Who’s Zooming Who?

While trying to follow events at last night’s performance in London by Israel’s Habima Theatre – remember? The performance the BDS movement sought to have boycotted, but failed – we couldn’t help come across what seemed to be a cyber-war of sorts going on alongside the issue. Seems that Israel’s London Embassy were found to have been trying to coordinate some Twitter activity in support of the performance and the more general theme of allowing artists to be heard, something which known anti-Israel hatemonger Ben White at the Electronic Intifada website called them out for. Funny thing is, though, that the very same Electronic Intifada reported at great length in early March as to the importance of planning Twitter campaigns, noting that recent campaigns that had brought international attention “did not do so by chance”.

Never missing an opportunity to remind us never to lose our sense of irony, we find the BDS movement once again caught in the inescapable contradictions of their mission and their identity: they claim universal rights for some while denying them to others; they claim to speak for the masses when they are by their own admission a narrow caste seeking to manufacture the image that they are “trending” in popularity; they claim to be being muzzled even as they seek to muzzle others; and they claim victories even as they are dealt yet another defeat.

We guess given the high profile that their call to boycott Habima received, it’s not that surprising that they’re now trying to distract attention from their defeat by focusing on what goes on on Twitter instead of what goes on in the real world the rest of us live in.

“Don’t be Played by the Boycotters”

The issue of a “cultural boycott” – as if there’s anything cultured about stifling others’ freedom of expression – has been in the headlines recently, with repeated reports of bullying and intimidation by Irish boycott activists to get fellow artists to refrain from performing in Israel, the ongoing attempts by others, including Israeli so-called “fans”,  to scare leading music acts to cancel concerts, and the very public attempt to get London’s Globe Theatre to retract its invitation to Israel’s Habima National Theatre to perform next week in a “Cultural Olympics” celebration of Shakespeare.

A common thread passing through these different assaults is an ideology promoted by the “Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel” (PACBI) – the same outfit which unsuccessfully pushed for academic boycotts in the UK, Norway and elsewhere few years ago.  Since 2004 PACBI, closely aligned with the BDS movement, has called upon intellectuals and academics worldwide to “comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions”, arguing that “as a general overriding rule, virtually all Israeli cultural institutions, unless proven otherwise, are complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, whether through their silence or actual involvement in justifying, whitewashing or otherwise deliberately diverting attention from Israel’s violations of international law and human rights [sic].  Accordingly, these institutions (mainly major state and public entities), all their products, and all the events they sponsor or support must be boycotted.”

Yes, that’s right, all Israeli cultural institutions are inherently and a priori guilty and worthy of being boycotted, unless (somehow) proven otherwise. No discussion, no debate, no flexibility. If you’re Israeli, you’re off limits.

The campaigners from PACBI and BDS like to cover the stench of bigotry and extremism that emanates from their approach with high-minded talk of Palestinian rights, solidarity, self-empowerment and so on, something which has allowed them to mobilize the occasional (often ignorant) celebrity to sign up to their program. The tactic of seeking celebrity endorsement is not of course unique to the BDS movement, but as DivestThis has documented, it is actually one of BDS’s key strategies; lacking in any credibility of their own, they seek to get others more publicly respected to parrot their positions, all the while manipulating and instrumentalizing them into pawns for the cause.

Habima are scheduled to play at the Globe on Monday 28^th and Tuesday 29^th May. The PACBI and BDS activists will no doubt be there to disrupt and bully as they have been before, and to impose their views on the performers and audience alike.

The graphics you see here alongside this post were prepared by us to address that prospect, and to encourage ordinary, decent-minded people not to be played by the boycotters.    

Share away!

More on the bullying culture of Ireland’s cultural bullies

Further to our post last week on the coercive tactics adopted by the Irish boycott movement, Haaretz reports that Irish writer Gerard Donovan, a prominent novelist and poet, has attacked the pro-Palestinian boycott movement, IPSC, for “outright intimidation and “trying to “bully” him to abstain from visiting Israel and take part in the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem this week.

Over the last few weeks, Donovan has been the focus of a campaign against his participating in the writers’ festival. Open letters and petitions were addressed to him over the internet but Donovan, who is currently living in a cabin in New York and recovering from cancer, said he was unaware of the letters, that he had cancelled his visit two months ago due to his ill health, and that the activists were “idiots” for targeting him.

Putting his finger on the method of instrumentalizing artists and others in the public eye in the service of the boycott activists’ own narrow political agenda, he added:

“Nobody tells me where I can or cannot read my work. I’m not going to allow myself to be drawn into any political controversy for any people’s ends, I don’t care how many other writers they line up, it is completely irrelevant to me.”

France’s new leader on record as opposing boycotts

Socialist François Hollande won the French presidential election Sunday, beating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the second and final round of voting.

Just in case anyone was concerned that Hollande may view the issue of boycotts differently than outgoing President Sarkozy, we are happy to share Hollande’s comments on the matter, given in an interview published on 1 May, by the French Jewish news website Tribunejuive.info, in which Mr Hollande said he is “totally opposed” to the boycott of Israeli products which, he added:

“is illegal and does not serve the cause of peace.”

Irish BDS campaign – “An avalanche of negativity and venom”

Two Irish bands, Dervish and Fullset, last week canceled their June concerts in Israel, citing the cultural boycott policy adopted by some members of Ireland’s artistic community. Their decision to finally yield was a clear result of an orchestrated campaign from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), characterized by a torrent of “negativity and venom” on Facebook and Twitter and a caution, that the band would lose all credibility if they travelled.

“Cyber bullying” is how this campaign was described by Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter. In comments reported by Ireland’s Sunday Independent he claimed that the IPSG staged a “concerted” campaign to stop the series of three concerts by the traditional music group and slammed the actions of the IPSG and their attempts to promote a boycott of Israel by Irish acts.

“The invitation to Dervish to perform in Israel came from a fellow musician who worked to bridge divides between people through music for much of his life and the objective of the concerts was ‘to promote love between two divided communities.’

“If the IPSC were in any way interested in promoting peace and reconciliation in a troubled part of the world they would recognize the value of cultural and artistic exchanges and the contribution such events make to fostering understanding and tolerance.”

Shatter also attacked the motives of the IPSC. He added:

“Unfortunately, IPSC’s interest is not in peace and reconciliation, their appeal to human rights rings hollow.

“It is particularly extraordinary that the orchestrated campaign targeted at Dervish occurred at a time when thousands have lost their lives in Syria and the IPSG have remained silent about the crimes against humanity being committed there.”

U.K. union bars Israeli expert from conference on conflict resolution

A master-class on conflict resolution for health-trust managers and union officials that was set to be given by an Israeli lecturer in Manchester next week was cancelled by the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust after local trade union members who were to take part in the class objected to participating in a workshop with an Israeli expert.

Moty Cristal, an Israeli expert on negotiating skills and crisis-management, was to have taught a class entitled “The Role of Negotiation in Dealing with Conflict”. Cristal has worked in the past with Palestinian groups and human-rights organizations, and has lectured on his field on numerous occasions in Britain, including a lecture to the Muslim Council of Britain. Despite this, he received an e-mail on Friday from the company that organized the event, saying that his expertise was no longer required, following pressure by members of UNISON, Britain’s largest trade union, which represents 1.3 million public service workers. The message said the class was being cancelled “on the grounds that it is [the union's] policy and also that of the Trades Union Council to support the Palestinian people.”

While the council has voted in the past against general boycott resolutions of Israel, the UNISON National Delegate Conference has repeatedly voted in favor of a general boycott, despite the recommendation of its national executive to “critically engage” instead with Israelis and Israeli organizations, including the Histadrut.

The Israeli Embassy in London said that “the cancelation of a private expert simply due to his citizenship or ethnic identity is a racist policy in every way. What is even more shameful is the fact this was supposed to be an NHS-sponsored workshop dealing, ironically, with negotiating and conflict resolution. It seems that those who cancelled it are in urgent need of such training.”

And Cristal responded to the cancelation by writing to Manchester Mental Trust chief executive Jackie Daniel:

“Values-wise, unlike you, I am confident that the only way to resolve conflicts, let alone the Israeli-Palestinian one, is through effective communication and constructive dialogue, rather than violence or boycotts.”

(Source: Haaretz)

A Name and a Shame

A new blog called BDS Gone Bad is adding some good juice to the fight against BDS, by focusing on exposing the hypocrisy and the lies of the anti-Israel movement. Their latest expose involves one Tali Shapiro, a self-described activist and writer, who supports “Anarchists Against the Wall”; “Boycott!” and is the head editor of its Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from within newsletter.

Shapiro regularly presents herself to foreign artists as a longstanding fan, and then uses that status as a platform to call on them not to perform in Israel. But it’s all a lie. Turns out that she only begins to “like” the bands once they announce their intention to perform in Israel!

Of course the BDS movement has a long history of manipulating the common decency of ordinary people (artists, co-ops, union members etc.) and trying to turn them into unwitting mouthpieces for the anti-Israel agenda, but this little revelation is a tasty example of just how they go about their duplicitous business.

Co-op to boycott exports from West Bank but continue trading with Israel

The Guardian reports that the Co-operative Group has become the first European supermarket group to end trade with companies that export produce from Israeli settlements.

The UK’s fifth biggest food retailer and its largest mutual business, the Co-op took the step as an extension of its existing policy which had been not to source produce from settlements in the West bank, by “no longer engaging with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements”.

The decision will hit four companies; Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin, Israel’s largest agricultural export company, and contracts worth some £350,000.

BDS campaigners led by the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign have ben lobbying the Co-op to enact a full boycott of all Israeli products, but have clearly failed in this regard, with the Co-op stressing in its announcement that this is not an Israeli boycott and that its contracts will go to other companies inside Israel.

Minnesota divestment attempt fails. Again.

BDS earned itself yet another failure last week, this time in Minnesota, USA.

On February 1^st, 2011, after two years of state-wide grassroots organizing, an activist group, called the “Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign” (MN BBC), issued a divestment demand to the Minnesota State Board of Investment (SBI), threatening them with possible legal action.

Activists then tried for months to pressure Minnesota state lawmakers to divest from Israel Bonds. They launched public letter-writing campaigns to the SBI, in what they described as “an effort to flood the capitol building with demands that Minnesota divest from Israel”, and they also lobbied members of the state legislature directly. They unsuccessfully tried to bully themselves on to the agenda of the March 2011 SBI meeting which was to make decisions pertaining to investments – refusing a private meeting offered by the SBI in favour of pursuing a publicity grab on the issue. SBI officials did eventually meet with MN BBC activists, in March 2011, but the activists reported that the state was (not surprisingly) “unresponsive”, a fact borne out when, in November 2011, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton formally rejected MN BBC’s demand.

Not to be deterred by their total political failure MN BBC then filed a lawsuit against the SBI, claiming that  Israel Bonds were supporting Israeli actions that had supposedly been deemed illegal under international law, and calling on the State of Minnesota to sell the $18 million it holds in Israeli Bonds.

Last week, on April 9^th, Minnesota’s Ramsey County Judge Margaret Marrinan dismissed the lawsuit out of hand.

Quite aside from finding that the self-appointed plaintiffs did not have standing to file the lawsuit, the Judge ruled that “the authority to make social, political and economic policy decisions of the kind Plaintiffs complain about in this case resides with the Legislature and the SBI [State Board of Investment], not this Court” – in other words, that there is no legal grounds for the call to divest from Israel.

Minds Snapping Shut

Aside from the usual rumble of behind the scenes attempts by BDS activists to bully local authorities and others into subordinating their institutions to the “Israel must be punished no matter what else is going on in the world” agenda, the main BDS story to be gaining headlines in the last couple of weeks has been the loud and negative response to the public letter published by a group of British celebrities including Oscar-winner Emma Thompson, calling on London’s Globe Theatre to withdraw its invitation to Israel’s Habimah Theatre (See this letter by well-known Birtish theatre personalities Arnold Wesker, Ronald Harwood, Maureen Lipman, Simon Callow, Louise Mensch MP and Steven Berkoff published (alongside a separate letter critical of Israel) in the Guardian. Earlier, the same figures expanded on their critique to the Jewish Chronicle).

Howard Jacobson, winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize for his comic novel The Finkler Question, added his own clear voice to the debate:

“If there is one justification for art… it is that it proceeds from, and addresses, our unaligned humanity. Whoever would go to art with a mind made up on any subject misses the point of what art is for.

So to censor it in the name of political or religious conviction… is to tear out its very heart. For artists themselves to do such a thing to art is not only treasonable, it is an act of self-harm.

With last week’s letter to the Guardian, McCarthyism came to Britain. You can hear the minds of people in whom we vest our sense of creative freedom snapping shut.”

Meanwhile, the Globe theatre’s management said that it was standing by its decision, that the Habima performance was a key part of its eclectic Cultural Olympiad and that “as an institution, [we] are welcoming everybody to the festival.”

Ilan Ronen, Habima’s artistic director, called the original letter “a disgrace” and added that:

“Artists should create bridges where there is conflict; the issue of Israel and the Palestinians is an area in which European dialogue can be very helpful in creating a better atmosphere. To boycott us prevents any artistic dialogue.”