Judgement

Well the verdict is in regarding the lawsuit against the Olympia FoodCo-op for their Israel boycott, and there is no sugar coating the news that the judge went against the plaintiffs as hard as he could, not just dismissing their claims but hitting them with an anti-SLAPP judgment that could lead to heavy fines.

Needless to say, the BDSers are masturbating themselves into unconsciousness over the decision all over the Internet.  And while I could always go down the well-trod BDS path of declaring “By losing we really won!,” I prefer not to spin or deny what has happened, but to learn from it.

In nearly every instance when I have commented on this or any other BDS-related lawsuit, I have tried to make it clear why my preference is for political vs. legal responses to boycott and divestment activity. 

To begin with, political responses have been pretty-much 100% successful over the last ten years, which means non-legal remedies continue to represent my preferred path (as difficult and painful as it can sometimes be to have to engage in them).

Second, lawsuits set not just legal but political precedent, making it that much harder to complain when your opponents take to the courts (as BDSers have in at least two other instances I’ve followed or been part of in the past). 

Finally, a lawsuit is high risk.  And while I’d be surprised if huge fines end up getting levied on a group of Olympia citizens (either due to the SLAPP motion being overturned on appeal – allowing the case to continue, or the whole thing getting settled out of court), I think that Olympia demonstrates the chances one takes if you go down the legal route (no matter how justified one might feel about your position and how strong your feel your case).

As noted above, I only know of three BDS-related lawsuits: this one and two filed by boycotters in Sacramento (against the Sacramento Food Co-op) and Somerville (against the city).  I’ve actually served as a witness in two of those cases (Olympia and Somerville), and all three seem to highlight the reluctance of the courts to interfere with the political decision making of a civic institution (be it a food co-op or municipality).

The other observation I have about the case derives from having read the court documents submitted by both sides (which are available here if you’ve got the time and inclination to read through them).

This observation fits into a theme I’ve revisited a number of times on this site: the notion of sacrifice (or, more specifically, the type of sacrifice BDS demands of the civic institutions they ask to partake in a boycott or divestment decision).

Summarizing that theme, one of the more extraordinary characteristics of boycott and divestment campaigners is that they demand a civic organization not simply take its side but to put onto the alter that which the institution holds most sacred in order to be considered a “true” BDS participant. 

In the case of media (be it the British National Union of Journalists or community radio stations), journalists are asked to sacrifice journalistic objectivity (the key to their professional integrity) in order to make a statement about one particular international issue (the perfidy of the Jewish state).  

Teachers who want to participate in an academic boycott are not being asked to simply take a political stance, but to throw the whole notion of academic freedom out the window in order to use their professional positions as weapons against Israeli colleagues.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the Mainline Protestant churches which are asked to make their pronouncements condemning Israel not in the name of individuals, committees or the church, but in the name of “Christian Witness,” implying that God himself is in unquestionable alignment with the BDSers worldly political positions.

If you look through the main legal submissions by the Olympia Food Co-op, their key argument (which I presume was accepted by the court) was that the leadership of the organization can basically do whatever it wants, whenever it likes, regardless of any specifics that may appear in the organization’s by-laws, and (by implication) regardless of how much it might offend people (even if not the majority) which that leadership is supposed to represent (be they staff or members). 

Legally (at least according to the judge hearing this case), the board of an organization like the Co-op does appear to have this type of latitude.  And even if the SLAPP portion of the case is overturned or the whole case settled, the keystone argument the Co-op and their BDS supporters have presented is that what the leaders say goes.

While this argument may be legally correct, what does it say about an organization that prides itself on cooperation, community-building and consensus-based leadership?  It says that in the case of BDS, all of those principles have to be jettisoned (all for a “higher cause,” of course).  And in the (hopefully unlikely) case that the next step in this sad story is for members of the Co-op to get punished with heavy personal fines (while the BDSers chortle all the way to the bank), what does that leave of the co-op, other than a rigidly hierarchical institution ready to punish those who dare cross it?

As an anti-BDS activist, I’ve already gotten all I need from Olympia: a precedent that – when invoked – virtually guarantees victory in any other co-op boycott fight in the country.  But, as noted before, the fact that I am united with members of the Olympia community by the common experience of having woken up to discover others trying to speak in my name keeps me coming back to the Olympia story that would probably be best left alone.

Yesterday, the court stated that the leadership of that community has the legal right to act in an appalling fashion towards large percentages of the people it is supposed to represent.  But, as we know from many other aspects of life, just because something is legal, does not make it any less appalling.

Fallout

Catching up on some other BDS news taking place between the PennBDS brouhaha and upcoming BDS fights within the Methodist and Presbyterian churches:

While I refuse to leverage the alleged defection of Norman Finkelstein from the BDS cause, I’m happy to point out an interesting piece that appeared on Jewish Ideas Daily that analyzes part of the story I don’t get to talk about enough, namely what makes up this alleged “Palestinian Civil Society” that supposedly justifies everything the BDSers claim to be doing (from torturing food co-op members to screaming at the top of their lungs at ballet performances).  This is an interesting follow up to the BDS Sewer System Analysis performed by the indispensable NGO Monitor.  Both pieces are required reading to best understand the shop worn rationale behind the current iteration of the BDS “movement.” 

And speaking of food co-ops, the Olympia Food Co-op case finally came before a judge last week.  As background, members of the Olympia Food Co-op sued the organization last Fall for implementing a boycott of Israeli products in violation of the co-ops rules.   And supporters of the boycott essentially counter-sued, claiming that the original lawsuit was an example of a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) violation, denying the co-op’s board its right of free speech.

In the interest of full disclosure, I provided expert testimony in the court case regarding whether BDS represents a “nationally recognized boycott” (something required according to the Co-ops rules) which essentially repeats what I said here (without the references to Sponge Bob Square Pants and the Pope).  In further interest of full disclosure, I will also repeat my strong preference for political vs. legal remedies to BDS situations (especially since we’ve been so successful in defeating the boycotters politically to date).

But a court case would be an interesting place for various questions that have floated around the Olympia story to get answered.  These include whether the board has full power to do whatever it wants (regardless of specifics in the co-ops own boycott rules); whether the board’s right of free speech extends to the right to make political statements on behalf of the membership (or, as plaintiff’s attorney put it: “Someone can’t write an article and sign my name to it, and claim free-speech protection”).

Before any of those questions can be answered, the initial anti-SLAPP counter-case must first be decided (which it will be next week) a decision that will likely be appealed whatever side wins.  While I suspect the SLAPP matter will be taken off the table (given the mushiness of the concept in this context – after all, can the Co-op now be hit with an anti-SLAPP lawsuit for using their own anti-SLAPP suit to silence their opponents?), there is still the possibility that this judge will simply tell the members to solve this problem for themselves.

  

Interestingly, BDSers nationwide are claiming a dismissal of the SLAAP  motion will represent a serious setback for their cause (recognizing what might happen if the case gets to the point where anti-BDS forces get the chance to perform discovery on how the co-op made their original boycott decision).

In the meantime (and just to put the whole thing into perspective), co-ops in Davis, Sacramento and even right up the street from Olympia in Port Townsend don’t seem to be suffering from any fallout whatsoever regarding their decision to give BDS the old heave ho (a point that I hope will not be missed by people making BDS decisions in Park Slope next month). 

And as a final bit of news, it turns out that Israel represented the safest investor return in the world over the last ten years, despite war, terror, and endless attempts to isolate, vilify, boycott, divest from and sanction the Jewish state.  Now what else has been going on over the last ten years while Israel became the world’s safest haven for outside investment?  (I’ll give you a hint – it’s got D in the middle, but otherwise just spells BS.)

A Call to Battle

In general, it’s the battles you don’t have to fight to win that are the most productive. 

For example, the reason we’ve not seen any serious consideration of divestment by colleges or cities over the last ten years is that the leaders of schools and municipalities have taken a measure of BDS activists over the last decade and know enough to not be snookered by them. 

Similarly, the reason no divestment bill has gotten past the gate at university student unions is that such bills only tend to get passed in the dead of night which means Israel’s supporters need only make sure the light of day continues to shine on student government activities to ensure BDS activists don’t get the chance to hijack the university for their own gain.

But there come times when a fight is necessary, and two such fights loom on the horizon over the next six months.

A big one (which I’ll be getting into over the next few weeks) will take place at the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches which meet every two years in national conventions to let Israel-bashers within the denomination run amok (whoops! I mean to discuss vital issues of church policy).  Despite being rejected by members in 2006, 2008 and 2010, and despite promises to those members that the Israel obsession would stop, BDS marches on regardless of what it means for the church (or for peace in the Middle East).

But before those battles (which will be taking place in April and June), we face something closer to the grassroots at the Park Slope Food Co-op in New York.  Yes, after years of letters to the editor, appeals to the co-op’s board, and other maneuvering, a vote on whether or not to hold a referendum on a co-op boycott of Israel goods is set for March 27^th.

Now keep in mind that this vote is not taking place because local BDSers convinced anyone of anything.  Rather, they pushed for an Israel boycott referenda (similar to failed boycott appeals at places like Davis and Sacramento California), and when told that such a referenda would sicken and appall huge numbers of members they said, in effect, “So what?”  And since the rules of most co-ops are rather loose, presuming as they do that members will act in good faith and not try to manipulate the organization for their own ends (at the expense of other members), the only way to close out a matter the BDSers will continue to push (regardless of the cost to others) was to let a vote on the referenda go forward.

Apparently, the usual meeting place for co-op votes (a synagogue, ironically) will not be big enough to hold the vote so the co-op is looking for a venue that will hold the 1000+ members likely to attend the March 27^th gathering.  And, as luck will have it, anti-BDS forces at Park Slope are organized, have able leadership who are doing the spadework necessary to wage a grassroots political campaign (including communication and get-out-the-vote advocacy). 

As an alumni of several similar campaigns, I envy the local boycott-fighters’ chance to watch their own hard work and resoluteness hand BDS yet another defeat.  At the same time, I don’t envy them the effort they have to put into getting this squalid little propaganda campaign masquerading as a human rights movement out of their food co-op’s bloodstream. 

In addition to the work involved (energy that could be put to more productive use improving the co-op or fighting for actual peace in the Middle East), these types of campaigns always end in meetings like the huge gathering that will take place in March.  In the run-up to such a meeting, a phenomena I refer to as “The Circus” will descend upon Park Slope where every pro- and anti-Israel individual and organization within a thousand mile radius will try to have their say on the matter while neighbors who once waved and smiled at each other, instead accusing one another of racism, anti-Semitism and indifference to human rights.

And at the meeting itself, both sides will take their assigned roles, with disciplined BDSers never wavering in their message of Palestinian suffering and Israeli villainy, with Israel’s supporters more fragmented in their messaging, but no less firm in their resolve.  Park Slopians can look forward to a number of anti-Israel harangues that start with “As a Jew…” deploring the Jewish state and insisting (with tears in their eyes) that a boycott is the organization’s only moral choice. 

Needless to say, attempts to prick the conscience of the BDSers over issues such as terrorist murders of Israelis or Arab deaths at the hands of Hamas or Assad will fall on deaf ears since the BDSers are indifferent to Israeli life and even Palestinian lives are only measured in terms of their usefulness to “the movement”.  But arguments directed over the boycotters heads to the general membership can be as effective in Park Slope as they have been everywhere else.

And that message is: why the hell should a group of single-issue partisans be allowed to speak on behalf of the thousands of members of an institution that BDS had no role in building?  After all, the boycotters are free as individuals to not buy all the Israeli products they like.  And they’re even free to start their own co-op and build into its charter the refusal to ever let an Israeli orange or seltzer dispenser stain their shelves.

Ah, but that’s not what they want, is it?  They want to be able to claim that their minority opinion represents the will of thousands of members of a respected organization, and thus give their propaganda message unearned weight. 

On March 27^th, the first real BDS battle of the year will be fought.  Israel’s friends didn’t want it.  Leaders and members of the Park Slope Food Co-op didn’t want it.  But the boycotters insisted on it.  And while they may get their jollies railing about Israeli in front of an audience of over a thousand (and video tape the whole thing for their YouTube channel and Facebook pages), our friends on the ground should never waver in their commitment to get the job done, add Park Slope to the long list of progressive institutions that have rejected the boycotter’s blandishments, and announce to the world the real message that we all hope comes out of New York this March: that BDS Loses Again! 

Barometer

A few months back, I wrote about what an end to the BDS “movement” might look like.  And one of the telltale signs I identified was the marginalization of those individuals and organizations who continue to push the BDS tactic, whatever the costs.

In a way, Norman Finkelstein recent tirade (whether motivated by politics or whatever psychosis he chooses to manifest this week) demonstrated awareness that criticizing BDS as ineffective and cult-like is now fair game outside of this blog. 

And the increasing number of Palestinians who are ignoring that supposed “Call from Palestinian Civil Society” for boycott and divestment, a program devised by a University of Tel Aviv graduate student who refuses to live by the creed he demands of others, also points to increasing recognition that maybe, just maybe, BDS is not “on the march” and racking up “spectacular successes.”  Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s such a political loser that even die-hard Israel haters are starting to wonder if they’re really obliged to double down on it for another decade or three.

Keep in mind that the historic precedent for BDS going away (or, at least going into remission) happened within recent memory.  In 2006, after a string of embarrassing defeats, advocates for the BDS tactic had trouble answering troublesome questions as to why a project they claimed would lead to success instead ended in failure time and time again.

More importantly, the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (or PSM), the moving force behind BDS activity (at least on college campus), fell apart right around this time.  And when evaluating the strength and weakness of a political “movement,” looking at the organizations that lead or make up that movement is a better barometer of strength than lapping up or picking apart Omar Barghouti’s latest bombast printed in the International Herald Tribune (or any of the other many papers he manages to get himself published in, despite perpetual BDS claims of victimization and censorship).

And if you look at the BDS project that that was resurrected in 2009, you can see how it inherited all of the contradictions and weaknesses of the original divestment campaign, with a number of additional flaws added to the mix. 

In addition to Barghouti’s PACBI organization (which has accomplished little other than intimidating certain parts of Palestinian civil society so they could claim to speak for them), you’ve got the successor to the Palestinian Solidarity Movement – Student for Justice in Palestine (SJP) whose claim to fame is the hoax that they succeeded in getting Hampshire College to divest from Israel.  And as unpleasant as the PSM was during its heyday, it never relied on fraud to get into the headlines.  In contrast, those responsible for ensuring BDS stay in everyone’s face in the coming years base large parts of their effort on deception and lies, not just the usual lies about the Middle East, but easily checkable and debunked lies about their own success and failure.

So while they might be able to get the same bunch of Israel haters to spend a weekend in Philadelphia (just like they got them to show up at Hampshire two years ago), once those kids get back to campus they are likely to face the same wall of opposition that their predecessors faced over the last decade.  And if another academic year passes and SJP has nothing to show for itself other than failed hummus boycotts and increasingly ignored Israel Apartheid Week events, even the most hysterical or self-congratulatory letters to the editor cannot mask the fact that BDS seems to be going nowhere.

It was exactly three years ago that the Hampshire story broke, triggering the start of the current round of boycott and divestment activities across the country and around the world.  And if you look at the original divestment campaigns that began in 2002 and died out in 2006, it’s an open question as to whether BDS 2.0 is going to make it as long as the original.

Time, as it usually does, will tell. 

Thanks for Nothin’ Norman

Boy, when you start sounding like Norman Finkelstein (or, more specifically, when Norman Finkelstein starts sounding like you), it’s clearly time to retire.

By now, my regular reader will have heard that Finkelstein, the bad boy of the Israel-hating network, has lashed out against BDS, condemning it as a “cult” (more specifically, a dishonest, marginal cult that has no hope of swaying public opinion).

On one hand, I could hardly agree more than BDS is the biggest loser tactic anti-Israel advocates could pick (which kind of makes this site counter-productive since the best thing for the Jewish state would be to see the Israel dis-likers double down on this failed strategy for another decade or three).  And while I choose the word “fantasist” to describe those who dwell on Planet BDS, a land where some unknown food co-op on the other side of the country removing Israeli ice cream cones from their shelves represents imminent victory over the dreaded Zionist entity, the term “cult” (as well as Finkelstein’s overall description) certainly describes the BDS phenomenon adequately.

Now if I followed BDS Rhetorical Strategy 101, I would scream across the Internet “BDS must be a loser – see even Norman Finkelstein say so!”  But as much emotional satisfaction there is to be had in seeing the gander getting the same sauce as the goose, I just can’t bring myself to score cheap points if it means drawing Norman Finkelstein even an inch closer.

You see, Mr. Finkelstein (or, should I say, Professor Finkelstein – well, Associate Professor anyway – meowwww) is probably best thought of as the ultimate anti-Israel hack. 

Leveraging a legacy he in no way contributed to (as the son of Holocaust survivors) Finkelstein wanders the world, seeking to win for himself the mantle (given up by Israel Shahak upon his death) as the planet’s most Israel-loathing Jew.

In the early phase of his career, he hit upon a technique to generate headlines by turning himself from Dr. Norman Finkelstein to “the controversial Dr. Norman Finkelstein” by attacking the work of Harvard Professor Daniel Goldhagen whose 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners fingered the German populace for active involvement in the Holocaust (vs. simple complicity or fellow victimhood at the hands of the Nazis).  As you can imagine, Finkelstein’s rebuttal tome-ette A Nation on Trial was a big hit in Deutschland, particularly among audiences who didn’t care much that Finkelstein’s “research” was conducted without review of any actual source material (given that Herr Professor is not only NOT an historian, but doesn’t’ read a word of German).

I bring up sources since Finkelstein’s one contribution to scholarly technique grew directly out of Microsoft’s decision to add the “Insert Table” command to Word, allowing him to grab a snippet of a quote from his victim’s work (ripped entirely out of context, of course), place it in a table column alongside an equally edited damning counter-quote, with Fink’s self-serving interpretation appearing in the third column.

Norman tried the same tricks on Alan Dershowitz years later, accusing him of plagiarism as well as bad scholarship and fraud.  Unfortunately for him, Mr. Dershowitz was unwilling to roll over and play dead and instead lashed right back, accurately tagging Finkelstein with terms that resonate with the brief bio I’ve provided on this blog. 

Having failed to achieve tenure at any university, Norman now walks the earth, trying to find a home among just the right Israel-loathing community, an odyssey that has brought him to (among other places) Iran which hosted a conference dedicated to proving that the Holocaust that almost killed parents never occurred. 

Maybe you begin to see why Dr. Finkelstein’s embrace of the Divest This message of BDS as a loser warrants, at best, a “thanks but please go away.”  For (and apologies for using complex psychological terminology), whatever fucked up shit is going on in Norman Finkelstein’s head, the further away he is from the rest of us the better.

Back to the topic at hand, I strongly suspect that this lashing out at BDS as a “cult” (presuming it’s not driven by personal eccentricity) comes at the end of a “finger-in-the-wind” experiment that convinced Finkelstein of something those of us who dwell on Planet Reality have known for quite some time: that BDS bites as a political strategy and stands the chance of bringing the whole de-legitimization edifice down with it as it prepares to crash and burn for another ten years.

If this interpretation is correct, Norman hopes to be hailed as a seer when BDS goes into remission (as it did in 2006) or, preferably, disappears from the landscape altogether.  And despite what I said above regarding BDS being a gift from heaven to Israel’s supporters, I still can’t wait to see the end of it (if only because whatever tactic may replace it stands the chance of leaving other people – including my old neighbors in Somerville, MA – alone).

So even if BDS gets deeped sixed, and even if credit for its demolition flows to Norman Finkelstein’s “cult” death stroke, the only thing that deserves to be yanked off the world stage with a vaudeville hook more than the BDS “movement” is Professor Finkelstein himself.  

Presbyterians Behaving Badly (Again)

As stories about the PennBDS conference fall off headlines in the U Penn student newspaper (to be replaced by tales of student chicken-wing-eating prowess), I suspect the time has come to move onto other BDS-related stories that may have been missed over the last month.

That said, I promise to return to this subject if the local BDSers strategy of desperately Twitterwhining about how no one is talking about the support they received from Desmond Tutu (Tutu’s support for any BDS program on earth being about as newsworthy as the story about a chicken laying eggs) returns them to public notice.

But in the meantime, there are other BDS victories to cover! Such as…, Well…, Hmmm…; OK, I can’t find any. But that doesn’t mean the dreaded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions juggernaut has not been getting some notice.

Most significantly, this is an even-numbered year.  And as those who have been following BDS ups and downs (mostly downs) over the last 7-8 years know, even numbered years are when some of the Mainline Protestant churches (notably the Presbyterians and Methodists) gather for bi-annual conclaves to set church policy regarding a number of religious and (increasingly over recent decades) political

When the Presbyterian Church in the US (PCUSA) actually passed a divestment resolution in 2004, they may not have realized that they invited in what was to become a permanent houseguest. For even though the church reconsidered their hastily decided 2004 vote in 2006 (the year in which the membership rejected divestment by 95%-5%), this just doubled the BDSers commitment to reintroduce the issue in 2008. And when that failed, they tried again in 2010.  And when that (you guessed it) failed, the boycotters simply began planning to re-introduce it two years hence (and again and again after that – no doubt - until the church finally voted the “right” way).

The entire Presbyterian divestment tale is a long and interesting one (to me, anyway) and if you would like to get the full background you can read all about it at this site that I and a Presbyterian (actually former Presbyterian) friend created to address the 2010 vote.

The thing to keep an eye on this year is the configuration of forces that show up to fight it out yet again when PCUSA gathers in Pittsburgh this summer for their 2012 General Assembly (GA).

Traditionally, BDS forces begin planning for the next GA the minute they lose at the current one with voices supportive of Israel not getting their act together until a few months before the gathering.

But last time around, BDS opponents got the attention of important members of the church who had stayed on the sidelines during previous Middle East debates. Most notably, leaders at some of the larger urban Presbyteries were beginning to get sick and tired of hearing the same arguments by the same people year in and year out. And they were also getting annoyed that the only stories reaching the public about important church gatherings was how the Presbyterians were alienating Jewish interfaith friends and supports via what seemed like perpetual Israel bashing.

People more experienced with church internals have informed me that this re-alignment of forces may mitigate said bashing during the 2012 GA, but that is a story that has yet to play out.

In the meantime, anti-Israel activity continues to be concentrated in the church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) committee, members of which have spearheaded most controversial divestment votes in the past.  In 2008, the church asked that a report be generated that would strike some balance in the church’s Middle East policy. But by then the group charged with creating such a report had become so infiltrated by IPMN BDS activists that the group was only able to create a document more laughably lopsided than anything the church had ever created before. In fact, it was the excesses of those involved with the creation of this report that doomed divestment at the 2010 event and galvanized the previously uncommitted church members noted above into action.

If the cartoon that appeared on the IPMN Facebook page (and the associated story behind this charming image which follows on that linked page) is any indication, IPMN has somehow discovered a way to become even more radical, more offensive, and more self-righteous in the last two years, best exemplified by the decidedly un-Christian response they provided to critics pointing out that images like the one linked above (as well as others that have routinely appeared on their sites) were as ugly and inappropriate as they look.

Time will tell if this time around the forces of BDS make progress with the Presbyterians, the Methodists or some other church in 2012.  Trends (including eight years of rejection and reversals) say otherwise,  but like a Fractured Fairy Tale version of the Pandora’s Box story, when all hope has fled they still have ruthlessness and hate to fall back on.

PennBDS – Perspective

Well the PennBDS conference has come and gone and before looking at what it all adds up to, I’d like to start by congratulating the organizers for the impressive job they accomplished.

I know this might seem strange coming from someone who has done so much to criticize the event, both at the PennBDS-Oy site and in the local Philadelphia Jewish paper.  But having organized programming in the past (and having also put a great deal of effort in a PennBDS-related project over the last month), I appreciate the time, energy and logistical effort needed to pull off a program of this scale.  And just because my appreciation of their efforts will never be reciprocated, that’s no reason not to express such sentiments. 

Needless to say, I found the content of the program misguided at best.  And recognizing the various tricks they played to give the appearance of debate while never actually engaging in it did not make watching such manipulative behavior any less distasteful.  But now that the event is over, it’s best to step back and get some perspective on what might emerge from the last few days.

Regarding U Penn where the program was held, my first instinct was to use the last few weeks as another example of stalemate between pro- and anti-Israel forces on US campuses.  After all, the BDS group clearly had the people, resources and wherewithal to pull together a reasonably large conference just as Israel’s supporters put together program of generally comparable size in opposition. 

But after visiting campus last week, seeing who was doing what, and thinking through the long-term results of efforts started over the last month, I may have to give the long-term edge to Israel’s supporters vs. the players at PennBDS. 

After all, the organized Jewish community on campus received a lot of attention as well as resources targeted at long-term programming related to Israel-related political action.  More importantly, students that might have spent four years indifferent to Israel (or focused on apolitical Jewish or Israel-related issues) have been galvanized to action.  And, as we’ve seen on campus after campus, all it takes is one energized and skilled organizer to make a difference.

In contrast, if a goal of group called PennBDS was to make the University of Pennsylvania divesting and distancing itself from Israel more thinkable, all they managed to do was to focus a spotlight on the warm relationship between U Penn and the Jewish state and force the school’s administration to articulate their support for that relationship openly.  With actual BDS closed off to them, chances of even getting a toothless, symbolic divestment resolution passed by the student council are practically nil, leaving little practical outlets for their energy outside of hummus boycotts (which failed as well).

So if on the U Penn campus Penn BDS is remembered as a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, what about the “free media” they got from the event? Might that have some long-term outcome outside of campus?

Well if you subtract stories that appeared in the U Penn paper, stories penned by the BDSers on their own web sites, and what I’ve written about the subject, you end up with an event that generated maybe a dozen stories (mostly in the Pennsylvania or general Jewish press, and mostly negative).  And even at U Penn, the press bandwagon is moving on, with remaining stories wondering what all the fuss was about.

This is important since; despite increasingly ludicrous claims by Omar Barghouti that his political position represents the unspoken will of that mythical “99%,” the vast majority of college students remain indifferent to either side in the Arab-Israeli conflict and distrustful of partisans in either camp.  Sure they support human rights and justice (who doesn’t?), but they show no indication of believing that groups like PennBDS represents those values, just because they mouth the words incessantly.  And, as mentioned before, those unaffiliated with either side tend to favor the party that shows a willingness to engage in dialog.  Which means that the BDSers decision to ban journalists they don’t care for (while all the time insisting they be allowed to do whatever they want, all in the name of free speech) might leave the most lasting impression of their entire effort.

Moving off campus, there is the legitimate concern that students energized by attending the conference will get back to their schools and use what they have learned to inflict BDS on their fellow students for the coming months or years.  But as we have seen for over a decade, BDS has been a complete dead end, particularly at colleges and universities.  So the notion of anti-Israel forces doubling down on a failed tactic for another decade or three should actually fill pro-Israel hearts with joy.

And for those who hope (or fear) that BDS is simply a transmission belt for pumping the Israel = Apartheid propaganda message into public discourse, keep in mind that the level and scale of rejection of BDS over the last 11-12 years cannot be explained as bad luck or a conspiracy of the 1%.  For when boycotts and divestment have been put to a vote (even in places like the Mainline Protestant churches which have been increasingly unfriendly towards Israel over the last few decades), it was voted down by 95-100% ­i.e., by almost the entirety of the grassroots who understood that everything about BDS: its arguments, its message its presentation of facts are simply a tangle of lies and propaganda masquerading as virtue.

And so as the BDSers pack up their tents, pat each other on the back and claim victory on every blog and twitter feed where they maintain control of the conversation, the rest of us can take satisfaction that outside the fantasy world of BDS activists themselves, their event will barely leave the footprints you see in the sand before the next tide comes in.

PennBDS – Cowardice

I had planned to give the whole PennBDS thing a rest over the weekend in order to let that group have their say.  But after this story broke yesterday, it seemed negligent to let the group’s decision to ban a member of the press from their event go without commentary.

As the linked piece above describes, the organizers of the PennBDS conference decided that they didn’t like an article written about their event by a journalist from Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia’s one Jewish paper (one which was generous enough to let me pen an editorial for them last week).  And so they denied her press credentials to cover their conference.  Now they did claim willingness to let a different Exponent reporter in, but by a strange coincidence they selected a reporter who was out of town and thus unavailable.

Whether this de facto expulsion of the Exponent was intentional or just an accidental by-product of the PennBDS organizer’s decision that they be allowed to pick and choose which members of the press could cover them, this incident really encapsulates everything that BDS is about.

First off, you’ve got a group (PennBDS) which has used the phrases of “freedom of speech” and “academic freedom” as blast shields, accusing anyone who criticizes them or criticizes the University for allowing their event to take place as enemies of both.  And yet within the civic space they control (their own conference), they demand full authority to decide who is and who is not allowed to hear what they say.  And apparently that decision was based entirely on the fact that they didn’t like a member of the free press using her freedom of speech to say something they didn’t like.

Now this is par for the course for BDS across the board which routinely demands that everyone else’s civic spaces be opened to them unconditionally, while greedily protecting their own spaces just as unconditionally.  The refusal of BDS organizations to make their Web sites two-way streets in terms of communication is a symptom of this phenomenon that I’ve commented on before, but you can generally count on them only being willing to engage in “dialog” when they’ve got the upper hand (for instance, after every hour-long talk at their conference, they are willing to allow 5-10 minutes of Q&A – but only so long as they get to pick the questioners and continue to control the microphone). 

Most people have talked about the banning of the Exponent in terms of hypocrisy, which is more than relevant.  But I would like to look at it through a different lens: that of courage vs. cowardice.

This too is relevant, especially with folks like BDS generalissimo OmarBarghouti (who demands an unconditional boycott of Israeli academia from his comfortable perch as a University of Tel Aviv grad student) declaring that the across-the-board negative public reaction to PennBDS is evidence that BDS critics are panicking and running scared.

Now to me, the many events set up to counter the PennBDS program seem like nothing more than groups of people lining up to give Barghouti’s cause the swift kick it deserves, but in terms of panicking and running scared, just who do these descriptions fit better, the BDSers or their critics?

The Exponent banishment scandal helps to answer that question, but so does the PennBDS group’s choices regarding how to engage with critics.  As I’ve noted before, this group is fully aware that at least one person (me) has taken them at their word that they are starved for meaningful dialog with those who oppose their “movement,” that I have provided a detailed response to each and every item on their conference agenda, and even offered them space to post transcripts from their event (or any other response they like) in a place that is open for two-way dialog.

Yet their reaction to someone who they understand has their number is to dodge discussion and debate through the simple expedient of avoiding engagement with these arguments: never acknowledging them, never linking to them (despite the numerous links I’ve made to their sites), in fact doing everything in their power to pretend they do not exist.

Now contrast this with their reaction to one letter to the editor that criticized them with less than measured language.  Once that was published, suddenly they found their voice issuing endless denunciations and demands that others condemn this letter, coupled with complaints that they feared for their lives all because a 60+ year old professor dared to use language half as intemperate as the BDSers will using all weekend long to describe the Jewish state.

There is a word for this behavior which is cowardice.  And the bullying we’ve seen since this event started making news (condemning those who criticize them as enemies of free speech, banning the press, etc.) is just a demonstration of something we learned from Saturday morning cartoons: that bullies are cowards (and vice versa).

One of the most important things I’ve learned in participating in debate over the years is something called the Principle of Charity.  This principle says that those participating in debate are obligated to take on their opponent’s strongest arguments, rather than just pouncing on their weakest (and pretending that those weak arguments are all that there are). 

Despite the fact that my writing is probably too long-winded to attract a wide audience, and my viewpoint somewhat eccentric, I will at least be able to go into next week knowing that by choosing to take on my opponent’s chosen arguments (all of them) I was willing to live by the Principle of Charity and to not chicken out or take shortcuts to demonstrate the hollowness of the whole BDS enterprise.

Human beings being what they are, the organizers of PennBDS know in their heart of hearts that they cannot say the same thing.  When given the chance to argue and defend their positions they dodged, they weaved and they hid.  They found (or invented) arguments they would rather take on (such as claims that anyone criticizing them were just hurling empty accusations of anti-Semitism) in order to avoid more substantial ones.

No doubt they will try to ameliorate feelings of spinal inadequacy by congratulating themselves on their courage for standing up to dark, all-powerful Zionist forces that opposed them.  But in the years to come, when most of them have left radical politics behind in order to focus on applications to dental school, a little voice will continue to speak to them reminding them that when they had the chance to truly fight for a cause they claimed to believe in, they chose to do anything but.

Closing Remarks

Well I returned from a brief visit to the University of Pennsylvania campus and I’m happy to report that – at least as far as I can tell – the sky is not falling.

Signs of the impending big-bad-BDS event were non-existent (although I did see Alan Dershowitz’s punim staring me in the face on multiple locations).  And while PennBDS organizers were busy working themselves into an indignant snit over one less-than-elegant article responding to their event (such faux outrage serving as an excuse to continue pretending that other and stronger arguments against their cause do not exist), other people have been busy on the U Penn campus as well.

I mentioned Dersowitz who was invited by the local Jewish community to speak on the subject of “Why Israel Matters to You, Me and Penn” (although I suspect he’ll work a few words on what he thinks about the BDS “movement” into his talk).  And, at last count, over 900 people have signed up to attend the event.  On the surface, this seems like just three times the number of people who will be going to PennBDS, but when you realize that the number of actual Penn students involved with and attending the BDS program is between two and three dozen, you’re looking at a pro-Israel to anti-Israel campus attendance ratio of closer to 30:1.

And the response to PennBDS doesn’t stop there.  Just as the Somerville divestment battles of 2004-2006 created a Zionist enclave alongside Boston and Cambridge, leaving no other BDS footprints beyond the city (except, perhaps, this blog), so to PennBDS seems to have kicked off a Zionist renaissance on campus. 

The school’s administration, which has always been supportive of its relationship the Jewish state, was given the opportunity to speak out on the value of that relationship and to look at ways to strengthen and extend it.  Jewish students who might have put their energies into other religious or secular extra-curriculars are instead raising funds Penn-Israel programs, talking to their friends about the real Israel (not the wicked witch Israel of BDS fairy tales) and marching en mass to buy out the very products the BDSers insisted be boycotted.

All in all, not a bad set of outcomes for a three-day event that has yet to happen.  Oh sure, I know that the attendees of the PennBDS event come from a number of campuses, and they are likely to take what they learn this weekend and use it to try to gin up enthusiasm for boycott and divestment campaigns when they get back home.  But it’s not like anything new is going on.  In fact, such campaigns have been a cornerstone of campus life for more than a decade and today Israel’s relationship with American colleges and universities (like its economy and popularity among the US population) are stronger than they’ve ever been.

With that as backdrop, it’s time to take care of some housekeeping. 

First, here is an editorial I was lucky to have been given the opportunity to pen for the Philadelphia Jewish exponent.  While this will no doubt be used by BDS proponents as more evidence of their wild success (Look!  Someone else is criticizing us!  We must be powerful!), the fact that the PennBDSers have done everything in their power to avoid acknowledging (much less confronting) a month-long effort to take on their arguments just demonstrates that they are willing to do everything for their cause except defend it.   In short, as my editorial makes clear: the big news story about PennBDS specifically is the same decade-old news story about BDS in general, that it’s a L-O-S-E-R. 

Second, I’ve rearranged and re-titled items on the PennBDS-Oy landing page so that they better conform to the final agenda for the actual PennBDS program.

Third (and most exciting), I figured out a way to turn all of the material that’s appeared on this site over the last month into an ebook in a variety of formats.  So if you’re looking for something to read while the PennBDS program is going on (ideally from within the conference itself), go to this page to download your book free of charge (or read it online at Scribd).  And spread the word.

As this series closes up (and please forgive me if things slow down here starting tomorrow), I wanted to wrap with an answer to a question that’s come up a few times since this series started, namely why do this at all?  After all, the PennBDS event is not that big a deal (other similar programs have come and gone without this level of response).  And even if I were whoring for blog hits (as a PennBDS organizer once accused in the comments section on this story), historically the one sure way of reducing readership has been to write a multi-part series (like this one and this one that are actually points of pride).

Now I’ve provided lofty explanations regarding my choice to blog about this subject generally.  And while I stick by those explanations, the reasons for the last 29 pieces in 29 days is far more mundane and simple: I like to write, I like a challenge, and I don’t like bullies.

The rest is commentary.

Cheers!

PennBDS - Spectacle

Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when 3.5 inch floppy disks were considered cutting edge, I attended some of the big computing tradeshows that defined that pre-Internet era (PC Expo, Mac World and – the big one – Comdex), as both a journalist and an exhibitor.

It was while acting as a journalist that I learned an important lesson: that the level of violence a salesperson has to do to his or her own character in order to attract people into their booth is directly proportional to the crappiness of their product (or the likelihood that it would never be released). 

Said violence frequently involved apes (including dressing up in a gorilla suit or, in some cases, having an actual live chimpanzee in the booth – usually under a sign that bore some variation on “Don’t Monkey Around with Data Security!”).  Other acts of “spectacle” included the use of celebrity impersonators (poor imitations of Robin Williams and Cher ring a dim bell) and, at one MacWorld, Leonard Nimoy wearing a grey turtleneck sweater yamming on about Wingz!, a Mac spreadsheet that never saw the light of day.

Such behavior came to mind as I started thinking about the type of “spectacle” that is important enough to merit its own session at the now-so-close-I-can-smell-it PennBDS conference.  Like the aforementioned chimp shows, BDS performances have the tendency to bewilder and appall their target audience, rather than attract and inspire them.  In fact, given that BDS public performances have tended to be either bizarre (such as attempts at creating a “flash-mob,”), gross (queue the Code Pink bikini squad) or hostile (including blowing air horns and shouting through megaphones at concerts and ballet performances), BDS spectacle seems to represent an evolutionary step downward from the good old days of PC Expo monkey-business.

Interestingly, the behaviors required to participate in these types of BDS activities are the very ones I have been busy teaching my nine-year-old to avoid.  This includes interrupting, wallowing in mud, and being rude during public events.  It’s intriguing to discover that at the same time I am trying to get my 3^rd grader to learn proper manners, the PennBDS cru is running a course on how to unlearn them (and then celebrating the results).

There is a logic to this behavior once you realize that, unlike getting schools, churches or cities to embrace your political program, making a spectacle of yourself only requires acting up in public and thus success or failure is under the full control of the boycotters.  Sure, they’re likely to get kicked out of a store or concert for being public nuisances, but even if their “direct action” winds up with them sitting on the pavement, the ability to initiative these actions requires nothing more than their own rudeness and exhibitionism.

And we should not forget that between the start of a flash-dance or interruption-fest, the digital cameras will be rolling (do digital cameras roll?), capturing every minute of the “big event” on film (well, bits, anyway).  This video footage is a crucial component for understanding why folks like Code Pink put such a stake in spectacle. 

Given how much BDSers brag of their flash mobs, de-shelving, and similar “direct actions,” you might be surprised to discover that no more than a couple of dozen these types of events have ever taken place.  Each one lives on, however, on BDS web sites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels and even the occasional DVD which are then talked about in mailing lists, RSS feeds, tweets and BDS conferences, with participants hailed for their edginess and “courage.”.

Once you realize that these stunts are not played out to convince an external audience, but to impress an internal one, everything makes perfect sense.  Other questions get answered as well, including why the BDSers disrupt talks put on by their political opponents when this is guaranteed to turn the uncommitted against their cause?  It explains why they perpetuate fraud and hoaxes, knowing full well they’ll get caught.  It explains why they use corrupt tactics to win one battle, which all but guarantees they will lose the war.

For a full explanation, we must again return to our old friend fantasy politics; a set of activities that on the surface seem political, but in reality are designed to create a self-image among participants in a collective fantasy where they (and they alone) represent a noble, courageous, vanguard, of all-seeing seers who battle alone against unspeakable evil. 

Why should such fantasists care about how the public reacts to their flash dances and catcalls since, for them, this public does not actually exist except as props in a drama going on in their own heads.  In fact, all of us are props for the fantasist: Israel, it’s friends and supporters, even the Palestinians in whose names the boycotters claim to speak are just things, not people, a backdrop for YouTube videos designed to demonstrate to the world that by acting naughty in front of grownups that the BDS “movement” is more than what they are.

And what are they?  Well here in reality, BDS is just a tactic used by the same tired Israeli haters who have been gathering in church basements for decades to show each other cliché-ridden 16mm films and talk about how horrible the Jews (whoops! I mean the Zionists) are.  And while the names and faces may change, the only genuine difference is that today those films are distributed via Internet download and the basement has been briefly extended to an unknown location on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

PennBDS – Palestine and the Media

There are a number of approaches one could take when dealing with media-related issues regarding Israel and the Middle East.

The most obvious is an analysis of the way Israel and the Middle East conflict are treated in newspapers, television, radio and other media sources, both in the US and abroad.  Such analyses can be extremely eye-opening, but they are also conducted every day by people far more experienced at it than I (notably CAMERA in the US and CIFWatch in the UK).

Alternatively, this piece could focus on how BDS activists try to use the media as a force multiplier for their campaigns, especially since pushing BDS events into the headlines is really the raison d’etre for a “movement” dedicated to convincing the world that the desire to punish Israel economically for alleged “crimes” represents the opinion of more than just a tiny, marginal fringe.

A recent discussion of how boycott and divestment forces skillfully utilize Web 2.0 communication to bypass or augment traditional news sources discusses this phenomenon in detail.  And the only thing I could add specifically regarding the PennBDS conference is that organizers of that event never really seemed to get the hang of whole Web 2.0 thing, waiting until just this week to start tweeting frantically, with most of their comments the result of scouring the Internet for weak arguments to pounce on while all the time avoiding strong arguments at all cost.

Given that these two obvious angles are pretty well covered in the linked sources above, I’d like to use the media as an example of one of the key themes of this blog: the corrupting influence of BDS and allied propaganda efforts on important elements of our civil society.

Few readers will remember this, but one of the first unions to officially pass a BDS resolution was Britain’s National Union of Journalists (or NUJ).  The resolution came about as most boycott and divestment “victories” do (especially within UK unions) when a radicalized union leadership with its own agenda passed a boycott vote before members had the slightest understanding that a discussion on the matter was even taking place.

The 2007 resolution committed the union to a boycott of Israeli goods “similar to those boycotts in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.” And given the negative disposition of many British journalists towards the Jewish state, it was unclear whether such a resolution would be accepted and remain union policy.  But instead, a revolt broke out among the membership that had not been consulted about the decision and who resented being put in the position of participants in a political conflict they were supposed to be able to cover impartially.

The spirit of objections was summed up by one journalist who asked how he could be expected to be treated as a neutral observer when he carried his press card in one pocket declaring him to be a professional journalist, and an NUJ card in the other declaring him to be a participating in the conflict he was writing about.

As with similar instances, this whole mishagas represented over-reach by BDS forces with rank-and-file objections overcoming leadership power-plays and the NUJ boycott was quickly withdrawn.  And while I couldn’t imagine a similar situation playing out within the mainstream media in the US, the BDSers have found tiny media niches where they have tried to ply their wares (so far unsuccessfully, at least in the US). 

But step back for a moment and consider that the original NUJ was explicitly asking members of the journalistic profession to place their most sacred asset (journalistic integrity) on the sacrificial alter in order to be considered “right-thinking” by those pushing a BDS agenda within the union.

We’ve seen this level of sacrifice requested before by divestment partisans lucky enough to receive an audience (preferably private), in front of academic and religious groups.  In the case of an academic boycott (the subject of two talks at the PennBDS conference), educators are not being asked to move money from one retirement fund investment to another as a political statement but to throw their greatest treasure, academic freedom, out the window in order to participate in “the movement” and show themselves to be on the side of the angels.

And speaking of angels, when BDS gets injected into church discourse (as it’s been for almost a decade within Mainline Protestant churches in particular), they are not being asked to divest their considerable retirement portfolios of Israel-related assets to take a political position on a secular matter.  Rather, they are told that such action would represent the purest act of “Christian Witness,” implying that who is right and who is wrong in the Middle East conflict is so blindingly obvious that even God can see it (or, at least, that the church can confidently speak in God’s name when making statements to that effect).

A couple of months back, I read Robin Sheperd’s excellent book A State Beyond the Pale which discusses the reasons behind Europe’s deteriorating behavior vis-à-vis Israel.  The whole book is worth reading, but I wanted to end with a quote I found so resonant I decided to save it for just this purpose:

“Whatever it touches, the anti-Israel agenda always brings out the worst.  It brings out the worst in journalists who cast aside their principles of balance and objectivity.  It brings out the worst in seasoned commentators who substitute hysteria and foot stomping for calm analysis and enlightened discussion. 

It brings out the worst in trade unions which put a hateful agenda above the interest of their members.  It brings out the worst in diplomats who debase themselves by pandering to tyrannies against a democracy.  It brings out the worst in artists and writers who submerge their commitment to beauty and truth in ugliness and lies.  It brings out the worst of the great traditions of Left and Right which default back to their shabbiest instincts and their darkest prejudices.”

Truer words were never spoken.