduced to manufacturing pretend victories where none exist. The strategy seems to be to anticipate likely financial decisions (such as companies trying to get rid of their Israel-Africa shares as fast as possible, given the company’s huge losses and exposure in the real estate markets), send out press releases claiming that these normal business transactions actually represent political choices on the part of large institutions, and hope someone in the media takes the bait.
As I’ve noted before, inflating small victories is a reasonable way to try to build political momentum. But what is one to make of a “movement” that is trying to be built on pretend victories (Hampshire, Blackrock, Motorola, TIAA CREF) to cover up the real losses divestment has faced in every institution where it has been tried?
While it is true that Israel-Africa company is involved with some small construction projects in controversial areas (such as Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood), it’s also true that the company announced a $340 million loss in Q2 of this year and was unsure how it was going to deal with $2 billion in outstanding debt. And, as you might guess, decisions by global financial institutions regarding whether to hold or sell Israel-Africa shares were being driven by the latter (financial) rather than the former (political) reasons.
Less than a month ago, it was the UK Investment firm Blackrock that was being touted by divestment champions as their latest and greatest win, claiming that the financial giant’s choice to shed its Israel-Africa shares was some kind of vindication of their BDS agenda. Needless to say, Blackrock firmly denied that their decision to sell shares in the struggling Israeli-Africa had anything to do with politics. This, apparently, did not prevent more press releases going out claiming another divestment “victory.” Nor did it prevent the BDS-niks from dipping into this well again by claiming another normal business decision (this time by TIAA CREF) to sell shares in a money-losing company was somehow done at the behest of divestment advocates.
One fraud (Hampshire) does not a trend make. Two frauds (Hampshire and Motorola) at least give us two dots to connect. But now we’re up to four dots (Hampshire, Motorola, Blackrock and TIAA CREF), not to mention the hilarious mis-interpretation of the words of the CEO of Caterpillar Tractor which clearly establishes not just a pattern, but the latest strategy of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions “movement.”
Having failed to get a single college or university to divest in the Jewish state, having lost their few attempts to win a divestment victory with municipalities and unions, and now having lost the support of the Mainline Protestant community (once the flagship for the BDS enterprise), “Team Divestment” has been reduced to manufacturing pretend victories where none exist. The strategy seems to be to anticipate likely financial decisions (such as companies trying to get rid of their Israel-Africa shares as fast as possible, given the company’s huge losses and exposure in the real estate markets), send out press releases claiming that these normal business transactions actually represent political choices on the part of large institutions, and hope someone in the media takes the bait.
As I’ve noted before, inflating small victories is a reasonable way to try to build political momentum. But what is one to make of a “movement” that is trying to be built on pretend victories (Hampshire, Blackrock, Motorola, TIAA CREF) to cover up the real losses divestment has faced in every institution where it has been tried?
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Latest BDS Hoax: TIAA-CREF
To give you an idea of how powerful and effective the divestment project has become, they now have the ability to get companies to act on their demands four months before those demands are even made!
The latest 2009 divestment hoax (I’m starting to lose count) has to do with TIAA-CREF, the academic retirement fund, which allegedly responded to a September 10th letter sent by 50 members calling for the investment giant to remove Israel-Africa (or I-A, a holding group of 13 companies listed on the Israeli stock exchange) from its portfolio due to I-A’s involvement with construction projects in Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood, yadda, yadda, yadda.
TIAA-CREF responded by noting that the organization no longer invests in I-A “following their [I-A shares] removal from an emerging markets index that the [TIAA-CREF] account tracks, as part of a regular rebalancing.” For those not versed in investment-speak, Israel-Africa was part of a collection of stocks owned by an investment organization that maintains holdings in companies from “emerging markets” (such as the Middle East, Africa and former Soviet Union). TIAA-CREF owns shares in that emerging market fund, a fund which chose to sell its I-A shares back in June.
Now did this decision get made for political reasons, as divestment advocates are advertising? Well first, keep in mind that TIAA-CREF maintains over $300 million in investments with Israeli firms, and the Israel-Africa holdings in question amounted to just $250,000. In other words, this was a highly cautions investment, and with good reason. For Israel-Africa is primarily in the real estate business with property holdings in Israel, the US (including the old New York Times building) and Europe (mostly Eastern Europe).
Now in case you haven’t heard, the real estate market has not been doing all that well over the last couple of years, and companies that are either in that market (particularly ones that borrowed heavily based on the alleged value of their property holdings) are not in particularly good shape. And Israel-Africa has been looking a lot like the nearly bankrupted nation of Iceland since the bottom fell out of the economy last year. With billions in debt, and few ideas as to how that debt can be paid (diversification into companies like Gottex, the Israeli swimwear maker – doesn’t look likely to bail them out), I-A shares have taken a beating in the last few months, which is why wise investors have been either selling or taking a cautious approach to the company.
So while Israel-Africa may have created an incentive for investors to flee due to their wishful thinking that real estate would continue to rise in value indefinitely (an idiocy shared by many of us over the last decade), have they become an investment pariah for political reasons, as BDS advocates are claiming?
It’s interesting that Israel Africa has only gotten onto my BDS radar over the summer. Before then, talk was primarily about Caterpillar, with some yammering in the spring about Motorola. And now, it seems clear why the divest-niks have taken a recent interest in the company. With the company in crisis, what was the likelihood that retirement funds and other investors would “divest” from Israel-Africa for reasons having nothing to do with politics? And, as with the case of Motorola, the BDS crew has shown a recent interest in finding or anticipating buy/sell decisions relating to Israel, and claiming those decisions were made for purely political reasons.
As I’ve asked before, can two play at that game? Does the sale of trillions of assets in companies doing business with Israel’s Arab neighbors mean investors have woken up to the human rights abuses plaguing the Middle East? Does the hundreds of millions TIAA-CREF still maintains in Israel an unequivocal statement of support for the Jewish state? Or is it only the BDS crew that gets to run out in front of a torch wielding mob of investors and claim to be leading them?
As I’ve stated before, there is one and only one way to be sure that investment or divestment decisions are being made on political vs. financial grounds, and that is for the investor or company making the decision to actually say so in no uncertain terms. And in the case of TIAA-CREF/Israel Africa (as with Motorola and even Hampshire College) we only have divestment activists making self-serving claims regarding decisions made by others, claims that are either not supported or outright rejected by the organizations in whose names the BDSers are claiming to speak.
Given recent reversals with the churches, I can understand the need for the “I hate Israel” crowd to find some kind of win to crow over. But that raises the questions as to why these “victories” always seem to unravel or be exposes as outright hoaxes when subject to the slightest scrutiny?
The latest 2009 divestment hoax (I’m starting to lose count) has to do with TIAA-CREF, the academic retirement fund, which allegedly responded to a September 10th letter sent by 50 members calling for the investment giant to remove Israel-Africa (or I-A, a holding group of 13 companies listed on the Israeli stock exchange) from its portfolio due to I-A’s involvement with construction projects in Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood, yadda, yadda, yadda.
TIAA-CREF responded by noting that the organization no longer invests in I-A “following their [I-A shares] removal from an emerging markets index that the [TIAA-CREF] account tracks, as part of a regular rebalancing.” For those not versed in investment-speak, Israel-Africa was part of a collection of stocks owned by an investment organization that maintains holdings in companies from “emerging markets” (such as the Middle East, Africa and former Soviet Union). TIAA-CREF owns shares in that emerging market fund, a fund which chose to sell its I-A shares back in June.
Now did this decision get made for political reasons, as divestment advocates are advertising? Well first, keep in mind that TIAA-CREF maintains over $300 million in investments with Israeli firms, and the Israel-Africa holdings in question amounted to just $250,000. In other words, this was a highly cautions investment, and with good reason. For Israel-Africa is primarily in the real estate business with property holdings in Israel, the US (including the old New York Times building) and Europe (mostly Eastern Europe).
Now in case you haven’t heard, the real estate market has not been doing all that well over the last couple of years, and companies that are either in that market (particularly ones that borrowed heavily based on the alleged value of their property holdings) are not in particularly good shape. And Israel-Africa has been looking a lot like the nearly bankrupted nation of Iceland since the bottom fell out of the economy last year. With billions in debt, and few ideas as to how that debt can be paid (diversification into companies like Gottex, the Israeli swimwear maker – doesn’t look likely to bail them out), I-A shares have taken a beating in the last few months, which is why wise investors have been either selling or taking a cautious approach to the company.
So while Israel-Africa may have created an incentive for investors to flee due to their wishful thinking that real estate would continue to rise in value indefinitely (an idiocy shared by many of us over the last decade), have they become an investment pariah for political reasons, as BDS advocates are claiming?
It’s interesting that Israel Africa has only gotten onto my BDS radar over the summer. Before then, talk was primarily about Caterpillar, with some yammering in the spring about Motorola. And now, it seems clear why the divest-niks have taken a recent interest in the company. With the company in crisis, what was the likelihood that retirement funds and other investors would “divest” from Israel-Africa for reasons having nothing to do with politics? And, as with the case of Motorola, the BDS crew has shown a recent interest in finding or anticipating buy/sell decisions relating to Israel, and claiming those decisions were made for purely political reasons.
As I’ve asked before, can two play at that game? Does the sale of trillions of assets in companies doing business with Israel’s Arab neighbors mean investors have woken up to the human rights abuses plaguing the Middle East? Does the hundreds of millions TIAA-CREF still maintains in Israel an unequivocal statement of support for the Jewish state? Or is it only the BDS crew that gets to run out in front of a torch wielding mob of investors and claim to be leading them?
As I’ve stated before, there is one and only one way to be sure that investment or divestment decisions are being made on political vs. financial grounds, and that is for the investor or company making the decision to actually say so in no uncertain terms. And in the case of TIAA-CREF/Israel Africa (as with Motorola and even Hampshire College) we only have divestment activists making self-serving claims regarding decisions made by others, claims that are either not supported or outright rejected by the organizations in whose names the BDSers are claiming to speak.
Given recent reversals with the churches, I can understand the need for the “I hate Israel” crowd to find some kind of win to crow over. But that raises the questions as to why these “victories” always seem to unravel or be exposes as outright hoaxes when subject to the slightest scrutiny?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Neve Us Alone
I must have missed the teacup tempest that erupted back while I was on vacation when the Los Angeles Times (are they still publishing a print edition?) decided to give editorial space to Neve Gordon, a professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University in Israel which urged the world to boycott his country.
I will admit to never having heard of Mr. Gordon, although that has more to do with my lack of “readidness” regarding books with titles like Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel (an interesting topic for someone who lives in a region where Israel’s neighbors maintain budget line-items for medieval torture chambers for political dissidents, and a leading cause of hospital fatalities in nearby Gaza is being dragged from your bed by Hamas and beaten to death).
Anyway, it was not abundantly clear why this Israeli politics professor, as opposed to all of the other Israeli politics professors, got space in the LA Times until I read his piece and realized that the paper still considers an Israeli condemning his own country a “man-bites-dog” story. Honestly, where have they been for the last hundred years?
After all, the parade of Jews ready to condemn their fellow lansmen for the “crimes” of Zionism goes back to the beginning of the Zionist movement itself. Many of my fellow activists get apoplectic over the phenomenon, tracing it back to this Jewish religious tradition or that historic psychological aberration. But there’s always been a simpler explanation as to why “Jewish critics of Israel” are guaranteed attention, one provided by Adam Smith over 200 years ago: market demand.
Every organization pushing for BDS, for example, has its Jewish face (often people whose only connection to Jewish tradition is their readiness to blast other Jews for doing things that embarrass them). And by joining such organizations, these “courageous” souls get showered with praise for their fearlessness in standing up to a solid wall of pro-Israel sentiment that they know full-well does not exist.
In academia, the benefits of striking such a pose are even more alluring. Take Norman Finkelstein (please!). (Sorry – I couldn’t resist.) For two decades, Dr. Finkelstein has built a career based on being the “exposer” of other academics such as Harvard German scholar Daniel Goldhagen and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, substituting vitriol for scholarship (given that he knows nothing of the German language, US or international law). Despite the fact that each book was more farcically footnoted than the last, Finkelstein earned a huge raft of followers, not because of the quality of his work, but because of whom his choice of targets. In any other field, such crackpot pseudo-scholarship would earn a one-way ticket to a career in comic book store, but when the field is condemnation of Israel, fame, fortune and even a documentary film are the rewards.
Consider Mr. Gordon’s strange situation whereby he is calling for the world to boycott the very institution where he teaches, yet when people criticize this urging of academic censorship those critics are accused of “muzzling” and attempting to get Gordon shunned. The notion that a professor calling for his institution and colleagues to be boycotted crying foul when some suggest such a boycott begins with him demonstrates BDS as fashion statement (i.e., - “do what I say to them, but don’t touch my salary!”) than politics.
Other Israeli academics have protested Neve Gordon’s editorial and – needless to say – these Israeli voices are not being hailed by “Fans of Gordon” (i.e., people who also never heard of him until he became politically useful as the latest “courageous Jew poster child” for a boycott of the Jewish state).
I will admit to never having heard of Mr. Gordon, although that has more to do with my lack of “readidness” regarding books with titles like Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel (an interesting topic for someone who lives in a region where Israel’s neighbors maintain budget line-items for medieval torture chambers for political dissidents, and a leading cause of hospital fatalities in nearby Gaza is being dragged from your bed by Hamas and beaten to death).
Anyway, it was not abundantly clear why this Israeli politics professor, as opposed to all of the other Israeli politics professors, got space in the LA Times until I read his piece and realized that the paper still considers an Israeli condemning his own country a “man-bites-dog” story. Honestly, where have they been for the last hundred years?
After all, the parade of Jews ready to condemn their fellow lansmen for the “crimes” of Zionism goes back to the beginning of the Zionist movement itself. Many of my fellow activists get apoplectic over the phenomenon, tracing it back to this Jewish religious tradition or that historic psychological aberration. But there’s always been a simpler explanation as to why “Jewish critics of Israel” are guaranteed attention, one provided by Adam Smith over 200 years ago: market demand.
Every organization pushing for BDS, for example, has its Jewish face (often people whose only connection to Jewish tradition is their readiness to blast other Jews for doing things that embarrass them). And by joining such organizations, these “courageous” souls get showered with praise for their fearlessness in standing up to a solid wall of pro-Israel sentiment that they know full-well does not exist.
In academia, the benefits of striking such a pose are even more alluring. Take Norman Finkelstein (please!). (Sorry – I couldn’t resist.) For two decades, Dr. Finkelstein has built a career based on being the “exposer” of other academics such as Harvard German scholar Daniel Goldhagen and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, substituting vitriol for scholarship (given that he knows nothing of the German language, US or international law). Despite the fact that each book was more farcically footnoted than the last, Finkelstein earned a huge raft of followers, not because of the quality of his work, but because of whom his choice of targets. In any other field, such crackpot pseudo-scholarship would earn a one-way ticket to a career in comic book store, but when the field is condemnation of Israel, fame, fortune and even a documentary film are the rewards.
Consider Mr. Gordon’s strange situation whereby he is calling for the world to boycott the very institution where he teaches, yet when people criticize this urging of academic censorship those critics are accused of “muzzling” and attempting to get Gordon shunned. The notion that a professor calling for his institution and colleagues to be boycotted crying foul when some suggest such a boycott begins with him demonstrates BDS as fashion statement (i.e., - “do what I say to them, but don’t touch my salary!”) than politics.
Other Israeli academics have protested Neve Gordon’s editorial and – needless to say – these Israeli voices are not being hailed by “Fans of Gordon” (i.e., people who also never heard of him until he became politically useful as the latest “courageous Jew poster child” for a boycott of the Jewish state).
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Yurp and the "Big Mo"
I’m occasionally asked about divestment activities that take place in Europe, such as the Norwegian government’s recent decision to divest a state pension fund from a specific Israeli company. I must admit that the focus of my work has been primary North America (with an occasional foray into Great Britain), although I have noted in a piece on another subject that people often dress up decisions European firms make to take advantage of the large Arab market vs. the smaller Israeli one as some form of moral political choice. And politically, Muslim (and increasingly Islamist) politics is playing as big or bigger a role on the continent than Jewish politics plays in the US, especially now that Europeans have chosen to stop reproducing, creating demographic trends that should concern us all.
But that’s not the point of today’s posting. For every time some institution announces something that can be construed as a divestment success, we are once again told that divestment has the “Big Mo,” that the BDS crowd has the wind at its back, and we must all hail this latest victory (even if it’s a hoax, like Hampshire) as the wave of the future.
But there is a corollary to such an approach that almost never gets asked. In the last month alone, two of the remaining Protestant denominations (the UCC in Canada and the Lutherans in the US) have joined their colleagues in the Presbyterian and Methodist churches to give divestment the heave ho. If a Norwegian pension fund choosing to divest a few kroner from one Israeli firm is to be considered a victory for the other side, shouldn’t the rejection of divestment by virtually the entire Mainline Protestant community be considered a massive triumph for our’s?
It’s sometimes too easy to let the BDS-ers set the terms of victory since, after all, they are seeking victory, whereas the ultimate goal for most of us is not winning but reconciliation and peace. But given that the divest-niks have chosen the battlefield, I think it’s only fair that the rules they have created apply to both sides. And given the unending string of defeats divestment has faced in schools, unions, municipalities and now churches (to a point where they have to rely on obscure artists choosing to not attend little-known arts festivals alongside Israelis as their latest “win”), doesn’t that say something about these institutions’ positive attitudes towards Israel (or at least their negative attitudes towards seeing it punished economically, just because the BDS crowd says it must).
If that’s the case, then every college, union, city, town and church in the country has voted YES on Israel, even if the other side has a Norwegian pension fund on its side (for now). Call me crazy, but I’ll take that as a win any day.
But that’s not the point of today’s posting. For every time some institution announces something that can be construed as a divestment success, we are once again told that divestment has the “Big Mo,” that the BDS crowd has the wind at its back, and we must all hail this latest victory (even if it’s a hoax, like Hampshire) as the wave of the future.
But there is a corollary to such an approach that almost never gets asked. In the last month alone, two of the remaining Protestant denominations (the UCC in Canada and the Lutherans in the US) have joined their colleagues in the Presbyterian and Methodist churches to give divestment the heave ho. If a Norwegian pension fund choosing to divest a few kroner from one Israeli firm is to be considered a victory for the other side, shouldn’t the rejection of divestment by virtually the entire Mainline Protestant community be considered a massive triumph for our’s?
It’s sometimes too easy to let the BDS-ers set the terms of victory since, after all, they are seeking victory, whereas the ultimate goal for most of us is not winning but reconciliation and peace. But given that the divest-niks have chosen the battlefield, I think it’s only fair that the rules they have created apply to both sides. And given the unending string of defeats divestment has faced in schools, unions, municipalities and now churches (to a point where they have to rely on obscure artists choosing to not attend little-known arts festivals alongside Israelis as their latest “win”), doesn’t that say something about these institutions’ positive attitudes towards Israel (or at least their negative attitudes towards seeing it punished economically, just because the BDS crowd says it must).
If that’s the case, then every college, union, city, town and church in the country has voted YES on Israel, even if the other side has a Norwegian pension fund on its side (for now). Call me crazy, but I’ll take that as a win any day.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
BDS Countdown! - Be Still My Heart
According to their countdown clock, the 8th Annual Organizer’s Conference will be taking place in downtown Chicago in ten days, three hours and 43 minutes (whoops! make that 42 minutes). While the innocuous title is likely to have been chosen in the hope that the group won’t get thrown out of their venue before this gig begins on September 12, the Annual Organizer’s Conference promises to be THE place where the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) “movement” targeting Israel will coordinate their activity for the year.
Scuttlebutt on campuses seems to indicate that BDS will be the chosen tactic for the “Israel is wrong about everything, always” crowd this academic year. In some ways, this is a pain (who wants to fight the same battles over and over again, after all). At the same time, it’s nice that Israel’s foes have chosen to revisit the only thing I know of that is more unpopular among the American public than Israel’s political rivals: the tactics of boycott, divestment and sanction.
Given how little the divest-niks have to show for themselves after eight years of trying to hijack respected institutions, the noise level at this year’s conference is sure to be high-decibel and shrill. After all, colleges and universities have already given divestment the heave-ho, and last year’s Hampshire hoax is not likely to endear the “movement” to college administrators. The closest the BDS crew got to success in cities and towns was five years ago in Somerville, MA, after which municipal leaders pretty much had their number. Despite boasts of union support, the US labor movement continues to rival Evangelical Christians in their devotion to the Jewish state. And speaking of Christians, the final holdouts among Mainline Churches calling for Israel divestment have spent the last two weeks reversing those positions by overwhelming majorities.
So where does that leave BDS in ’09? I could continue to make fun of their feeble attempts to turn normal business transactions (i.e., Motorola) or corporate presidents telling them to screw themselves (i.e., Caterpillar) into “victories,” but that misses a larger point that today BDS mostly represents a way for anti-Israel activists to create cohesion among themselves, a human-to-human “social network” of individuals blinded by their own self-righteous fury, impervious to any truths that contradict a vision of the world that is endlessly re-enforced by spending time only with the like-minded.
Of course, the last several years have taught us that the BDS crew does have one skill: the ability to turn even shallow victories (such as the Presbyterian Church’s two-year flirtation with divestment) into media-driven “momentum” that can require months or years agita to turn around. Still, while it’s always hard to pull an apathetic public into any political project, it’s particularly difficult when that project has proven to be as big a loser as divestment.
Anyway, it’s now ten days, three hours and twenty-eight minutes until those who know better than the rest of us gather in Chicago. If anyone is interested in attending and sending me back material I can broadcast, I’ll be happy to pick up the $35 entrance fee.
Scuttlebutt on campuses seems to indicate that BDS will be the chosen tactic for the “Israel is wrong about everything, always” crowd this academic year. In some ways, this is a pain (who wants to fight the same battles over and over again, after all). At the same time, it’s nice that Israel’s foes have chosen to revisit the only thing I know of that is more unpopular among the American public than Israel’s political rivals: the tactics of boycott, divestment and sanction.
Given how little the divest-niks have to show for themselves after eight years of trying to hijack respected institutions, the noise level at this year’s conference is sure to be high-decibel and shrill. After all, colleges and universities have already given divestment the heave-ho, and last year’s Hampshire hoax is not likely to endear the “movement” to college administrators. The closest the BDS crew got to success in cities and towns was five years ago in Somerville, MA, after which municipal leaders pretty much had their number. Despite boasts of union support, the US labor movement continues to rival Evangelical Christians in their devotion to the Jewish state. And speaking of Christians, the final holdouts among Mainline Churches calling for Israel divestment have spent the last two weeks reversing those positions by overwhelming majorities.
So where does that leave BDS in ’09? I could continue to make fun of their feeble attempts to turn normal business transactions (i.e., Motorola) or corporate presidents telling them to screw themselves (i.e., Caterpillar) into “victories,” but that misses a larger point that today BDS mostly represents a way for anti-Israel activists to create cohesion among themselves, a human-to-human “social network” of individuals blinded by their own self-righteous fury, impervious to any truths that contradict a vision of the world that is endlessly re-enforced by spending time only with the like-minded.
Of course, the last several years have taught us that the BDS crew does have one skill: the ability to turn even shallow victories (such as the Presbyterian Church’s two-year flirtation with divestment) into media-driven “momentum” that can require months or years agita to turn around. Still, while it’s always hard to pull an apathetic public into any political project, it’s particularly difficult when that project has proven to be as big a loser as divestment.
Anyway, it’s now ten days, three hours and twenty-eight minutes until those who know better than the rest of us gather in Chicago. If anyone is interested in attending and sending me back material I can broadcast, I’ll be happy to pick up the $35 entrance fee.
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