It looks like one of the pieces I linked to yesterday actually confirmed that the Deutsche Bank divestment story was another hoax, a la TIAA CREF and Blackrock from last year. With this many data points, I do hope that news outlets (especially Jewish and Israeli ones) can start treating future press releases about alleged divestment by financial institutions with the kilo of skepticism they deserve.
In fact, we need to all start requiring actual public statements from those who are supposedly doing the divesting (like colleges or investment firms) with quotes from high officials saying they are selling shares for political vs. financial reasons before we take any future divestment story seriously.
And speaking of frauds, I’ve not had the chance to check in with Hampshire College, site of the original BDS hoax that kicked off last year’s academic divestment kick, since the anniversary of the original false divestment story in February. Fortunately, my friend CitizenWald, an academic and blogger from Western Mass, has posted several pieces reflecting on the Hampshire/Students for Justice in Palestine tale as the Hampshire academic year came to a close. Read them all here.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Catching Up: Madison Market/Deutsche Bank
I’ve been a little tardy reporting on a couple of BDS stories that have been in the news over the last week. Part of this delay has to do with a project I’m working on regarding the upcoming Presbyterian Church General Assembly (GA) in July (a subject that will be a focus for the next month at Divest This), although another part has to do with the painkillers I was put on after getting a hernia fixed last week (medications that make the latest Gaza Boatnik crowd seem even more laughable than the last one).
Anyway, in Soft Targets I mentioned that failure tends to create its own momentum. In other words, when divestment loses on a college campus and is denounced by the school’s administration, word of that failure/denouncement travels and makes it that much harder to win a divestment fight on at another university. And thus a whole category of potential BDS allies gets closed off. This forces the boycotters to seek new categories of well-known institutions or individuals to try to exploit.
Food co-ops have been on the BDS radar over the last several months, and earlier this week, the Madison Market in Seattle gave boycott the heave ho, just as Davis Food Coop rejected proposals to boycott Israeli products earlier this year. The story played out in the usual predictable pattern:
(1) BDS activists (in this case, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace) put boycott on the Market’s agenda
(2) Their case for boycott includes only Israeli witches/tyrants and Palestinian virgin/victims with all information needed to make intelligent decisions intentionally left on the cutting room floor
(3) Members of the organization (in this case, Madison Market) become aware of what is being asked in their name and organize a response, providing the context missing from presentations from propagandists like PSC and JVP
(4) The organization realized that, despite what it’s been told by divestment advocates, it does have more than one choice in the matter and politely kicks the BDS crew down the stairs
It’s too early to tell if food co-ops are fully inoculated against the divestment virus, but after Davis and now Madison, we’re clearly making progress.
The second story is a blast from the past regarding a financial institution’s alleged divestment in an Israeli electronics firm. The contours of this story follow similar stories in 2009 where BDS advocates sent out press releases hailing a financial firm (such as TIAA-CREF or Blackrock) for their alleged anti-Israel divestment stance. It was only later that the public discovered that no such divestment had taken place and that the divestniks were projecting their own political opinions onto the generic buying and selling decisions of third parties.
Now I'm ready to believe that Deutche Bank sold shares in the Israeli firm Elbit (although, apparently, even this fact has yet to be confirmed). And I'll even accept the fact that various anti-Israel groups in Germany had lobbied the bank to sell these shares. But where is the causal link between the two (other than the post-hoc fallacy that says if A proceeds B, than A must have caused B)? The story on this sale also mentioned that Elbit shares has fallen 30% this year. From what little I know of the world of high finance, I would suspect that this fact influences bank investment policy more than complaints by Pax Christi.
Now those pushing the Deutche Bank/Elbit story as being about BDS (vs. a general sale of stock which is losing value) can clarify the issue for us quickly by providing us a statement by Deutche Bank the unequivocally states that they have made this decision to sell Elbit shares for political vs. financial reasons. This is not such a big thing to ask if divestment has actually taken place. In fact, unless such information can be provided, then it’s safe to say that divestment has NOT taken place since divestment (vs. the generic buying and selling of stock) is a political act, and thus it makes no sense whatsoever to divest in secret.
Given the number of BDS hoaxes we were subjected to last year that fit this pattern, the onus is really on those who insist that Deutche Bank has made a political divestment decision to provide us the evidence that this is the case (in the form of a statement by the bank explaining clearly that they sold their Elbit shares for political vs. financial reasons).
If such evidence can be provided, I would be happy to acknowledge that BDS has scored a victory. But absent such evidence, I think we’ll have to assume that the BDSers are simply up to their old tricks of trying to create fake victories by projecting their own wishful thinking onto the financial decisions of others.
Anyway, in Soft Targets I mentioned that failure tends to create its own momentum. In other words, when divestment loses on a college campus and is denounced by the school’s administration, word of that failure/denouncement travels and makes it that much harder to win a divestment fight on at another university. And thus a whole category of potential BDS allies gets closed off. This forces the boycotters to seek new categories of well-known institutions or individuals to try to exploit.
Food co-ops have been on the BDS radar over the last several months, and earlier this week, the Madison Market in Seattle gave boycott the heave ho, just as Davis Food Coop rejected proposals to boycott Israeli products earlier this year. The story played out in the usual predictable pattern:
(1) BDS activists (in this case, the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace) put boycott on the Market’s agenda
(2) Their case for boycott includes only Israeli witches/tyrants and Palestinian virgin/victims with all information needed to make intelligent decisions intentionally left on the cutting room floor
(3) Members of the organization (in this case, Madison Market) become aware of what is being asked in their name and organize a response, providing the context missing from presentations from propagandists like PSC and JVP
(4) The organization realized that, despite what it’s been told by divestment advocates, it does have more than one choice in the matter and politely kicks the BDS crew down the stairs
It’s too early to tell if food co-ops are fully inoculated against the divestment virus, but after Davis and now Madison, we’re clearly making progress.
The second story is a blast from the past regarding a financial institution’s alleged divestment in an Israeli electronics firm. The contours of this story follow similar stories in 2009 where BDS advocates sent out press releases hailing a financial firm (such as TIAA-CREF or Blackrock) for their alleged anti-Israel divestment stance. It was only later that the public discovered that no such divestment had taken place and that the divestniks were projecting their own political opinions onto the generic buying and selling decisions of third parties.
Now I'm ready to believe that Deutche Bank sold shares in the Israeli firm Elbit (although, apparently, even this fact has yet to be confirmed). And I'll even accept the fact that various anti-Israel groups in Germany had lobbied the bank to sell these shares. But where is the causal link between the two (other than the post-hoc fallacy that says if A proceeds B, than A must have caused B)? The story on this sale also mentioned that Elbit shares has fallen 30% this year. From what little I know of the world of high finance, I would suspect that this fact influences bank investment policy more than complaints by Pax Christi.
Now those pushing the Deutche Bank/Elbit story as being about BDS (vs. a general sale of stock which is losing value) can clarify the issue for us quickly by providing us a statement by Deutche Bank the unequivocally states that they have made this decision to sell Elbit shares for political vs. financial reasons. This is not such a big thing to ask if divestment has actually taken place. In fact, unless such information can be provided, then it’s safe to say that divestment has NOT taken place since divestment (vs. the generic buying and selling of stock) is a political act, and thus it makes no sense whatsoever to divest in secret.
Given the number of BDS hoaxes we were subjected to last year that fit this pattern, the onus is really on those who insist that Deutche Bank has made a political divestment decision to provide us the evidence that this is the case (in the form of a statement by the bank explaining clearly that they sold their Elbit shares for political vs. financial reasons).
If such evidence can be provided, I would be happy to acknowledge that BDS has scored a victory. But absent such evidence, I think we’ll have to assume that the BDSers are simply up to their old tricks of trying to create fake victories by projecting their own wishful thinking onto the financial decisions of others.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Soft Targets
Like many of you, I’ve received a fair share of alerts that Elvis Costello has joined the ranks of entertainers planning to boycott Israel until the boycott “movement” gives them the all clear. A number of these alarms have been accompanied by condemnations of Costello as a hack, a has-been and a hypocrite, coupled with calls to counter-boycott the singer and (if it can be done with MP3s) burn his recordings for good measure.
In truth, I have a slightly softer spot for Elvis Costello than I do for Carlos Santana, another rocker who has decided to dabble in moral consciousness at the expense of the Jewish state, if only because I saw E.C. in concert once (at Brandies as a matter of fact) and a friend one succeeded in impersonating the British singer to get into a sold-out comedy club. The fact that celebrity endorsements (even ones in favor of causes I support) have always seemed pretty vacuous and imbecilic also keeps the danger signal of Costello’s choice flashing yellow instead of red.
That said, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that BDS is pretty good at capitalizing on even small successes, at least in terms of keeping its militant project energized. So the recruitment of pop-stars as the latest anti-Israel bludgeon needs to be taken seriously. At the same time, placing this month’s BDS “triumph” in the context of how the whole boycott and divestment thing has been going over the last year or two might provide some guidance as to how to meet this latest challenge.
As this site has been documenting, BDS has had a pretty tough go of it since it got off the ground in 2001. College administrators (the only ones who could make actual campus divestment decisions) have their number. Leaders of the Mainline Protestant churches that once championed divestment have seen their activities condemned by overwhelming majorities of church members. Product boycotts tend to trigger counter-boycotts that drive up the sale of Israeli goods by thousands of percentage points. And if you pull back and look at the bigger picture, the decade that BDS has been in existence has seen a doubling of the Israeli economy and exports, coupled with a 20% rise in popularity of the Jewish state among Americans.
Behind these stories in the dynamic that defeat, like victory, creates its own momentum. Especially in today’s interconnected age, when one university administration or city government kicks BDS down the stairs, word gets out to other similar institutions, closing off that avenue for further exploitation by divestment advocates. Which is why new targets of opportunity must always be sought in hope that some decision that can be characterized as a BDS victory can be obtained somewhere.
In 2009, the divestniks tried to get around this dynamic by simply inventing victories out of whole cloth with a series of hoaxes regarding Hampshire College and various investment firms. But when such fraudulence refused to bear fruit, the BDSers got back to basics in 2010, finding new targets of opportunity in food co-ops (which gave them the chance to put boycotts onto member ballots) and student governments (which, unlike college administrators, were in a position to take purely symbolic votes on matters over which they had no actual responsibility).
Well we all know how those two campaigns turned out recently with rejection by Co-ops and failure with student governments, much of which played out in California this Spring. And with each boycott and divestment defeat, new precedents were created that will make it that much harder for the BDS-niks to find new unwitting institutions to exploit over the coming months and years.
Which leaves them once again with the need to find a new category of people or institutions into whose mouth they can stuff their “Israel=Apartheid” message. And thus aging rockers should be looked at not so much as a new front in the BDS wars, but as a soft target for potential exploitation by divestment activists.
It’s no accident that the three performers won over as participants in the cultural boycott were big in the 60s (Gil Scott-Heron), 70s (Carlos Santana) and 80s (Elvis Costello). This is not meant as some cheap crack at their expense, but to point out that two, three and four decades ago, people really cared what these folks did and said (well, maybe not Santana), rewarding them with not just booze and broads, but money and a media megaphone to trumpet any thought that came into their heads.
Flash forward to a new millennium when Hannah Montana outsells all three artists combined and you can understand why Mssrs. Heron, Santana and Costello would want to retire into some kind of Emeritus status where their cultural contributions could be celebrated with a certain level of reverential peace.
And into these artist’s lives come the BDSers bearing huge banners and megaphones, condemning these musicians for daring to bring their talents to the hated Jewish state. The threat, both implicit and explicit, is that a rocker who dares to not follow the boycotters dictates can expect their last years to be spent not with dignified nostalgia tours, but with protests everywhere they perform and a legacy that BDSers promise will be tarnished with accusations of hypocrisy.
And so, this new target caves. And why not since the cost doesn’t seem to involve anything more than screwing a few friends in Israel where you promised to perform? Isn’t that worth it if the alternative is to be denounced at every other venue you play anywhere else on Earth? And if you can convince yourself that your action is limited and based on principle, so much the better.
Unfortunately, these three rockers (and anyone else who falls into the same trap) are soon to discover the true cost of joining the BDS bandwagon (even unwittingly). Already the mediasphere is alight, claiming the cultural boycott a victory, with Elvis Costello the poster child for the Israel=Apartheid analogy that is the boycotter’s real narrative (not the simple human-rights story they managed to sell their victims).
So once again, a new community is at each other’s throats over the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once again, insults and accusations are hurled against people who never realized they could become a participant, much less a battlefield, in that conflict. And once again, another corner of our lives (this time, our old vinyl record collection) becomes needlessly politicized, just so that BDSers don’t have to admit to themselves that their political campaign is as bankrupt as their morals.
In truth, I have a slightly softer spot for Elvis Costello than I do for Carlos Santana, another rocker who has decided to dabble in moral consciousness at the expense of the Jewish state, if only because I saw E.C. in concert once (at Brandies as a matter of fact) and a friend one succeeded in impersonating the British singer to get into a sold-out comedy club. The fact that celebrity endorsements (even ones in favor of causes I support) have always seemed pretty vacuous and imbecilic also keeps the danger signal of Costello’s choice flashing yellow instead of red.
That said, if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that BDS is pretty good at capitalizing on even small successes, at least in terms of keeping its militant project energized. So the recruitment of pop-stars as the latest anti-Israel bludgeon needs to be taken seriously. At the same time, placing this month’s BDS “triumph” in the context of how the whole boycott and divestment thing has been going over the last year or two might provide some guidance as to how to meet this latest challenge.
As this site has been documenting, BDS has had a pretty tough go of it since it got off the ground in 2001. College administrators (the only ones who could make actual campus divestment decisions) have their number. Leaders of the Mainline Protestant churches that once championed divestment have seen their activities condemned by overwhelming majorities of church members. Product boycotts tend to trigger counter-boycotts that drive up the sale of Israeli goods by thousands of percentage points. And if you pull back and look at the bigger picture, the decade that BDS has been in existence has seen a doubling of the Israeli economy and exports, coupled with a 20% rise in popularity of the Jewish state among Americans.
Behind these stories in the dynamic that defeat, like victory, creates its own momentum. Especially in today’s interconnected age, when one university administration or city government kicks BDS down the stairs, word gets out to other similar institutions, closing off that avenue for further exploitation by divestment advocates. Which is why new targets of opportunity must always be sought in hope that some decision that can be characterized as a BDS victory can be obtained somewhere.
In 2009, the divestniks tried to get around this dynamic by simply inventing victories out of whole cloth with a series of hoaxes regarding Hampshire College and various investment firms. But when such fraudulence refused to bear fruit, the BDSers got back to basics in 2010, finding new targets of opportunity in food co-ops (which gave them the chance to put boycotts onto member ballots) and student governments (which, unlike college administrators, were in a position to take purely symbolic votes on matters over which they had no actual responsibility).
Well we all know how those two campaigns turned out recently with rejection by Co-ops and failure with student governments, much of which played out in California this Spring. And with each boycott and divestment defeat, new precedents were created that will make it that much harder for the BDS-niks to find new unwitting institutions to exploit over the coming months and years.
Which leaves them once again with the need to find a new category of people or institutions into whose mouth they can stuff their “Israel=Apartheid” message. And thus aging rockers should be looked at not so much as a new front in the BDS wars, but as a soft target for potential exploitation by divestment activists.
It’s no accident that the three performers won over as participants in the cultural boycott were big in the 60s (Gil Scott-Heron), 70s (Carlos Santana) and 80s (Elvis Costello). This is not meant as some cheap crack at their expense, but to point out that two, three and four decades ago, people really cared what these folks did and said (well, maybe not Santana), rewarding them with not just booze and broads, but money and a media megaphone to trumpet any thought that came into their heads.
Flash forward to a new millennium when Hannah Montana outsells all three artists combined and you can understand why Mssrs. Heron, Santana and Costello would want to retire into some kind of Emeritus status where their cultural contributions could be celebrated with a certain level of reverential peace.
And into these artist’s lives come the BDSers bearing huge banners and megaphones, condemning these musicians for daring to bring their talents to the hated Jewish state. The threat, both implicit and explicit, is that a rocker who dares to not follow the boycotters dictates can expect their last years to be spent not with dignified nostalgia tours, but with protests everywhere they perform and a legacy that BDSers promise will be tarnished with accusations of hypocrisy.
And so, this new target caves. And why not since the cost doesn’t seem to involve anything more than screwing a few friends in Israel where you promised to perform? Isn’t that worth it if the alternative is to be denounced at every other venue you play anywhere else on Earth? And if you can convince yourself that your action is limited and based on principle, so much the better.
Unfortunately, these three rockers (and anyone else who falls into the same trap) are soon to discover the true cost of joining the BDS bandwagon (even unwittingly). Already the mediasphere is alight, claiming the cultural boycott a victory, with Elvis Costello the poster child for the Israel=Apartheid analogy that is the boycotter’s real narrative (not the simple human-rights story they managed to sell their victims).
So once again, a new community is at each other’s throats over the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once again, insults and accusations are hurled against people who never realized they could become a participant, much less a battlefield, in that conflict. And once again, another corner of our lives (this time, our old vinyl record collection) becomes needlessly politicized, just so that BDSers don’t have to admit to themselves that their political campaign is as bankrupt as their morals.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Strategy and Tactics: Let’s Talk About Us
Over the last week, I’ve tried to lay out some observations about the size, scope and nature of the two sides of the BDS debate. A previous discussion of tactics focused on the other side’s traditional framework for advancing its cause. In this final installment, I’d like to switch to a discussion of our choices. Since specifics will vary depending on where the next battle will take place, ideas are presented as general guidelines that can be applied to a BDS fight, or some other de-legitimization campaign.
1. Understand the Nature of the Enemy and the Situation
Pro-Israel forces tend to waste a lot of cycles wrestling with the ideology of our opponents, or speculating into the origins, funding sources and alliances of those waging a BDS fight (or other anti-Israel campaign) at a particular institution. But this search for a bigger picture can often lead to missing practical matters that can be of more immediate use.
At Berkeley (to site one example), the Students for Justice in Palestine organization was co-opting members of one of the major student political parties (CALSERV) and trying to gain enough support among the other political parties to win a student government divestment vote. Thus the battle line was drawn specifically at swinging a few key non-CALSERV Senators to not override the Senate President’s veto of the bill. Other activity (lobbying the administration, attending public hearings, leafleting the student body, etc.) had its place, but all choices needed to be made in light of the one overriding goal that would lead to a win.
When two armies meet on the battlefield, the ideologies of each force are less relevant than their size, organization, morale, leadership, relevant alliances (i.e., people who will really come to their aid, rather than just pat them on the back after a win or loss), logistics (such as access to supplies/resources) and the terrain of the battlefield. For the sake of winning a BDS battle (or any similar engagement), we need to make sure our own political passions do not get in the way of understanding all of these concrete matters as we make our own battle plans.
2. We’re in it for the long haul, so let’s enjoy ourselves
It’s been said that there is nothing Israel can do to end the Middle East conflict. While it may be psychologically comforting to think that peace is something that can be brought about by Israel or its supporters, fundamentally peace will only arrive when those who have declared war on Israel for decades decide that the war is over.
The corollary for we supporters of Israel is that we have no control over when the battle over de-legitimize of the Jewish state will end. It’s the BDSers who can say when BDS is over, not us, so we have to plan to be in this fight for the foreseeable future (possibly for the rest of our lives).
This can be a depressing prospect, unless we change our own mindset to welcome battle (especially battles that we are likely to win). I’ve gotten involved with the fight against BDS for a lot of reasons, and as distasteful as I find any individual fight, I must admit that I’ve gotten a bit hooked on seeing BDS get its ass kicked again and again across the country (and even around the world).
As I’ve been documenting on this site for over a year, fundamentally BDS is a loser so if you going to find yourself a reluctant soldier in the fight against it, best to become a “happy warrior” who relishes battle, especially against a foe who can’t seem to recognize the weakness of their own tactical choices (just as they can’t recognize the moral bankruptcy of their political positions).
3. Focus only on tactics that work
There are a number of political activities that make us feel good, but may not actually have any impact. While I rail against the fantasy politics of the other side (i.e., their substitution of self-inflating grandstanding for actual practical politics), it needs to be pointed out that our side also makes choices that are more about getting something off our chest than winning a particular fight. Given how emotionally charged BDS battles can be, this is an understandable reaction, but one which should be fought since fantasy politics is fantasy politics, whichever side is engaged in it and should not be seen as a substitute for genuine action.
4. Focus only on people who work
There’s an ongoing debate over whether we’re better off trying to convince 100 people that they should take up our cause, vs. finding just ten people who are already engaged and cultivating them. My preference is the latter. As much as I’d love it if an argument or presentation I make could inspire an unengaged person to become engaged, it’s been my experience that people come to activism on their own, usually after encountering the ugly face of Israel’s haters through exposure to a BDS campaign or something similar. Better to find these newly self-energized activists and build them into your team, rather than try to convince people who haven’t caught “the bug” that it’s in their interest to become happy warriors.
5. Stop keeping our victories to ourselves
When the Davis Food Co-op unanimously rejected a boycott based on sound principles that would resonate with any similar institution in the country, news of that decision made it to a dozen Web sites and less than 100 blogs (half of which simply reposted the same story on another news site or blog). In contrast, when the Berkeley Student Senate took its meaningless, symbolic vote on divestment, the story was in a thousand different places within 24 hours.
Communicating our story (especially online) is one area where we are far, far behind our adversaries which is why Berkeley became an international story, while news of Davis (and the hundred other victories we’ve achieved in the BDS wars) rarely make it past this web site.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people comment on how a true boycott of Israel would require the boycotters to throw out their computers and cell phones. Fair enough, but it would be far preferable if our side started using those devices to spread our stories half as effectively as the other side spreads theirs.
6. It’s not just about us
The overwhelming defeats of BDS have not come about just because rank and file Presbyterians (or whoever rejects divestment next) are closet Zionists. Rather, they are people of good sense who understand that while solving the Middle East crisis may be important, it’s not required that they trash their own organization or community in order to take a stand on this issue.
What this means is that when we cast our arguments against BDS (or some other form of de-legitimization) to a third party (such as a university or church), we need to think beyond Jews, Arabs, and the Middle East conflict itself. The aforementioned Davis Co-op decision was based on the organization understanding that a boycott was bad for the Co-op, not the Jewish community. Never lose site of the fact that these battles often involve other people and organizations with their own needs and agendas. As you formulate your battle plans, taking these needs into account can determine whether these groups become your allies or your adversaries.
As the academic year winds to a close with BDS continuing its uninterrupted record of zero victories and Avogadro’s Number losses, my attention will be swinging towards the next big battle (the Presbyterian Church) over the next few weeks.
But the summer will be a time when both sides will plan for next fall’s campus wars, and as painful as it might be to have to fight the same battles all over again, never lose site of the fact that peace will come about only when those who have made war against the Jewish state the prime focus of their lives realize that no matter what they do, we will be there, sword in hand with joy in our hearts, making sure they lose once again.
1. Understand the Nature of the Enemy and the Situation
Pro-Israel forces tend to waste a lot of cycles wrestling with the ideology of our opponents, or speculating into the origins, funding sources and alliances of those waging a BDS fight (or other anti-Israel campaign) at a particular institution. But this search for a bigger picture can often lead to missing practical matters that can be of more immediate use.
At Berkeley (to site one example), the Students for Justice in Palestine organization was co-opting members of one of the major student political parties (CALSERV) and trying to gain enough support among the other political parties to win a student government divestment vote. Thus the battle line was drawn specifically at swinging a few key non-CALSERV Senators to not override the Senate President’s veto of the bill. Other activity (lobbying the administration, attending public hearings, leafleting the student body, etc.) had its place, but all choices needed to be made in light of the one overriding goal that would lead to a win.
When two armies meet on the battlefield, the ideologies of each force are less relevant than their size, organization, morale, leadership, relevant alliances (i.e., people who will really come to their aid, rather than just pat them on the back after a win or loss), logistics (such as access to supplies/resources) and the terrain of the battlefield. For the sake of winning a BDS battle (or any similar engagement), we need to make sure our own political passions do not get in the way of understanding all of these concrete matters as we make our own battle plans.
2. We’re in it for the long haul, so let’s enjoy ourselves
It’s been said that there is nothing Israel can do to end the Middle East conflict. While it may be psychologically comforting to think that peace is something that can be brought about by Israel or its supporters, fundamentally peace will only arrive when those who have declared war on Israel for decades decide that the war is over.
The corollary for we supporters of Israel is that we have no control over when the battle over de-legitimize of the Jewish state will end. It’s the BDSers who can say when BDS is over, not us, so we have to plan to be in this fight for the foreseeable future (possibly for the rest of our lives).
This can be a depressing prospect, unless we change our own mindset to welcome battle (especially battles that we are likely to win). I’ve gotten involved with the fight against BDS for a lot of reasons, and as distasteful as I find any individual fight, I must admit that I’ve gotten a bit hooked on seeing BDS get its ass kicked again and again across the country (and even around the world).
As I’ve been documenting on this site for over a year, fundamentally BDS is a loser so if you going to find yourself a reluctant soldier in the fight against it, best to become a “happy warrior” who relishes battle, especially against a foe who can’t seem to recognize the weakness of their own tactical choices (just as they can’t recognize the moral bankruptcy of their political positions).
3. Focus only on tactics that work
There are a number of political activities that make us feel good, but may not actually have any impact. While I rail against the fantasy politics of the other side (i.e., their substitution of self-inflating grandstanding for actual practical politics), it needs to be pointed out that our side also makes choices that are more about getting something off our chest than winning a particular fight. Given how emotionally charged BDS battles can be, this is an understandable reaction, but one which should be fought since fantasy politics is fantasy politics, whichever side is engaged in it and should not be seen as a substitute for genuine action.
4. Focus only on people who work
There’s an ongoing debate over whether we’re better off trying to convince 100 people that they should take up our cause, vs. finding just ten people who are already engaged and cultivating them. My preference is the latter. As much as I’d love it if an argument or presentation I make could inspire an unengaged person to become engaged, it’s been my experience that people come to activism on their own, usually after encountering the ugly face of Israel’s haters through exposure to a BDS campaign or something similar. Better to find these newly self-energized activists and build them into your team, rather than try to convince people who haven’t caught “the bug” that it’s in their interest to become happy warriors.
5. Stop keeping our victories to ourselves
When the Davis Food Co-op unanimously rejected a boycott based on sound principles that would resonate with any similar institution in the country, news of that decision made it to a dozen Web sites and less than 100 blogs (half of which simply reposted the same story on another news site or blog). In contrast, when the Berkeley Student Senate took its meaningless, symbolic vote on divestment, the story was in a thousand different places within 24 hours.
Communicating our story (especially online) is one area where we are far, far behind our adversaries which is why Berkeley became an international story, while news of Davis (and the hundred other victories we’ve achieved in the BDS wars) rarely make it past this web site.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people comment on how a true boycott of Israel would require the boycotters to throw out their computers and cell phones. Fair enough, but it would be far preferable if our side started using those devices to spread our stories half as effectively as the other side spreads theirs.
6. It’s not just about us
The overwhelming defeats of BDS have not come about just because rank and file Presbyterians (or whoever rejects divestment next) are closet Zionists. Rather, they are people of good sense who understand that while solving the Middle East crisis may be important, it’s not required that they trash their own organization or community in order to take a stand on this issue.
What this means is that when we cast our arguments against BDS (or some other form of de-legitimization) to a third party (such as a university or church), we need to think beyond Jews, Arabs, and the Middle East conflict itself. The aforementioned Davis Co-op decision was based on the organization understanding that a boycott was bad for the Co-op, not the Jewish community. Never lose site of the fact that these battles often involve other people and organizations with their own needs and agendas. As you formulate your battle plans, taking these needs into account can determine whether these groups become your allies or your adversaries.
As the academic year winds to a close with BDS continuing its uninterrupted record of zero victories and Avogadro’s Number losses, my attention will be swinging towards the next big battle (the Presbyterian Church) over the next few weeks.
But the summer will be a time when both sides will plan for next fall’s campus wars, and as painful as it might be to have to fight the same battles all over again, never lose site of the fact that peace will come about only when those who have made war against the Jewish state the prime focus of their lives realize that no matter what they do, we will be there, sword in hand with joy in our hearts, making sure they lose once again.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Strategy and Tactics: Offense and Defense
Whenever I hang out with fellow activists, either officially or socially, a subject that inevitably comes up is offense and defense.
“Why are we always on the defensive?” “We can’t win if we just play defense!” “It’s time to go on the attack!” “Even if we win a particular fight, we can’t win long-term if we simply defend while the other side is allowed to always take the initiative.” are just some of the ways the same argument is brought to bear again and again.
Having watched or taken part in various BDS battles for more than half a decade, fights that require our side to turn back or reverse a divestment vote at some university or church (i.e., play defense) that the other side has initiated (offensively), I can understand the frustration behind the offense vs. defense argument in its various guises.
At the same time, the terms “offense” and “defense” only describe tactics, and tactics must be dictated by strategy which, in turn, are supposed to support specific goals. And if your ultimate goals are militant (such as destroying the Jewish state or weakening it to the point where it becomes more vulnerable to destruction), then it is easier to devise strategies to achieve these destructive ends (such as the “Apartheid strategy” designed to weaken support for Israel with its crucial US ally via a campaign of de-legitimization) which require offensive tactics such as BDS to implement.
But if your ultimate goals are NOT destructive, then it becomes more difficult to build or sustain a strategy designed around perpetual attack. For example, despite fantasies that Israel is a genocidal, expansionist power eager to kill every Arab it can reach as it expand its borders from the Nile to the Euphrates (really a description of Israel’s foes which they project onto Israel), the goal of the vast majority of Israelis and their supporters is to find a way to live in peace with not just the Palestinians but the entire Arab world.
Given this, efforts to build a strategy that will involve perpetual attack on those you ultimately want to live in peace with invariably fail to find enough support to become widely used. And even aggressive individual campaigns invariably become impossible to sustain, not because those who initiate them are lazy or lose their nerve, but because they inevitably run into the contradiction of maintaining a non-stop assault on those with whom most of us desire to live alongside without conflict.
The other issue I have with this “offense vs. defense” reasoning derives from what I know as an extremely amateur student of classical battle strategy. For prior to the age of air power, shock and awe, and asymmetrical warfare, the vocabulary of battle was as much about the garrison and the siege as it was about the clash of armies in the field engaged in offensive vs. defensive tactics.
To take one historic example, when the Byzantine army attempted to win back the Italian peninsula from the Ostragoths who had captured it after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantines managed to lay siege to several major cities, capturing some and garrisoning them in the process. These Byzantine-garrisoned cities later came under siege from Ostragothic forces attempting to win them back.
In this example, where the same army may be laying siege to one city, while defending against another siege at a different city a few miles up the road, which side is on the offense and which is playing defense? In a war that involves recapturing territory that may have been lost recently in a previous war, even being an invader does not necessarily put an army in the attacker vs. defender role.
I mention this because the metaphor that best describes Israel’s situation (and by extension the situation of its supporters abroad) is that of the siege. This was the title of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s fabulous history of Israel (the book I recommend to anyone who wants a crash course in the Middle East conflict), and it was no accident that this eloquent man of letters chose the term “siege” as the title of his one work on this subject.
For Israel’s military doctrine is based on fending off an attack from any possible combination of hostile forces that surround it. In other words, they are defending their city (really their nation) against someone else’s attack, which according to the arguments mentioned at the top of this piece would put them in the category of playing perpetual defense. Yet no one would describe the IDF, which maintains the siege walls, as lacking courage for not going on the attack more often. In fact, one of the most frequent reasons for a besieged city being lost was military leaders inside the city getting restless for a pitched battle and leaving the safety of the city walls to engage the enemy unnecessarily in the field.
I say unnecessarily because, historically speaking, the siege is just as hard (sometimes harder) on the besieger than the besieged. While it’s certainly no fun to have your city surrounded by soldiers firing arrows and building battering rams and catapults, it’s also no fun building those siege engines while defenders in the city pelt you with rocks, hot oil, dung and arrows. Besieging armies must survive in camps and forage for food (further and further from home base, the longer the siege goes on), while defenders can live in relative comfort and safety within their walls, presuming they have enough supplies to outlast the army at the gates.
Again, Middle East history bears out this siege parallel. For after 62 years, Israel behind its walls is more prosperous than ever, enjoying six decades of constitutional government. But during that same period, those who have maintained their siege against the Jewish state have watched their societies come apart at the seams with oligarchs and kings giving way to military dictatorships which are now fighting civil wars against religious fanatics, all the while sinking further and further into poverty and despair (despite God’s having planted half the world’s oil reserves under their feet).
The instability of the anti-Israel community described previously is another example where organizations dedicated to laying siege to Israel by proxy are perpetually falling apart while organizations dedicated to defending the Jewish state have gone from strength to strength.
Now fighting siege warfare does not simply involve cowering behind walls hoping your enemy will go away. Clashes at the walls are always part of the picture, as are skirmishes and even (ideally well-thought-out) battles that involve leaving the city to engage the enemy. But we should never lose site of the fact that the metaphor that describes our condition is not the standing army with its offensive and defensive strategies, but the siege which has its own logic, and its own legacy of strategy and tactics which can lead to victory.
Onto Part VI (Conclusion) - Let's Talk About Us
“Why are we always on the defensive?” “We can’t win if we just play defense!” “It’s time to go on the attack!” “Even if we win a particular fight, we can’t win long-term if we simply defend while the other side is allowed to always take the initiative.” are just some of the ways the same argument is brought to bear again and again.
Having watched or taken part in various BDS battles for more than half a decade, fights that require our side to turn back or reverse a divestment vote at some university or church (i.e., play defense) that the other side has initiated (offensively), I can understand the frustration behind the offense vs. defense argument in its various guises.
At the same time, the terms “offense” and “defense” only describe tactics, and tactics must be dictated by strategy which, in turn, are supposed to support specific goals. And if your ultimate goals are militant (such as destroying the Jewish state or weakening it to the point where it becomes more vulnerable to destruction), then it is easier to devise strategies to achieve these destructive ends (such as the “Apartheid strategy” designed to weaken support for Israel with its crucial US ally via a campaign of de-legitimization) which require offensive tactics such as BDS to implement.
But if your ultimate goals are NOT destructive, then it becomes more difficult to build or sustain a strategy designed around perpetual attack. For example, despite fantasies that Israel is a genocidal, expansionist power eager to kill every Arab it can reach as it expand its borders from the Nile to the Euphrates (really a description of Israel’s foes which they project onto Israel), the goal of the vast majority of Israelis and their supporters is to find a way to live in peace with not just the Palestinians but the entire Arab world.
Given this, efforts to build a strategy that will involve perpetual attack on those you ultimately want to live in peace with invariably fail to find enough support to become widely used. And even aggressive individual campaigns invariably become impossible to sustain, not because those who initiate them are lazy or lose their nerve, but because they inevitably run into the contradiction of maintaining a non-stop assault on those with whom most of us desire to live alongside without conflict.
The other issue I have with this “offense vs. defense” reasoning derives from what I know as an extremely amateur student of classical battle strategy. For prior to the age of air power, shock and awe, and asymmetrical warfare, the vocabulary of battle was as much about the garrison and the siege as it was about the clash of armies in the field engaged in offensive vs. defensive tactics.
To take one historic example, when the Byzantine army attempted to win back the Italian peninsula from the Ostragoths who had captured it after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantines managed to lay siege to several major cities, capturing some and garrisoning them in the process. These Byzantine-garrisoned cities later came under siege from Ostragothic forces attempting to win them back.
In this example, where the same army may be laying siege to one city, while defending against another siege at a different city a few miles up the road, which side is on the offense and which is playing defense? In a war that involves recapturing territory that may have been lost recently in a previous war, even being an invader does not necessarily put an army in the attacker vs. defender role.
I mention this because the metaphor that best describes Israel’s situation (and by extension the situation of its supporters abroad) is that of the siege. This was the title of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s fabulous history of Israel (the book I recommend to anyone who wants a crash course in the Middle East conflict), and it was no accident that this eloquent man of letters chose the term “siege” as the title of his one work on this subject.
For Israel’s military doctrine is based on fending off an attack from any possible combination of hostile forces that surround it. In other words, they are defending their city (really their nation) against someone else’s attack, which according to the arguments mentioned at the top of this piece would put them in the category of playing perpetual defense. Yet no one would describe the IDF, which maintains the siege walls, as lacking courage for not going on the attack more often. In fact, one of the most frequent reasons for a besieged city being lost was military leaders inside the city getting restless for a pitched battle and leaving the safety of the city walls to engage the enemy unnecessarily in the field.
I say unnecessarily because, historically speaking, the siege is just as hard (sometimes harder) on the besieger than the besieged. While it’s certainly no fun to have your city surrounded by soldiers firing arrows and building battering rams and catapults, it’s also no fun building those siege engines while defenders in the city pelt you with rocks, hot oil, dung and arrows. Besieging armies must survive in camps and forage for food (further and further from home base, the longer the siege goes on), while defenders can live in relative comfort and safety within their walls, presuming they have enough supplies to outlast the army at the gates.
Again, Middle East history bears out this siege parallel. For after 62 years, Israel behind its walls is more prosperous than ever, enjoying six decades of constitutional government. But during that same period, those who have maintained their siege against the Jewish state have watched their societies come apart at the seams with oligarchs and kings giving way to military dictatorships which are now fighting civil wars against religious fanatics, all the while sinking further and further into poverty and despair (despite God’s having planted half the world’s oil reserves under their feet).
The instability of the anti-Israel community described previously is another example where organizations dedicated to laying siege to Israel by proxy are perpetually falling apart while organizations dedicated to defending the Jewish state have gone from strength to strength.
Now fighting siege warfare does not simply involve cowering behind walls hoping your enemy will go away. Clashes at the walls are always part of the picture, as are skirmishes and even (ideally well-thought-out) battles that involve leaving the city to engage the enemy. But we should never lose site of the fact that the metaphor that describes our condition is not the standing army with its offensive and defensive strategies, but the siege which has its own logic, and its own legacy of strategy and tactics which can lead to victory.
Onto Part VI (Conclusion) - Let's Talk About Us
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Strategy and Tactics: Tactic(s)
With the sides in the BDS conflict outlined in terms of numbers and organization, I’d like to turn the conversation over to the tactics used by those seeking Boycott, Divestment and Sanction against Israel.
Even through “tactics” appears in the plural, in fact the entire BDS project seems to be built around a single tactic with multiple manifestations. This tactic includes the following steps:
(1) Find an organization or individual that is self-identified with progressive or human-rights causes, preferably one with a history of taking stands on international matters. Ideally, these targets should have a track record of taking such stances after they hit “critical mass” in the media, rather than as the result of deep knowledge about the subject within the organization.
(2) Present the targeted group with the BDS case in stark black-and-white terms in which any information not directly related to Israeli villainy and Palestinian pristine innocence is removed from consideration.
(3) Push for the organization to take some kind of boycott or divestment stance, however small. Insist that the institution’s professed progressive and human-rights credentials leave them no choice but to do as the BDSers say.
(4) If an individual or institution says “Yes” to a boycott or divestment call (even in the tiniest way), broadcast across the planet that the group is now squarely in the BDS camp and is in full agreement that Israel is an Apartheid State alone in the world at deserving economic punishment
(5) Use the success obtained in steps (1)-(4) above to try to get similar organizations to take a similar stance in hopes that this will give the BDS project “momentum.”
The details change from case to case. Sometimes (as in the case of municipalities and churches), the BDS appeal has been made directly to leaders behind the backs of citizens and church members. In the case of institutions with low thresholds for public petitioning (like food co-ops) attempts are made to get around the leadership to put boycott questions onto a public ballot. But whether the target is a university, church, city, union, co-op or over-the-hill rocker, the steps outlined above are pretty much always the same.
The divestniks know their demographic, which is why you’ll never see them take their roadshow to conservative or even moderate audiences, or even progressive audiences with a track record of careful consideration before taking stances on controversial issues. And steps 4-5 are crucial since, knowing how unpopular anti-Israel stances are among the general public, BDSers must create the appearance of institutional hostility towards the Jewish state from a well-known person or organization in order to try to create a reality that does not exist.
Now most political movements are about changing attitudes and dynamics, which is all about changing the “reality” of a particular approach to controversial topics. But this betrays the thin line between political action and political fantasy (a subject I’ve discussed in the past). For if you look at where BDS has been temporarily successful (such as the Presbyterian Church), the divestors have been so fast to move onto the next target that they immediately abandon the very people they’ve recently won over, leaving these groups to discover the consequences of the decision they were bullied into taking which often leads them to reverse course.
The widespread use of BDS hoaxes in 2009 is symptomatic of the fact that the five-step tactic noted above, while effective, hits a roadblock when it encounters an institution that knows what it’s dealing with when divestment comes knocking at the door. And after a decade of failed divestment and boycott efforts, the number of college administrations, student governments, church groups, etc. that are completely unfamiliar with BDS tactics and history becomes shorter. Which is why many anti-Israel groups decided last year to skip steps 1-3 entirely and simply publicize “victories” that never happened.
That observation aside, tactics involving presenting the complex Middle East as an oversimplified, emotionally driven morality play present a challenge to those of us who fight against BDS who are not inclined to counter their simplified, inaccurate storyline with a simple, untrue storyline of our own. Which is why we often find ourselves on the defensive, providing background and context to counter gut-wrenching images and ardent accusations.
I’ll have more to say about offense vs. defense tomorrow, but for now I should note that the BDSers themselves provide an example of how their own tactics can be countered. For if you’ve ever been in a debate with them, watch how quickly they’ll dismiss any accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, corruption and totalitarian violence against themselves, the Palestinians or Israel’s Arab neighbors by either ignoring it, dismissing it with a scoffing laugh or insincerely accepting such challenges then immediately spinning them into another condemnation of the Jewish state which they insist must continue to be the only topic of discussion.
If they feel that they’re allowed to draw the boundaries around what can and cannot be discussed in a conversation about Israel, the Middle East or BDS, then why can’t we?
Onto Part V - Offense vs. Defense
Even through “tactics” appears in the plural, in fact the entire BDS project seems to be built around a single tactic with multiple manifestations. This tactic includes the following steps:
(1) Find an organization or individual that is self-identified with progressive or human-rights causes, preferably one with a history of taking stands on international matters. Ideally, these targets should have a track record of taking such stances after they hit “critical mass” in the media, rather than as the result of deep knowledge about the subject within the organization.
(2) Present the targeted group with the BDS case in stark black-and-white terms in which any information not directly related to Israeli villainy and Palestinian pristine innocence is removed from consideration.
(3) Push for the organization to take some kind of boycott or divestment stance, however small. Insist that the institution’s professed progressive and human-rights credentials leave them no choice but to do as the BDSers say.
(4) If an individual or institution says “Yes” to a boycott or divestment call (even in the tiniest way), broadcast across the planet that the group is now squarely in the BDS camp and is in full agreement that Israel is an Apartheid State alone in the world at deserving economic punishment
(5) Use the success obtained in steps (1)-(4) above to try to get similar organizations to take a similar stance in hopes that this will give the BDS project “momentum.”
The details change from case to case. Sometimes (as in the case of municipalities and churches), the BDS appeal has been made directly to leaders behind the backs of citizens and church members. In the case of institutions with low thresholds for public petitioning (like food co-ops) attempts are made to get around the leadership to put boycott questions onto a public ballot. But whether the target is a university, church, city, union, co-op or over-the-hill rocker, the steps outlined above are pretty much always the same.
The divestniks know their demographic, which is why you’ll never see them take their roadshow to conservative or even moderate audiences, or even progressive audiences with a track record of careful consideration before taking stances on controversial issues. And steps 4-5 are crucial since, knowing how unpopular anti-Israel stances are among the general public, BDSers must create the appearance of institutional hostility towards the Jewish state from a well-known person or organization in order to try to create a reality that does not exist.
Now most political movements are about changing attitudes and dynamics, which is all about changing the “reality” of a particular approach to controversial topics. But this betrays the thin line between political action and political fantasy (a subject I’ve discussed in the past). For if you look at where BDS has been temporarily successful (such as the Presbyterian Church), the divestors have been so fast to move onto the next target that they immediately abandon the very people they’ve recently won over, leaving these groups to discover the consequences of the decision they were bullied into taking which often leads them to reverse course.
The widespread use of BDS hoaxes in 2009 is symptomatic of the fact that the five-step tactic noted above, while effective, hits a roadblock when it encounters an institution that knows what it’s dealing with when divestment comes knocking at the door. And after a decade of failed divestment and boycott efforts, the number of college administrations, student governments, church groups, etc. that are completely unfamiliar with BDS tactics and history becomes shorter. Which is why many anti-Israel groups decided last year to skip steps 1-3 entirely and simply publicize “victories” that never happened.
That observation aside, tactics involving presenting the complex Middle East as an oversimplified, emotionally driven morality play present a challenge to those of us who fight against BDS who are not inclined to counter their simplified, inaccurate storyline with a simple, untrue storyline of our own. Which is why we often find ourselves on the defensive, providing background and context to counter gut-wrenching images and ardent accusations.
I’ll have more to say about offense vs. defense tomorrow, but for now I should note that the BDSers themselves provide an example of how their own tactics can be countered. For if you’ve ever been in a debate with them, watch how quickly they’ll dismiss any accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, corruption and totalitarian violence against themselves, the Palestinians or Israel’s Arab neighbors by either ignoring it, dismissing it with a scoffing laugh or insincerely accepting such challenges then immediately spinning them into another condemnation of the Jewish state which they insist must continue to be the only topic of discussion.
If they feel that they’re allowed to draw the boundaries around what can and cannot be discussed in a conversation about Israel, the Middle East or BDS, then why can’t we?
Onto Part V - Offense vs. Defense
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Strategy and Tactics: Organization
What do the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions have in common? Among other things, they each involved world historical changes that came about due to the activities of small but highly organized, highly disciplined minorities of motivated individuals.
One doesn’t need to pick such charged examples to see that strength of organization has much more impact than sheer numbers when it comes to political effectiveness. Campaigns against slavery, the Civil Rights movement, Women’s suffrage, even the creation of Israel all began with tiny cadres who used effective organization as a force multiplier.
In the US, elements of an organized Jewish community (AIPAC, ADL, et al) are well known to the point of generating their own mythology (and even demonology). But the country also contains an organized anti-Israel community which, while numerically smaller than its Jewish counterpart, makes up for size through (1) organization; and (2) ties to the wider Arab, Muslim and broader anti-Israel world which dwarfs by an order of magnitude the global Jewish world in terms of numbers and resources.
The organizational face of BDS reflects one of the key elements of anti-Israel grassroots politics: instability. When BDS first came on the scene after the 2001 Durban conference and 9/11 attacks, the first generation activists was led the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM) which emerged when divestment gained initial traction on US campuses. As described by divestment advocate Abraham Greenhouse, the PSM eventually succumbed to dynamics which tend to befall such groups whenever they begin to reach critical mass:
“Ultimately, the PSM collapsed under its own weight. Internal disagreements over the coalition's political platform, particularly a statement explicitly refusing to condemn Palestinian attacks on civilians, prevented the group from realizing its ambition to develop an elaborate support structure to nurture and sustain the broader movement. Further, the Palestine solidarity community in the U.S. has often been divided along sectarian lines, and it was not unheard of for elements within a group to seize control through undemocratic means. After a series of incidents widely perceived within PSM as comprising such an attempted takeover, the coalition, intent on foiling further attempts, became increasingly bureaucratic. Eventually, it became nearly impossible to remain substantially engaged with PSM while continuing to be active in local organizing.”
This story is typical of anti-Israel organizational life which is fraught with the sectarian divisions along political, ethnic and religious lines that characterize the Middle East itself. Also, the BDS movement’s experience with infiltrating other organizations to bring them on board the divestment bandwagon has a destructive impact when these infiltration skills are turned onto organized elements of the movement itself. Radical politics – whatever cause they embrace – tends to be unstable, characterized by loyalty tests, browbeating of the rank and file by the leadership and, frequently, purges. My hometown of Boston, where the same anti-Israel activists have organized under a half a dozen banners in the last twenty years, is typical of this dynamic.
Jewish political life faces all the ups and downs of the opposite problem: too much, rather than too little, stability. Many brand-name Jewish activist groups are entering their second century and along with momentum, resources and name-recognition, such longevity creates bureaucratic inertia, blurred missions and networks of obligations (notably to partners and donors) that can limit organizational effectiveness. While newer entrepreneurial groups are emerging to focus on specific Israel-activism related missions, they too eventually become institutionalized and must divide their time between tending to their institutions (via fund raising, working with boards of directors, etc.) and connecting with the grass roots.
One ironic advantage the BDSers institutional instability is that it provides them a perpetually new face to present to their audience. If the excesses of the PSM still leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, no worries: it’s now the brand new SJP that’s taking the lead on campus divestment efforts. Turnover on college campuses already creates a dynamic of limited institutional memory, so once SJP falls apart (which it inevitably will) a new TLA will take its place, perpetually drawing students to an old idea that keeps being repackaged as new and fresh.
Jewish organizational stability creates a different set of opportunities and challenges. The sheer number of such organizations gives many grassroots activists the feeling that “doing something” at universities or elsewhere is simply a matter of connecting the right Jewish institution to the right people on campus. While this can be successful, it creates a disconnect between those on the ground that understand the local scene and culture, and national (or even international) organizations that tend to get called for help only when a crisis (such as a divestment battle) comes to town.
When pro-Israel activism has been most successful, it has been when strong, creative, local leadership takes the driver’s seat, reaching out to external resources when necessary. Ironically, it is when such local leadership is strong and stable that very little news is generated since anti-Israel activists (who follow Lenin’s maxim to “probe with bayonets”) tend to retreat when they encounter steel and advance only when they encounter mush.
Onto Part IV - Tactic(s)
One doesn’t need to pick such charged examples to see that strength of organization has much more impact than sheer numbers when it comes to political effectiveness. Campaigns against slavery, the Civil Rights movement, Women’s suffrage, even the creation of Israel all began with tiny cadres who used effective organization as a force multiplier.
In the US, elements of an organized Jewish community (AIPAC, ADL, et al) are well known to the point of generating their own mythology (and even demonology). But the country also contains an organized anti-Israel community which, while numerically smaller than its Jewish counterpart, makes up for size through (1) organization; and (2) ties to the wider Arab, Muslim and broader anti-Israel world which dwarfs by an order of magnitude the global Jewish world in terms of numbers and resources.
The organizational face of BDS reflects one of the key elements of anti-Israel grassroots politics: instability. When BDS first came on the scene after the 2001 Durban conference and 9/11 attacks, the first generation activists was led the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM) which emerged when divestment gained initial traction on US campuses. As described by divestment advocate Abraham Greenhouse, the PSM eventually succumbed to dynamics which tend to befall such groups whenever they begin to reach critical mass:
“Ultimately, the PSM collapsed under its own weight. Internal disagreements over the coalition's political platform, particularly a statement explicitly refusing to condemn Palestinian attacks on civilians, prevented the group from realizing its ambition to develop an elaborate support structure to nurture and sustain the broader movement. Further, the Palestine solidarity community in the U.S. has often been divided along sectarian lines, and it was not unheard of for elements within a group to seize control through undemocratic means. After a series of incidents widely perceived within PSM as comprising such an attempted takeover, the coalition, intent on foiling further attempts, became increasingly bureaucratic. Eventually, it became nearly impossible to remain substantially engaged with PSM while continuing to be active in local organizing.”
This story is typical of anti-Israel organizational life which is fraught with the sectarian divisions along political, ethnic and religious lines that characterize the Middle East itself. Also, the BDS movement’s experience with infiltrating other organizations to bring them on board the divestment bandwagon has a destructive impact when these infiltration skills are turned onto organized elements of the movement itself. Radical politics – whatever cause they embrace – tends to be unstable, characterized by loyalty tests, browbeating of the rank and file by the leadership and, frequently, purges. My hometown of Boston, where the same anti-Israel activists have organized under a half a dozen banners in the last twenty years, is typical of this dynamic.
Jewish political life faces all the ups and downs of the opposite problem: too much, rather than too little, stability. Many brand-name Jewish activist groups are entering their second century and along with momentum, resources and name-recognition, such longevity creates bureaucratic inertia, blurred missions and networks of obligations (notably to partners and donors) that can limit organizational effectiveness. While newer entrepreneurial groups are emerging to focus on specific Israel-activism related missions, they too eventually become institutionalized and must divide their time between tending to their institutions (via fund raising, working with boards of directors, etc.) and connecting with the grass roots.
One ironic advantage the BDSers institutional instability is that it provides them a perpetually new face to present to their audience. If the excesses of the PSM still leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, no worries: it’s now the brand new SJP that’s taking the lead on campus divestment efforts. Turnover on college campuses already creates a dynamic of limited institutional memory, so once SJP falls apart (which it inevitably will) a new TLA will take its place, perpetually drawing students to an old idea that keeps being repackaged as new and fresh.
Jewish organizational stability creates a different set of opportunities and challenges. The sheer number of such organizations gives many grassroots activists the feeling that “doing something” at universities or elsewhere is simply a matter of connecting the right Jewish institution to the right people on campus. While this can be successful, it creates a disconnect between those on the ground that understand the local scene and culture, and national (or even international) organizations that tend to get called for help only when a crisis (such as a divestment battle) comes to town.
When pro-Israel activism has been most successful, it has been when strong, creative, local leadership takes the driver’s seat, reaching out to external resources when necessary. Ironically, it is when such local leadership is strong and stable that very little news is generated since anti-Israel activists (who follow Lenin’s maxim to “probe with bayonets”) tend to retreat when they encounter steel and advance only when they encounter mush.
Onto Part IV - Tactic(s)
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Strategy and Tactics: Numbers
When dealing with a “movement” like BDS which thrives on anecdotes, numbers are a great way to pierce the fog and get to the real truth. After all, what tells us more about the success vs. failure of boycott and divestment: the story of a Danish retirement fund selling a few thousand dollars worth of Israeli stock for political reasons, or the numbers showing that the Israeli economy and exports have both doubled during the decade when BDS has been operating?
At the same time, casting peripheral issues in numeric terms can make them seem more central than they really are, leading to poor decisions regarding strategy and tactics. For instance, this situation may ring a bell, particularly with campus activists:
“SJP brought in an anti-Israel speaker and drew a crowd of 300 people and we had 10 protestors at their event. The next week, we had a pro-Israel event that drew 140 people and SJP showed up with 20 protestors. So it looks like we lost by 170.”
While this dialog may be fanciful, the notion is not. As activists (and as human beings) we like to be able to measure our success and failure in numerical terms, and lacking many things to count when it comes to campus activism, we tend to fall back on counting heads at one and other’s events to see if we’re gaining or losing ground.
This is one of the reasons why bringing in speakers and hosting Israel Days or Anti-Israel Days are so popular. Activist organizations (both on and off campus – on both sides) like to be able to present lists of their projects to members and funders, ideally with headcounts showing that their work is reaching people. And thus the need to generate numeric information drives a strategy based on maximizing the number of speaking events and maximizing the size of the audience at each event.
But if you look at more meaningful numbers (which I have), you’ll discover interesting insights like the fact that pro- and anti-Israel camps at most universities never tops more than 5-10% of the student population, with the other 90%+ viewing activists on both sides as mostly engaged with talking to themselves or shouting at each other. Which means that efforts both sides are using to swing this undecided vast majority one way or another might actually be turning them off to the issue entirely.
Remember also that hostility to Israel is most prominent on elite campuses, a small subset of American higher education as a whole. Now this subset is high profile and extremely influential, so should not be ignored. But we also shouldn’t lose site of the fact that on the vast majority of campuses, support for Israel looks a lot more like national trends where it outstrips hostility towards the Jewish state by 3:1.
Even if we assume that at places like Berkeley, sentiment about Israel on campus is closer to 1:1 (i.e., supporters and detractors evenly matched), suddenly the question becomes why anti-Israel activism has such a high profile at these places, even without an overwhelming (or even clear-cut) numerical advantage. In this case, sheer numbers may make less of a difference than other factors.
This should come as no surprise. After all, smaller armies have defeated much larger ones for centuries. Whether we’re talking about the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans held off a million invading Persians (or more historically likely figures of 7000 Greeks holding off 100,000+ invaders) or Israel’s numerous military victories against vastly numerically superior foes, the size of an army often takes a back seat to factors such as strategy, tactics, leadership, training, equipment, morale and the choice of terrain on which to fight.
In the case of the Spartans, the choice of a narrow pass as the battlefield meant that even a million-man army would have to enter Greece just a few hundred at a time, which meant better-trained and more disciplined troops protecting such a narrow space could hold the enemy at bay so long as the fight was taking place in one direction and the defender’s morale held firm.
In the case of Israel’s victories, technically sophisticated weapons actually made less of a difference than the training and discipline needed to integrate this hardware into creative battle strategies. The fact that Israel’s attackers could always retreat to their home countries safely while Israel knew it was fighting for its existence also dictated the level of commitment of each side’s soldiers.
Numbers provide us crucial information to make decisions, but we should beware of assessing our own strategic situation or making tactical decisions based on numeric factors (such as number of activists on each side) that might make less of a difference than strength of organization and tactical choices, each of which will be addressed in separate postings over the next two days.
Onto Part III - Organization
At the same time, casting peripheral issues in numeric terms can make them seem more central than they really are, leading to poor decisions regarding strategy and tactics. For instance, this situation may ring a bell, particularly with campus activists:
“SJP brought in an anti-Israel speaker and drew a crowd of 300 people and we had 10 protestors at their event. The next week, we had a pro-Israel event that drew 140 people and SJP showed up with 20 protestors. So it looks like we lost by 170.”
While this dialog may be fanciful, the notion is not. As activists (and as human beings) we like to be able to measure our success and failure in numerical terms, and lacking many things to count when it comes to campus activism, we tend to fall back on counting heads at one and other’s events to see if we’re gaining or losing ground.
This is one of the reasons why bringing in speakers and hosting Israel Days or Anti-Israel Days are so popular. Activist organizations (both on and off campus – on both sides) like to be able to present lists of their projects to members and funders, ideally with headcounts showing that their work is reaching people. And thus the need to generate numeric information drives a strategy based on maximizing the number of speaking events and maximizing the size of the audience at each event.
But if you look at more meaningful numbers (which I have), you’ll discover interesting insights like the fact that pro- and anti-Israel camps at most universities never tops more than 5-10% of the student population, with the other 90%+ viewing activists on both sides as mostly engaged with talking to themselves or shouting at each other. Which means that efforts both sides are using to swing this undecided vast majority one way or another might actually be turning them off to the issue entirely.
Remember also that hostility to Israel is most prominent on elite campuses, a small subset of American higher education as a whole. Now this subset is high profile and extremely influential, so should not be ignored. But we also shouldn’t lose site of the fact that on the vast majority of campuses, support for Israel looks a lot more like national trends where it outstrips hostility towards the Jewish state by 3:1.
Even if we assume that at places like Berkeley, sentiment about Israel on campus is closer to 1:1 (i.e., supporters and detractors evenly matched), suddenly the question becomes why anti-Israel activism has such a high profile at these places, even without an overwhelming (or even clear-cut) numerical advantage. In this case, sheer numbers may make less of a difference than other factors.
This should come as no surprise. After all, smaller armies have defeated much larger ones for centuries. Whether we’re talking about the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans held off a million invading Persians (or more historically likely figures of 7000 Greeks holding off 100,000+ invaders) or Israel’s numerous military victories against vastly numerically superior foes, the size of an army often takes a back seat to factors such as strategy, tactics, leadership, training, equipment, morale and the choice of terrain on which to fight.
In the case of the Spartans, the choice of a narrow pass as the battlefield meant that even a million-man army would have to enter Greece just a few hundred at a time, which meant better-trained and more disciplined troops protecting such a narrow space could hold the enemy at bay so long as the fight was taking place in one direction and the defender’s morale held firm.
In the case of Israel’s victories, technically sophisticated weapons actually made less of a difference than the training and discipline needed to integrate this hardware into creative battle strategies. The fact that Israel’s attackers could always retreat to their home countries safely while Israel knew it was fighting for its existence also dictated the level of commitment of each side’s soldiers.
Numbers provide us crucial information to make decisions, but we should beware of assessing our own strategic situation or making tactical decisions based on numeric factors (such as number of activists on each side) that might make less of a difference than strength of organization and tactical choices, each of which will be addressed in separate postings over the next two days.
Onto Part III - Organization
Monday, May 17, 2010
Strategy and Tactics: Language
Before the academic year comes to a close, I thought it might be useful to discuss topics regarding strategy and tactics in the fight against BDS. I’m kicking off a week-long series on the subject with some thoughts on language.
When talking about a political clash between two opposing sides, it’s inevitable that language gets drawn from a military vocabulary. Offense and defense are indispensible terms, as are words and phrases that indicate opposing sides such as the other side, opponents, or even the most challenging term of all enemy.
I acknowledge that this type of terminology makes many people feel uncomfortable, especially: (1) those whose ultimate goals are not militant; or (2) those whose ultimate goals are militant, but who seek to cover this up by using only neutral or positive terms (such as “human rights” or “international law”) to describe their motivations and actions.
While my motivations put me squarely in group (1), I also prefer to use the best words possible to describe things accurately, including terms deriving from argumentation to discuss what is essentially a political debate (albeit a heated one).
Now I could be coy and point out that a military vocabulary used to describe a legitimate debate between opposing parties to a conflict masks the fact that such argumentation can be (and often is) a cooperative enterprise. Parties to an argument, after all, have agreed to engage with each other over a matter of importance and the give-and-take between the parties (which might seem adversarial, especially if described in terms of “attack” and “defense”) can nevertheless lead to a full or partial resolution that would satisfy both parties (or at least provide insight to an audience to such a discussion).
In the case of the fight against BDS, however, claiming that both sides are engaged in an ultimately cooperative enterprise would be inaccurate. I can (and have) taken part in genuine (i.e., honest and mutually beneficial) arguments with people who support positions in the Middle East that I opposes, discussions that opened up new avenues for both of us to explore our own thinking. BDS, however, does not open dialog, but rather closes it.
BDS asks you to accept their premise of Israel’s guilt, and only seeks discussion over when and how it punishment should be administered. BDS advocates are not open to new ideas or new information. In fact, they become enraged when information is presented that challenges their truncated view of history or self-serving definitions of human rights or international law. Intimidation and even threats of violence (on display so vividly within the University of California system these last few years) are clearly in the BDS toolkit, which alone makes their claims to being participants in an honest debate suspect.
More importantly, there is a wider context into which the debate over BDS is being played out. To illustrate this by example: this weekend my son’s 5th grade Hebrew School class presented work they’ve been doing for the last several weeks to highlight various organizations in Israel trying to bring together Jews and Arabs via fields such as sports, children’s theater and medicine. Now there exists reasonable disagreement over how effective these grassroots mechanisms for building bridges can be, but I would never question the value of good faith efforts to exhaust all methods for bringing people together in the ultimate hope that this will eventually lead to peace.
BDS, however, takes an opposite view of such peace efforts, branding Israelis who participate in such activity as deceivers and Arabs who take part as collaborators or traitors. That is why they seek to shut down all cooperation between Arabs and Jews in the region. That is why they seek to end cooperation between Israelis and everyone else in the world by protesting not just Israel’s economic ties to other countries, but academic and cultural ties as well.
In other words, for the efforts of real peace activists to be successful, BDS must be exposed for what it is and, ideally, swept from the battlefield if efforts to create a real peace are ever to take root.
Thus the fight against BDS (even if is described in military-sounding language) turns out to be the true battle for peace, while BDS (which never hesitates to wrap itself in the mantle of peace-making and justice) is actually a form of unjust warfare that must lose in order for peace to win.
Funny thing language.
Onto Part II - Numbers
When talking about a political clash between two opposing sides, it’s inevitable that language gets drawn from a military vocabulary. Offense and defense are indispensible terms, as are words and phrases that indicate opposing sides such as the other side, opponents, or even the most challenging term of all enemy.
I acknowledge that this type of terminology makes many people feel uncomfortable, especially: (1) those whose ultimate goals are not militant; or (2) those whose ultimate goals are militant, but who seek to cover this up by using only neutral or positive terms (such as “human rights” or “international law”) to describe their motivations and actions.
While my motivations put me squarely in group (1), I also prefer to use the best words possible to describe things accurately, including terms deriving from argumentation to discuss what is essentially a political debate (albeit a heated one).
Now I could be coy and point out that a military vocabulary used to describe a legitimate debate between opposing parties to a conflict masks the fact that such argumentation can be (and often is) a cooperative enterprise. Parties to an argument, after all, have agreed to engage with each other over a matter of importance and the give-and-take between the parties (which might seem adversarial, especially if described in terms of “attack” and “defense”) can nevertheless lead to a full or partial resolution that would satisfy both parties (or at least provide insight to an audience to such a discussion).
In the case of the fight against BDS, however, claiming that both sides are engaged in an ultimately cooperative enterprise would be inaccurate. I can (and have) taken part in genuine (i.e., honest and mutually beneficial) arguments with people who support positions in the Middle East that I opposes, discussions that opened up new avenues for both of us to explore our own thinking. BDS, however, does not open dialog, but rather closes it.
BDS asks you to accept their premise of Israel’s guilt, and only seeks discussion over when and how it punishment should be administered. BDS advocates are not open to new ideas or new information. In fact, they become enraged when information is presented that challenges their truncated view of history or self-serving definitions of human rights or international law. Intimidation and even threats of violence (on display so vividly within the University of California system these last few years) are clearly in the BDS toolkit, which alone makes their claims to being participants in an honest debate suspect.
More importantly, there is a wider context into which the debate over BDS is being played out. To illustrate this by example: this weekend my son’s 5th grade Hebrew School class presented work they’ve been doing for the last several weeks to highlight various organizations in Israel trying to bring together Jews and Arabs via fields such as sports, children’s theater and medicine. Now there exists reasonable disagreement over how effective these grassroots mechanisms for building bridges can be, but I would never question the value of good faith efforts to exhaust all methods for bringing people together in the ultimate hope that this will eventually lead to peace.
BDS, however, takes an opposite view of such peace efforts, branding Israelis who participate in such activity as deceivers and Arabs who take part as collaborators or traitors. That is why they seek to shut down all cooperation between Arabs and Jews in the region. That is why they seek to end cooperation between Israelis and everyone else in the world by protesting not just Israel’s economic ties to other countries, but academic and cultural ties as well.
In other words, for the efforts of real peace activists to be successful, BDS must be exposed for what it is and, ideally, swept from the battlefield if efforts to create a real peace are ever to take root.
Thus the fight against BDS (even if is described in military-sounding language) turns out to be the true battle for peace, while BDS (which never hesitates to wrap itself in the mantle of peace-making and justice) is actually a form of unjust warfare that must lose in order for peace to win.
Funny thing language.
Onto Part II - Numbers
Friday, May 14, 2010
Barghouti
If you’ve been on either side of the BDS debates over the last couple of years, you can’t help stumbling over Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
I’ve discussed PACBI before, and despite a name which implies that the organization’s focus is on academic and cultural boycotts (the least successful variant of BDS), the PACBI name – and Barghouti’s – tend to get invoked by participants in any BDS project (university and union divestment battles, product boycotts at US food co-ops, etc.) regardless of whether they fall into PACBI’s alleged mandate.
When the Irish trade union movement met to discuss their controversial boycott resolutions against Israel, Barghouti was on the agenda. When the San Francisco Jewish Federation was debating how to prevent BDS activists from subsidizing their project with community money, local Jewish leaders were denounced for not debating Barghouti on the subject.
Even within the Israel-de-legitimization movement, where the efficacy of BDS vs. other tactics are debated (usually behind the scenes), Berghouti’s name is used as a show-stopper, an attempt to end disputes over the subject by claiming PACBI’s 2005 academic boycott call means the BDS movement wells up purely from Palestinian civil society and is thus beyond discussion. (The fact that PACBI and Barghouti himself are late-comers to the BDS campaign, which began in 2001, seems to have fled the consciousness of anti-Israel campaigners.)
So who is Mr. Barghouti?
If the name rings a bell, Omar Barghouti is related to a pair of older Barghouti’s, Mustafa Barghouti (the man who ran against current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas) and the more notorious Marwan Barghouti who is currently serving five consecutive life sentences for his involvement in terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Like the Husseini’s, a clan which includes PA negotiator Faisal Husseini, the late Yassir Arafat (whose real name is Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini), and the infamous Haj Amin al-Husseini (the George Washington of Palestinian nationalism who spent World War working for the Nazis in the Middle East), the Berghouti’s are major players in regional Arab politics.
Like a number of “professional Palestinians,” Omar Barghouti’s role as stand-in for the suffering local masses is a bit of a stretch. He was born in Qatar, but grew up in Egypt, the land that produced two of the most famous names in “pro-Pal” politics: Yassir Arafat and Edward Said (Arafat’s Egyptian accent was always a bit of an embarrassment for his allies, and Said had to admit to his Egyptian origins towards the end of a life of Palestinian identity politics).
Deeply ensconced in the higher end of the local upper Middle Class, Barghouti lived abroad and attended Columbia University before moving to Ramallah after college and, most recently, enrolling in a graduate program in philosophy at Israel’s Tel Aviv University. It is from this perch within Israeli academia that Barghouti runs his global campaign to have all academics everywhere shun their Israeli colleagues until all Arab demands against Israel are met in full.
The do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do nature of a leader supporting (and supported by) an Israeli university calling for academics (and everyone else) to boycott Israeli universities is a touchy subject within the BDS movement. When asked directly about the contradiction, Barghouti dismisses questions as a personal matter over which he does not wish to comment. When one critic refused to ignore the issue, Barghouti stated that “oppressed people don’t have a choice of where they go to school” (an interesting statement for someone who got into New York’s Columbia University, an honor denied to 90% of the “non-oppressed” people who apply).
When thousands of people signed a petition calling for Barghouti to be kicked out of Tel Aviv university for his tireless attempts to shut down Israeli schools, the humble Barghouti claimed kinship with Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King (all of which attended university within countries they criticized and fought against). And when the head of that university refused to punish him for his political activism, Barghouti became even more enraged, fearing that this act of Isreali academic liberalism would be used to besmirch his campaign to have Israeli acadamia globally condemned and boycotted for its alleged illiberalism.
If all of this makes your head spin, the key to understanding Barghouti is to see him as an academic vs. a political phenomenon. Like many (if not most) of the people who fuel the BDS “movement,” Omar Barghouti does so from within the ultimate safe environment: the womb of the university. There, his middle-class lifestyle is subsidized, his graduate school workload as light or as heavy as he chooses to make it, his position at the university protected by those he condemns, just as his body is protected by the Israeli security forces he claims are homicidal maniacs.
Like the many student activists around the world who look to him for leadership, Barghouti gets to pose as a risk taker knowing full well that his political activity will never be punished. The opposite, in fact, since his role within PACBI has provided him global celebrity status complete with endless speaking opportunities and trips around the world which don’t seem to be getting in the way of his preparation for final exams.
Like students at Berkeley and elsewhere, Barghouti gets to endlessly complain about his movement being silenced, even as jets around the planet delivering his message and penning articles that routinely get published in major newspapers. Like the BDSers who endlessly claim to be showing great courage by standing up to “Jewish power,” he rails against fantasy threats knowing full well that a late night knock on the door by his alleged oppressors will never materialize.
If the global leadership of the BDS movement resides anywhere, it resides at Tel Aviv University where a graduate student who does not seem to engage in any academic activities gets to dwell in highly-subsidized perpetual adolescence, jetting around the planet in luxury condemning the very institutions that support a comfortable lifestyle. In this role he takes no risks while claiming great courage, the ultimate middle class warrior acting as a stand-in for the repressed of the world.
Given all this, is it any wonder that Omar Barghouti is the poseur-child for BDS, leading ranks of the privileged all playing the role of repressed victim at someone else’s expense?
I’ve discussed PACBI before, and despite a name which implies that the organization’s focus is on academic and cultural boycotts (the least successful variant of BDS), the PACBI name – and Barghouti’s – tend to get invoked by participants in any BDS project (university and union divestment battles, product boycotts at US food co-ops, etc.) regardless of whether they fall into PACBI’s alleged mandate.
When the Irish trade union movement met to discuss their controversial boycott resolutions against Israel, Barghouti was on the agenda. When the San Francisco Jewish Federation was debating how to prevent BDS activists from subsidizing their project with community money, local Jewish leaders were denounced for not debating Barghouti on the subject.
Even within the Israel-de-legitimization movement, where the efficacy of BDS vs. other tactics are debated (usually behind the scenes), Berghouti’s name is used as a show-stopper, an attempt to end disputes over the subject by claiming PACBI’s 2005 academic boycott call means the BDS movement wells up purely from Palestinian civil society and is thus beyond discussion. (The fact that PACBI and Barghouti himself are late-comers to the BDS campaign, which began in 2001, seems to have fled the consciousness of anti-Israel campaigners.)
So who is Mr. Barghouti?
If the name rings a bell, Omar Barghouti is related to a pair of older Barghouti’s, Mustafa Barghouti (the man who ran against current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas) and the more notorious Marwan Barghouti who is currently serving five consecutive life sentences for his involvement in terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Like the Husseini’s, a clan which includes PA negotiator Faisal Husseini, the late Yassir Arafat (whose real name is Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini), and the infamous Haj Amin al-Husseini (the George Washington of Palestinian nationalism who spent World War working for the Nazis in the Middle East), the Berghouti’s are major players in regional Arab politics.
Like a number of “professional Palestinians,” Omar Barghouti’s role as stand-in for the suffering local masses is a bit of a stretch. He was born in Qatar, but grew up in Egypt, the land that produced two of the most famous names in “pro-Pal” politics: Yassir Arafat and Edward Said (Arafat’s Egyptian accent was always a bit of an embarrassment for his allies, and Said had to admit to his Egyptian origins towards the end of a life of Palestinian identity politics).
Deeply ensconced in the higher end of the local upper Middle Class, Barghouti lived abroad and attended Columbia University before moving to Ramallah after college and, most recently, enrolling in a graduate program in philosophy at Israel’s Tel Aviv University. It is from this perch within Israeli academia that Barghouti runs his global campaign to have all academics everywhere shun their Israeli colleagues until all Arab demands against Israel are met in full.
The do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do nature of a leader supporting (and supported by) an Israeli university calling for academics (and everyone else) to boycott Israeli universities is a touchy subject within the BDS movement. When asked directly about the contradiction, Barghouti dismisses questions as a personal matter over which he does not wish to comment. When one critic refused to ignore the issue, Barghouti stated that “oppressed people don’t have a choice of where they go to school” (an interesting statement for someone who got into New York’s Columbia University, an honor denied to 90% of the “non-oppressed” people who apply).
When thousands of people signed a petition calling for Barghouti to be kicked out of Tel Aviv university for his tireless attempts to shut down Israeli schools, the humble Barghouti claimed kinship with Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King (all of which attended university within countries they criticized and fought against). And when the head of that university refused to punish him for his political activism, Barghouti became even more enraged, fearing that this act of Isreali academic liberalism would be used to besmirch his campaign to have Israeli acadamia globally condemned and boycotted for its alleged illiberalism.
If all of this makes your head spin, the key to understanding Barghouti is to see him as an academic vs. a political phenomenon. Like many (if not most) of the people who fuel the BDS “movement,” Omar Barghouti does so from within the ultimate safe environment: the womb of the university. There, his middle-class lifestyle is subsidized, his graduate school workload as light or as heavy as he chooses to make it, his position at the university protected by those he condemns, just as his body is protected by the Israeli security forces he claims are homicidal maniacs.
Like the many student activists around the world who look to him for leadership, Barghouti gets to pose as a risk taker knowing full well that his political activity will never be punished. The opposite, in fact, since his role within PACBI has provided him global celebrity status complete with endless speaking opportunities and trips around the world which don’t seem to be getting in the way of his preparation for final exams.
Like students at Berkeley and elsewhere, Barghouti gets to endlessly complain about his movement being silenced, even as jets around the planet delivering his message and penning articles that routinely get published in major newspapers. Like the BDSers who endlessly claim to be showing great courage by standing up to “Jewish power,” he rails against fantasy threats knowing full well that a late night knock on the door by his alleged oppressors will never materialize.
If the global leadership of the BDS movement resides anywhere, it resides at Tel Aviv University where a graduate student who does not seem to engage in any academic activities gets to dwell in highly-subsidized perpetual adolescence, jetting around the planet in luxury condemning the very institutions that support a comfortable lifestyle. In this role he takes no risks while claiming great courage, the ultimate middle class warrior acting as a stand-in for the repressed of the world.
Given all this, is it any wonder that Omar Barghouti is the poseur-child for BDS, leading ranks of the privileged all playing the role of repressed victim at someone else’s expense?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Oh Say Can UC
And now for some updates on the shenanigans still showing up on my radar as the various University of California divestment resolutions finish off their death scenes as the academic year winds to a close.
To begin, at Stanford (and please forgive me for being repetitiously redundant): Divestment Loses Again! No news there, although one hopes that attempts to reconcile the differing sides in the debate turn out to be sincere and not just a mechanism for sneaking divestment back into the school via some backdoor.
Moving onto to Berkeley, what would a BDS story be without attempts to pull a fast one, such as this story about the attempted hijacking of the name and reputation of the Mayor of San Francisco? The speed with which this hoax blew up in the BDSers faces provides some encouragement that, despite what they believe, the divestment cru cannot get away with anything.
And finally, in case you concerned that any of the divestment votes that roiled student government up and down the West Coast for the last two months had any meaning whatsoever, here’s what the UC Regents had to say about the whole mishagas.
So at the end of the day, all those all-nighters, all the time, all the energy, all the hostility and bitter divisiveness needlessly spread on campus after campus added up to nothing more than the BDSers doing whatever it took to demonstrate to themselves their own relevance, whatever the cost to the rest of the community.
If there is one bright spot to this whole set of affairs, it comes from the students who rose up at all these universities to let the Students for Justice in Palestine types know that – despite what some may think – the boycotters do not own the campus. No doubt next year will be a hard one for Israel supporters throughout the UC system. But at least for now, they have learned that their voices count and their actions matter. Mazel Tov!
To begin, at Stanford (and please forgive me for being repetitiously redundant): Divestment Loses Again! No news there, although one hopes that attempts to reconcile the differing sides in the debate turn out to be sincere and not just a mechanism for sneaking divestment back into the school via some backdoor.
Moving onto to Berkeley, what would a BDS story be without attempts to pull a fast one, such as this story about the attempted hijacking of the name and reputation of the Mayor of San Francisco? The speed with which this hoax blew up in the BDSers faces provides some encouragement that, despite what they believe, the divestment cru cannot get away with anything.
And finally, in case you concerned that any of the divestment votes that roiled student government up and down the West Coast for the last two months had any meaning whatsoever, here’s what the UC Regents had to say about the whole mishagas.
So at the end of the day, all those all-nighters, all the time, all the energy, all the hostility and bitter divisiveness needlessly spread on campus after campus added up to nothing more than the BDSers doing whatever it took to demonstrate to themselves their own relevance, whatever the cost to the rest of the community.
If there is one bright spot to this whole set of affairs, it comes from the students who rose up at all these universities to let the Students for Justice in Palestine types know that – despite what some may think – the boycotters do not own the campus. No doubt next year will be a hard one for Israel supporters throughout the UC system. But at least for now, they have learned that their voices count and their actions matter. Mazel Tov!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Reality Check
As noted in the last entry, the BDSer (Jew or Gentile) is first and foremost a fantasist. In addition to creating a fantasy world which they share with fellow Israel-haters, one in which they are an intrepid, glorious vanguard with unique insight as to how the world really works, they also hope to bring their fantasy of a world with Israel suffering the punishment of a pariah into being by sheer force of their will.
This is why they rush headlong into the next BDS battle, even with a decade of defeat in their wake. This is why appeals to reason or questions regarding morality of a “movement” that blesses itself with the mantle of human rights (despite being allied with the greatest human rights abusers on the planet) fall on deaf ears. Simply put, here on Earth arguments for and again BDS can be judged on their own merits. But the fantasyland of BDS plays by an entirely different set of rules unknowable by the uninitiated.
Which is why we here in this dimension owe it to ourselves to check in with reality every now and then, if only to reassure ourselves of the distance between the world the divestniks demand we believe in and the world in which we actually dwell.
As previously described, during the ten years when BDS has been in the ascendant as the tactic of choice for the “Israel-is-Always-to-Blame” crowd, the Israeli economy and exports have nearly doubled and support for Israel within the United States has skyrocketed. And despite claims that their efforts are increasingly leading to Israel’s cultural and academic isolation, the list of artists and academics defying boycott calls to perform in Israel or work with Israeli colleagues just grows longer and longer.
A 60,000 pound dose of reality hit the newswires yesterday when Israel was admitted into the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 30+ countries that represent the world’s most advanced economies. The organization is committed to working together to advanced global growth and prosperity through cooperation, transparency and the sharing of economic and other resources. Prime Minister Netenyahu’s speech declaring the significance of joining this organization can be found here.
The choice to let Israel join the group was unanimous, despite calls by every one of the usual suspects to not admit Israel due to their perception of the political reality on the ground in the Middle East. Which begs the question I’ve asked before: if a rejection of Israel’s bid to join OECD would have been portrayed as a humiliating political loss for the Jewish state, isn’t it fair to characterize Israel’s success as a global stamp of approval?
But of course, we who dwell in the real world understand that you can have countries that are economic successes (even ones that have internal problems of wealth distribution and conflicts with neighbors) that still possess enough merit to warrant investment, political support of membership in a group like the OECD.
The measurement tool I try to use when balancing these various factors is the accountants ledger where assets are listed on one side, and liabilities on the other. In Israel’s case, the asset column would be filled with things like an industrious people, success in assimilating immigrants, an ability to make dramatic changes in fiscal policies, a choice to engage in peace politics (despite the hazards), etc. And in the liability column, you’d have remnant statism, a precarious security situation, and a society where unequal distribution of wealth can and has led to social unrest.
I could go on and on in this vein, and also create a similar ledger for Israel’s most militant foes with little on the assets side to balance out liabilities like totalitarian government, institutionalized hatred of minorities, clan-based corrupt economies and militant foreign policies that inevitably create needless conflict.
The ascension of Israel in the club of the world’s best run economies is symbolic in that it reflects the will of a certain segment of global thought leadership, the segment that deals with dollars and cents (i.e., the one that is forced to hue to reality as much as possible). After all, many of us hold political position and spiritual beliefs, but at the end of the day our choices regarding where to invest our own money tend to be made on the basis of reason. Similarly, European governments may huff and puff about this or that Israeli inequity, but at the end of their days investment dollars flow freely into the Jewish state, reflecting more confidence in the Jewish nation than in the economies of their own continent.
BDS sits squarely outside this reality. No ledger sheet for them: just fairy tales featuring Israeli witches and Palestinian virgins. And thus a Danish retirement fund selling off a few thousand shares of Israeli stock or a meeting at Berkeley where hundreds of students rail in impotent rage against the world’s only Jewish state (the Jew among the nations) has more resonance for them than an Israeli economy entering the second decade of the 21st century stronger than ever, and acting as a model for the rest of the world.
This is why they rush headlong into the next BDS battle, even with a decade of defeat in their wake. This is why appeals to reason or questions regarding morality of a “movement” that blesses itself with the mantle of human rights (despite being allied with the greatest human rights abusers on the planet) fall on deaf ears. Simply put, here on Earth arguments for and again BDS can be judged on their own merits. But the fantasyland of BDS plays by an entirely different set of rules unknowable by the uninitiated.
Which is why we here in this dimension owe it to ourselves to check in with reality every now and then, if only to reassure ourselves of the distance between the world the divestniks demand we believe in and the world in which we actually dwell.
As previously described, during the ten years when BDS has been in the ascendant as the tactic of choice for the “Israel-is-Always-to-Blame” crowd, the Israeli economy and exports have nearly doubled and support for Israel within the United States has skyrocketed. And despite claims that their efforts are increasingly leading to Israel’s cultural and academic isolation, the list of artists and academics defying boycott calls to perform in Israel or work with Israeli colleagues just grows longer and longer.
A 60,000 pound dose of reality hit the newswires yesterday when Israel was admitted into the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 30+ countries that represent the world’s most advanced economies. The organization is committed to working together to advanced global growth and prosperity through cooperation, transparency and the sharing of economic and other resources. Prime Minister Netenyahu’s speech declaring the significance of joining this organization can be found here.
The choice to let Israel join the group was unanimous, despite calls by every one of the usual suspects to not admit Israel due to their perception of the political reality on the ground in the Middle East. Which begs the question I’ve asked before: if a rejection of Israel’s bid to join OECD would have been portrayed as a humiliating political loss for the Jewish state, isn’t it fair to characterize Israel’s success as a global stamp of approval?
But of course, we who dwell in the real world understand that you can have countries that are economic successes (even ones that have internal problems of wealth distribution and conflicts with neighbors) that still possess enough merit to warrant investment, political support of membership in a group like the OECD.
The measurement tool I try to use when balancing these various factors is the accountants ledger where assets are listed on one side, and liabilities on the other. In Israel’s case, the asset column would be filled with things like an industrious people, success in assimilating immigrants, an ability to make dramatic changes in fiscal policies, a choice to engage in peace politics (despite the hazards), etc. And in the liability column, you’d have remnant statism, a precarious security situation, and a society where unequal distribution of wealth can and has led to social unrest.
I could go on and on in this vein, and also create a similar ledger for Israel’s most militant foes with little on the assets side to balance out liabilities like totalitarian government, institutionalized hatred of minorities, clan-based corrupt economies and militant foreign policies that inevitably create needless conflict.
The ascension of Israel in the club of the world’s best run economies is symbolic in that it reflects the will of a certain segment of global thought leadership, the segment that deals with dollars and cents (i.e., the one that is forced to hue to reality as much as possible). After all, many of us hold political position and spiritual beliefs, but at the end of the day our choices regarding where to invest our own money tend to be made on the basis of reason. Similarly, European governments may huff and puff about this or that Israeli inequity, but at the end of their days investment dollars flow freely into the Jewish state, reflecting more confidence in the Jewish nation than in the economies of their own continent.
BDS sits squarely outside this reality. No ledger sheet for them: just fairy tales featuring Israeli witches and Palestinian virgins. And thus a Danish retirement fund selling off a few thousand shares of Israeli stock or a meeting at Berkeley where hundreds of students rail in impotent rage against the world’s only Jewish state (the Jew among the nations) has more resonance for them than an Israeli economy entering the second decade of the 21st century stronger than ever, and acting as a model for the rest of the world.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Jew vs. Jew
One of the more challenging aspects of dealing with BDS is the number of Jews (including Israelis) who seem to be highly involved on both sides of the issue. “Another Jew/Israeli for Divestment” read stickers worn by several BDSers who crammed the Senate meetings at Berkeley (and elsewhere), reflecting that many divestment groups not only include Jewish members, but also have Jewish and even Israeli leaders.
Now I have many activist buddies who are driven to distraction by the phenomena of Jewish involvement in organized attacks on Israel and its supporters. And put a few beers into them (or even some mild tea) and you’ll soon know the whole history of Jewish anti-Semitism (called “self-hatred”), court-Jews, turncoats and treachery that dates back to before Josephus threw his lot in with the Romans, and continues to this day with academic “Wandering Jews” like Norman Finkelstein.
While this history is interesting, I tend to take a more pragmatic approach to the presence of my fellow tribesmen in the ranks of both sides of the BDS debate. After all, historic precedent would be useful if it provided an opening to educate (or at least shame) Israel’s Jewish critics regarding the historic baggage they carry. But given the current company Jewish anti-Israel activists keep, I don’t anticipate historic context would have much resonance for them. And as for shaming, as I’ve been documenting here for over a year, BDSers (Jew and Gentile alike) seem to have no shame.
In fact, Jewish and non-Jewish Israel-dislikers have far more in common with one another than they do with me (despite all of their speeches which begin “As a Jew…”). And what they share is the one element that permeates all aspects of the divestment debate: fantasy politics.
I’ve talked about fantasy vs. reality with regard to anti-Israel politics in the past, and while most divestment advocates share a common general fantasy (one where they are intrepid and virtuous heroes, fighting against an all-powerful enemy which represses them), flavors of that fantasy vary from group to group. At its most extreme, the jihadi Israel-hater is trying to re-create a fallen Islamic empire purely through acts of will and violence, just as Mussolini thought he could resurrect the Roman Empire via fearsome will coupled with pageantry and tanks.
Christian divestment activists (like those in the Presbyterian Church) do not go nearly to this extreme. But they still dwell in a fantasy world where they and only they are in possession of “the truth” in which they liken the Palestinians to Christ on the cross and thus see themselves as martyred saints who are always about to be thrown to the lions. The fact that this political myth-making has become its own form of superstitious faith (with Israel Apartheid Week taking the place of a dustier Easter they don’t really celebrate anymore) is lost on such people who lack, along with a sense of shame, any sense of irony.
For the Jewish member or leader of Students for Justice in Palestine (or whatever), the fantasy takes the form of being a truly enlightened, morally superior being whose distance from or rejection of the burdens of Jewish life (whether religious obligations or a willingness to fight for the political rights of the Jewish people) are proof positive of this courageous identity. Like the Christian BDSer whose anti-Israel animus demonstrates his or her Christ-like nature, the Jewish divestnik’s fantasy-self is just the latest iteration of a Jewish identity built on chosen-ness. The irony that this anti-Israel Jewish identity shows more assurance in its own correctness than the self-image of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi is again lost on those who dwell in BDS fantasy-land.
And while Jews have excelled at anti-Israel organization just as they excel at so many things, let’s not lose site of the fact that there is a market for Jews of any level of intelligence and political skill within the “I Hate Israel” movement. Which is why any Jew willing to join such a movement “as a Jew” (regardless of whether or not they have had a single Jewish moment in their life up to that point) is welcome to sign up and wear a sticker or sign a petition specifically pointing out the one quality that supposedly gives their voice weight: their Jewishness.
Taking part in such activity also allows the fantasist to celebrate his or her courage while actually not taking a single risk. For taking on “The Jewish Establishment” is not like publishing a cartoon of Mohammed or (if you live in Gaza) criticizing the government – an act that carries real risk of actual harm. In fact, the most these “Jewish Critics of Israel” can expect from their activity is to be criticized by people like me. And as much as they try to present such criticism as a form of censorship or repression, they must forever inflate the alleged power and villainy of their critics, lest reality penetrate a single ray of light into the fantasy world in which they dwell.
So my attitude towards the many Jews who flaunt their Jewishness solely for the purposes of attacking other Jews is the same as my attitude towards non-Jews who have turned lack of principle into virtue, ignorance into wisdom and cowardice into courage. To them I would say: the next time you decide you would rather live in fantasyland, could you please take up Dungeon’s and Dragons, rather than embrace a persona that asks me to be a prop in your fantasy and requires others (including Jews and Palestinians) to die in order to maintain your self-image?
Now I have many activist buddies who are driven to distraction by the phenomena of Jewish involvement in organized attacks on Israel and its supporters. And put a few beers into them (or even some mild tea) and you’ll soon know the whole history of Jewish anti-Semitism (called “self-hatred”), court-Jews, turncoats and treachery that dates back to before Josephus threw his lot in with the Romans, and continues to this day with academic “Wandering Jews” like Norman Finkelstein.
While this history is interesting, I tend to take a more pragmatic approach to the presence of my fellow tribesmen in the ranks of both sides of the BDS debate. After all, historic precedent would be useful if it provided an opening to educate (or at least shame) Israel’s Jewish critics regarding the historic baggage they carry. But given the current company Jewish anti-Israel activists keep, I don’t anticipate historic context would have much resonance for them. And as for shaming, as I’ve been documenting here for over a year, BDSers (Jew and Gentile alike) seem to have no shame.
In fact, Jewish and non-Jewish Israel-dislikers have far more in common with one another than they do with me (despite all of their speeches which begin “As a Jew…”). And what they share is the one element that permeates all aspects of the divestment debate: fantasy politics.
I’ve talked about fantasy vs. reality with regard to anti-Israel politics in the past, and while most divestment advocates share a common general fantasy (one where they are intrepid and virtuous heroes, fighting against an all-powerful enemy which represses them), flavors of that fantasy vary from group to group. At its most extreme, the jihadi Israel-hater is trying to re-create a fallen Islamic empire purely through acts of will and violence, just as Mussolini thought he could resurrect the Roman Empire via fearsome will coupled with pageantry and tanks.
Christian divestment activists (like those in the Presbyterian Church) do not go nearly to this extreme. But they still dwell in a fantasy world where they and only they are in possession of “the truth” in which they liken the Palestinians to Christ on the cross and thus see themselves as martyred saints who are always about to be thrown to the lions. The fact that this political myth-making has become its own form of superstitious faith (with Israel Apartheid Week taking the place of a dustier Easter they don’t really celebrate anymore) is lost on such people who lack, along with a sense of shame, any sense of irony.
For the Jewish member or leader of Students for Justice in Palestine (or whatever), the fantasy takes the form of being a truly enlightened, morally superior being whose distance from or rejection of the burdens of Jewish life (whether religious obligations or a willingness to fight for the political rights of the Jewish people) are proof positive of this courageous identity. Like the Christian BDSer whose anti-Israel animus demonstrates his or her Christ-like nature, the Jewish divestnik’s fantasy-self is just the latest iteration of a Jewish identity built on chosen-ness. The irony that this anti-Israel Jewish identity shows more assurance in its own correctness than the self-image of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi is again lost on those who dwell in BDS fantasy-land.
And while Jews have excelled at anti-Israel organization just as they excel at so many things, let’s not lose site of the fact that there is a market for Jews of any level of intelligence and political skill within the “I Hate Israel” movement. Which is why any Jew willing to join such a movement “as a Jew” (regardless of whether or not they have had a single Jewish moment in their life up to that point) is welcome to sign up and wear a sticker or sign a petition specifically pointing out the one quality that supposedly gives their voice weight: their Jewishness.
Taking part in such activity also allows the fantasist to celebrate his or her courage while actually not taking a single risk. For taking on “The Jewish Establishment” is not like publishing a cartoon of Mohammed or (if you live in Gaza) criticizing the government – an act that carries real risk of actual harm. In fact, the most these “Jewish Critics of Israel” can expect from their activity is to be criticized by people like me. And as much as they try to present such criticism as a form of censorship or repression, they must forever inflate the alleged power and villainy of their critics, lest reality penetrate a single ray of light into the fantasy world in which they dwell.
So my attitude towards the many Jews who flaunt their Jewishness solely for the purposes of attacking other Jews is the same as my attitude towards non-Jews who have turned lack of principle into virtue, ignorance into wisdom and cowardice into courage. To them I would say: the next time you decide you would rather live in fantasyland, could you please take up Dungeon’s and Dragons, rather than embrace a persona that asks me to be a prop in your fantasy and requires others (including Jews and Palestinians) to die in order to maintain your self-image?
Friday, May 7, 2010
Comments and Boycotts
A commenter at the end of this piece asked if I’d ever participated in a boycott. And someone responding to this one talked about an experience he had making a personal boycott choice in reaction to the BDS phenomenon.
Regarding the first question, looking back I don’t think that I ever have practiced or participated in any boycott of any kind. Previous to when I got into the fight against BDS, it actually never occurred to me to make boycotting part of my political life. But once I saw how the boycott weapon was being misused as a bludgeon to attack Israel, it definitely became a personal decision to avoid using that weapon myself, despite many understandable requests to do so in hope of taking the fight to Israel’s foes.
Alan, who left a story about his decision to boycott Arab shops in Jerusalem as a statement against BDS targeted at Israel, has made a different choice. And while he and I (or he and anyone else) are free to agree or disagree with that decision, it must be pointed out that his choice was personal and thus profoundly different than the choices BDS is asking others to make.
Alan has chosen to deprive himself of the goods he might have bought at the prices he might have received. He has also chosen to announce clearly that he made the economic decision that he did for political reasons. And, finally, he must be willing to accept the consequences for the choice he’s made. Those consequences might be good (word getting out that boycotts go both ways) or bad (increased hostility between Israeli Arabs and Jews). They can also be internal (from feelings of satisfaction to discomfort regarding the targets he chose for his boycott action). But they are consequences that he is prepared to bear.
Contrast that with the BDS “movement” that is all about getting other people to choose divestment and (although rarely mentioned by divestment advocates) bear the consequences.
Think about it. If Hampshire’s Students for Justice in Palestine sent out a press release saying that their members were divestment from Israel, that announcement would, at best, lead to a blog entry asking what they were divestment beyond their allowances. But if they can claim that Hampshire College itself is divesting, well now that’s news. Which is why they’ve worked so hard to make it happen and, failing to succeed, they have worked even harder to get others to join them in pretending that it did.
In terms of consequences, BDS leaves that to others as well. If their activity rubs ethnic and religious tension on US campuses raw, or puts UK unions in legal jeopardy, what do they care? All they want is the “brand” of one of these well-known organizations associated with their squalid little political program. And if Berkeley is turned into a war zone or a union gets sued over the position the boycotters forced into an institution’s mouth, it’s the institution (not the BDSers) who have to deal with the wreckage divestment has caused.
Considering the pose the divestment cru routinely strikes with regard to its supposed courage and boldness, just once I’d like to see them put anything of their own on the line. I recall a film where a father blasted some young people for playing at Third World radicalism with the statement “poverty is fine when you’ve got a return-trip ticket.” But if I were to craft a similar message for BDS it would be “boycotting is easy, so long as it’s other people doing it and other people paying the price.”
Regarding the first question, looking back I don’t think that I ever have practiced or participated in any boycott of any kind. Previous to when I got into the fight against BDS, it actually never occurred to me to make boycotting part of my political life. But once I saw how the boycott weapon was being misused as a bludgeon to attack Israel, it definitely became a personal decision to avoid using that weapon myself, despite many understandable requests to do so in hope of taking the fight to Israel’s foes.
Alan, who left a story about his decision to boycott Arab shops in Jerusalem as a statement against BDS targeted at Israel, has made a different choice. And while he and I (or he and anyone else) are free to agree or disagree with that decision, it must be pointed out that his choice was personal and thus profoundly different than the choices BDS is asking others to make.
Alan has chosen to deprive himself of the goods he might have bought at the prices he might have received. He has also chosen to announce clearly that he made the economic decision that he did for political reasons. And, finally, he must be willing to accept the consequences for the choice he’s made. Those consequences might be good (word getting out that boycotts go both ways) or bad (increased hostility between Israeli Arabs and Jews). They can also be internal (from feelings of satisfaction to discomfort regarding the targets he chose for his boycott action). But they are consequences that he is prepared to bear.
Contrast that with the BDS “movement” that is all about getting other people to choose divestment and (although rarely mentioned by divestment advocates) bear the consequences.
Think about it. If Hampshire’s Students for Justice in Palestine sent out a press release saying that their members were divestment from Israel, that announcement would, at best, lead to a blog entry asking what they were divestment beyond their allowances. But if they can claim that Hampshire College itself is divesting, well now that’s news. Which is why they’ve worked so hard to make it happen and, failing to succeed, they have worked even harder to get others to join them in pretending that it did.
In terms of consequences, BDS leaves that to others as well. If their activity rubs ethnic and religious tension on US campuses raw, or puts UK unions in legal jeopardy, what do they care? All they want is the “brand” of one of these well-known organizations associated with their squalid little political program. And if Berkeley is turned into a war zone or a union gets sued over the position the boycotters forced into an institution’s mouth, it’s the institution (not the BDSers) who have to deal with the wreckage divestment has caused.
Considering the pose the divestment cru routinely strikes with regard to its supposed courage and boldness, just once I’d like to see them put anything of their own on the line. I recall a film where a father blasted some young people for playing at Third World radicalism with the statement “poverty is fine when you’ve got a return-trip ticket.” But if I were to craft a similar message for BDS it would be “boycotting is easy, so long as it’s other people doing it and other people paying the price.”
Thursday, May 6, 2010
UC Divestment: Enough Already!
It will come as no surprise (at least to those of us who follow BDS’s constant noise and trouncing) to hear that attempts to resurrect the dead dog of divestment flopped again at UC San Diego last night.
Efforts to modify the original divestment bill to make it actually be about human rights unsurprisingly failed, since real human rights issues are the last things those proposing the original divestment bill had in mind. When attempts were made to try to breathe life into the original condemnation of Israel masquerading as a human rights proposal, student government chambers once again became sites for wrenching personal testimonials, accusations, and (as ever) sneers hurled at those who dared not toe the BDS party line. And once again, divestment went down to defeat.
As much as I enjoy typing that last sentence again and again, it must be becoming a real pain for students attending UC San Diego or UC Berkeley (not to mention the other places the BDS circus has tried to pitch its tents) to have to deal with this kind of tripe again and again. Given that the divestment cru was willing to accept the one vote that temporarily went in their favor at Berkeley and transmit it as a victory of historic proportions within seconds of it having been cast, it’s not clear why they seem so unable to take any of the many no votes they’ve been receiving over the last several weeks (or years, depending on how you’re measuring) as the final answer.
Actually, I’m wrong. It’s completely clear why they behave that way.
For starters, having been on the losing end of a decade worth of votes, the notion of being kicked down the stairs at places like Berkeley must be particularly galling for divestment advocates.
And let’s not forget the theater/fantasy factor. Remember that each of these votes has been accompanied by long (sometimes all-night) meetings where BDSers are allowed to take the stage, presenting their fact-free, emotional cases (complete with bloody photos and accusations of racism directed against their critics) before a captive audience.
Having sat through similar meetings in the past, you can almost feel an erotic energy emanating from the mobs of people who show up from campus and far beyond to take part in such events. In fact, it’s beginning to seem that the purpose behind the latest BDS projects is to create occasions for new performances of this type, politics be damned. In other words, rather than being about the university or the Middle East, in these debates UC students (as well as Israelis and even Palestinians) are simply props the boycotters are using in their own psychodramas. Inside this fantasy world, the boycotters are demonstrating their own virtue, courage and wit regardless of the fact that back here on earth the only thing on display is their ability to act like noisy, hypocritical doofuses.
Finally, there is the rank hostility directed at anyone who dares present a differing opinion. Along with the usual jeers and catcalls directed at Israel supporters, Berkeley’s latest debate featured something new, but typical. When the debate was organized to alternate between supporters and opponents of divestment based on people signing up to represent their position on two separate lists, BDS advocates immediately signed up on both lists so they could dominate the conversation, demonstrating both their maturity and commitment to fair play.
Why behave in such an absurd fashion? Well at California universities, particularly this year, the answer seems to be that the anti-Israel crowd is completely certain that it owns the campus. And anyone who dares say otherwise (by holding an event or an opinion that opposes the sacred anti-Israel cause) must be chased from the land by manipulation, shouting or (in a trend likely to accelerate next year) violence.
My hats off to the students who have successfully turned back these divestment efforts again and again, both for winning and for keeping their cool in the face of constant provocation. As long as the BDSers and their allies insist on making every campus in America a war zone, it’s good to know that those opposed to their efforts have what it takes to win the battle they never wanted. (Sound familiar?)
Efforts to modify the original divestment bill to make it actually be about human rights unsurprisingly failed, since real human rights issues are the last things those proposing the original divestment bill had in mind. When attempts were made to try to breathe life into the original condemnation of Israel masquerading as a human rights proposal, student government chambers once again became sites for wrenching personal testimonials, accusations, and (as ever) sneers hurled at those who dared not toe the BDS party line. And once again, divestment went down to defeat.
As much as I enjoy typing that last sentence again and again, it must be becoming a real pain for students attending UC San Diego or UC Berkeley (not to mention the other places the BDS circus has tried to pitch its tents) to have to deal with this kind of tripe again and again. Given that the divestment cru was willing to accept the one vote that temporarily went in their favor at Berkeley and transmit it as a victory of historic proportions within seconds of it having been cast, it’s not clear why they seem so unable to take any of the many no votes they’ve been receiving over the last several weeks (or years, depending on how you’re measuring) as the final answer.
Actually, I’m wrong. It’s completely clear why they behave that way.
For starters, having been on the losing end of a decade worth of votes, the notion of being kicked down the stairs at places like Berkeley must be particularly galling for divestment advocates.
And let’s not forget the theater/fantasy factor. Remember that each of these votes has been accompanied by long (sometimes all-night) meetings where BDSers are allowed to take the stage, presenting their fact-free, emotional cases (complete with bloody photos and accusations of racism directed against their critics) before a captive audience.
Having sat through similar meetings in the past, you can almost feel an erotic energy emanating from the mobs of people who show up from campus and far beyond to take part in such events. In fact, it’s beginning to seem that the purpose behind the latest BDS projects is to create occasions for new performances of this type, politics be damned. In other words, rather than being about the university or the Middle East, in these debates UC students (as well as Israelis and even Palestinians) are simply props the boycotters are using in their own psychodramas. Inside this fantasy world, the boycotters are demonstrating their own virtue, courage and wit regardless of the fact that back here on earth the only thing on display is their ability to act like noisy, hypocritical doofuses.
Finally, there is the rank hostility directed at anyone who dares present a differing opinion. Along with the usual jeers and catcalls directed at Israel supporters, Berkeley’s latest debate featured something new, but typical. When the debate was organized to alternate between supporters and opponents of divestment based on people signing up to represent their position on two separate lists, BDS advocates immediately signed up on both lists so they could dominate the conversation, demonstrating both their maturity and commitment to fair play.
Why behave in such an absurd fashion? Well at California universities, particularly this year, the answer seems to be that the anti-Israel crowd is completely certain that it owns the campus. And anyone who dares say otherwise (by holding an event or an opinion that opposes the sacred anti-Israel cause) must be chased from the land by manipulation, shouting or (in a trend likely to accelerate next year) violence.
My hats off to the students who have successfully turned back these divestment efforts again and again, both for winning and for keeping their cool in the face of constant provocation. As long as the BDSers and their allies insist on making every campus in America a war zone, it’s good to know that those opposed to their efforts have what it takes to win the battle they never wanted. (Sound familiar?)
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Friends and Allies
A couple of the more laughable moments during the recent divestment follies in California involved attempts to lump the Berkeley “victory” with a similar “win” at Hampshire College last year. The fact that both the Berkeley and Hampshire BDS attempts were epic failures (the latter having the after-effect of putting every college administrator on guard for similar fraud and manipulation, the former hopefully doing the same thing for student governments) never seemed to intrude into the fantasyland in which the boycott crowd dwells.
Meanwhile, back at Hampshire, attempts to portray last year’s divestment hoax as something other than the Pinky-and-the-Brain type bollocks that it was has been chronicled by one of my favorite bloggers, Citizen Weld who dwells in the lands Massachusetts’ Western Plains. CW blogs on a lot of topics pertinent to his wide ranging interests, but two recent posts of note regarding the Hampshire SJP’s attempt to document their own supposed wonderfulness can be found here and here.
And speaking of anti-divestment blogs, I’m thrilled to announce that Will Spotts, the former Presbyterian whose masterful treatise Pride and Prejudice provided the intellectual foundation for the successful battle to get divestment overturned at the Presbyterian Church’s 2006 General Assembly is back to blogging again.
While Will has left the church, he remains steadfast in his belief that his former religious home must stop its persecution of the Jewish state, for the sake of justice but also for the sake of the church itself which this year seems to have decided that it is free to engage in any type of anti-Israel animus, so long as it stops short of divestment.
Will and I will be working together again on the PCUSA issue in preparation for this July’s 2010 General Assembly where a dozen anti-Israel overtures and reports will be voted on. Stay tuned and make sure to visit Will’s site on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, back at Hampshire, attempts to portray last year’s divestment hoax as something other than the Pinky-and-the-Brain type bollocks that it was has been chronicled by one of my favorite bloggers, Citizen Weld who dwells in the lands Massachusetts’ Western Plains. CW blogs on a lot of topics pertinent to his wide ranging interests, but two recent posts of note regarding the Hampshire SJP’s attempt to document their own supposed wonderfulness can be found here and here.
And speaking of anti-divestment blogs, I’m thrilled to announce that Will Spotts, the former Presbyterian whose masterful treatise Pride and Prejudice provided the intellectual foundation for the successful battle to get divestment overturned at the Presbyterian Church’s 2006 General Assembly is back to blogging again.
While Will has left the church, he remains steadfast in his belief that his former religious home must stop its persecution of the Jewish state, for the sake of justice but also for the sake of the church itself which this year seems to have decided that it is free to engage in any type of anti-Israel animus, so long as it stops short of divestment.
Will and I will be working together again on the PCUSA issue in preparation for this July’s 2010 General Assembly where a dozen anti-Israel overtures and reports will be voted on. Stay tuned and make sure to visit Will’s site on a regular basis.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Water Water Everywhere
Well the water main for Boston and half its suburbs blew this weekend, which means my family has been subsisting on chocolate milk and scotch since Saturday. Fortunately, I had gotten word from the Boy Scout troop my son recently joined about the crisis and passed the message onto someone at my synagogue, who told another few hundred people and so on and so on until now (as the breached pipe is being fixed), the biggest problem we’re facing is the sheer number of warnings and updates pouring into our inboxes from well meaning civic organizations across the state.
After picking up four gallons of spring water provided by the town (and packed into the trunk of my car by – you guessed it – the Boy Scouts), my mind again wandered to a subject I revisit here every couple of months (or, as they used to say at work, “Jon, stop beating a dead horse with another dead horse”): the virtues of civic society, and the assault of BDS thereon.
Neither the Scouts, nor my synagogue, nor the hundreds of volunteers who poured out across the state to help people with this weekend’s water crisis had to do what they did. It’s not in their mission statements and no one would have been the wiser or thought less of them if they decided to let someone else handle life’s surprise problems. But doing the right thing was second nature to them, and so civil society stepped in when civil engineering failed.
It is this very goodness that BDS sees not as a virtue to be treasured, but a weakness to be exploited. It’s not in this mission statement of the local famous university, or the well-known church or the venerable union to take a stand on Middle East conflict. And, as much as I care about Israel and its people, I can’t imagine a circumstance in which I would take the natural instinct of a local Scout troop or house of worship to do good and ask questions later as an opening to stuff my political viewpoints into their mouth to score points against my political enemies.
But BDS feels no such limitations. In fact, it considers the better natures of these organizations as an open invitation to charge in. “You must not only accept my political position,” says the BDSer to the Berkeley Senator, Presbyterian General Assembly delegate or Somerville Alderman, “but you must do so because your own sense of goodness, virtue and fair play demands it.”
I would have issues with these civic groups being recruited to take a stand on a matter as wrenching as the Arab-Israeli conflict even if they were provided an honest presentation of the facts. But there’s no chance of that when BDS is in the driver’s seat with regard to “educating” a community organization about the Middle East. For the picture they present to their would-be victims (whoops! I mean allies) couldn’t be more deceptively black and white: on one side, the pitiful, pristine Palestinian mother cradling a blood-covered infant, on the other the inhuman, moustache-twirling Israeli soldier/settler treating that mother’s village to an unending rain of atom bombs for six decades.
The truncated history, emotion-laden accusations and distorted presentation of Middle East realities used to recruit the school, church or other institution to the cause of divestment is not simply one more example of galling propaganda. Rather, it is a way to exploit the very goodness I saw on display here in Boston over the last few days. “You say you’re good?” says the BDSnik to the civic leader. “You say you care about others? You say your organization stands up for the helpless and can’t sit idly by while the innocent suffer? Well then you have no other choice but to stand by me and support my political cause based solely on the information I provide you.” Which is why anyone presenting an alternative viewpoint or telling the civic group that they have a choice in the matter must be jeered at or shouted off the stage.
While I may have been drawn to the fight against BDS because of my devotion to the Jewish state and the Jewish people, there’s always been another reason why I’ve chosen this particular battle rather than letting my Zionist impulses take me in any number of other directions. For BDS is not just an assault on Israel, it’s an assault on the church in my neighborhood, the college I attended, the city I lived in, the very fabric of civic society that surrounds all of us.
I’ve seen communities torn apart because divestment champions have shown up demanding that virtue requires said community to insert itself into the Middle East conflict (and vice versa). The BDSers have seen the same thing, and couldn’t care less, so long as there’s a chance they’ll score a victory in their endless propaganda war.
Well I don’t want my neighbors clawing at each other’s throats over whether or not my people (or even the enemies of my people) should be declared war criminals. And so I will never yield to the temptation to turn the tables on my adversaries by asking these same civic groups to condemn those with whom I politically disagree. And if that means the other side will always have the advantage of picking whom to exploit next, leaving the rest of us in the defensive position of having to undo their damage, then so be it. It’s a small enough price to pay for maintaining civic peace (not to mention my soul).
After picking up four gallons of spring water provided by the town (and packed into the trunk of my car by – you guessed it – the Boy Scouts), my mind again wandered to a subject I revisit here every couple of months (or, as they used to say at work, “Jon, stop beating a dead horse with another dead horse”): the virtues of civic society, and the assault of BDS thereon.
Neither the Scouts, nor my synagogue, nor the hundreds of volunteers who poured out across the state to help people with this weekend’s water crisis had to do what they did. It’s not in their mission statements and no one would have been the wiser or thought less of them if they decided to let someone else handle life’s surprise problems. But doing the right thing was second nature to them, and so civil society stepped in when civil engineering failed.
It is this very goodness that BDS sees not as a virtue to be treasured, but a weakness to be exploited. It’s not in this mission statement of the local famous university, or the well-known church or the venerable union to take a stand on Middle East conflict. And, as much as I care about Israel and its people, I can’t imagine a circumstance in which I would take the natural instinct of a local Scout troop or house of worship to do good and ask questions later as an opening to stuff my political viewpoints into their mouth to score points against my political enemies.
But BDS feels no such limitations. In fact, it considers the better natures of these organizations as an open invitation to charge in. “You must not only accept my political position,” says the BDSer to the Berkeley Senator, Presbyterian General Assembly delegate or Somerville Alderman, “but you must do so because your own sense of goodness, virtue and fair play demands it.”
I would have issues with these civic groups being recruited to take a stand on a matter as wrenching as the Arab-Israeli conflict even if they were provided an honest presentation of the facts. But there’s no chance of that when BDS is in the driver’s seat with regard to “educating” a community organization about the Middle East. For the picture they present to their would-be victims (whoops! I mean allies) couldn’t be more deceptively black and white: on one side, the pitiful, pristine Palestinian mother cradling a blood-covered infant, on the other the inhuman, moustache-twirling Israeli soldier/settler treating that mother’s village to an unending rain of atom bombs for six decades.
The truncated history, emotion-laden accusations and distorted presentation of Middle East realities used to recruit the school, church or other institution to the cause of divestment is not simply one more example of galling propaganda. Rather, it is a way to exploit the very goodness I saw on display here in Boston over the last few days. “You say you’re good?” says the BDSnik to the civic leader. “You say you care about others? You say your organization stands up for the helpless and can’t sit idly by while the innocent suffer? Well then you have no other choice but to stand by me and support my political cause based solely on the information I provide you.” Which is why anyone presenting an alternative viewpoint or telling the civic group that they have a choice in the matter must be jeered at or shouted off the stage.
While I may have been drawn to the fight against BDS because of my devotion to the Jewish state and the Jewish people, there’s always been another reason why I’ve chosen this particular battle rather than letting my Zionist impulses take me in any number of other directions. For BDS is not just an assault on Israel, it’s an assault on the church in my neighborhood, the college I attended, the city I lived in, the very fabric of civic society that surrounds all of us.
I’ve seen communities torn apart because divestment champions have shown up demanding that virtue requires said community to insert itself into the Middle East conflict (and vice versa). The BDSers have seen the same thing, and couldn’t care less, so long as there’s a chance they’ll score a victory in their endless propaganda war.
Well I don’t want my neighbors clawing at each other’s throats over whether or not my people (or even the enemies of my people) should be declared war criminals. And so I will never yield to the temptation to turn the tables on my adversaries by asking these same civic groups to condemn those with whom I politically disagree. And if that means the other side will always have the advantage of picking whom to exploit next, leaving the rest of us in the defensive position of having to undo their damage, then so be it. It’s a small enough price to pay for maintaining civic peace (not to mention my soul).
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