The Boycott Game
By Gad Nahshon
Nazi boycott of a Jewish store in Berlin during the 1930�s
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A new, and old, game was exposed recently in New York City. It is an American-Jewish anti-Semitic game. It has a sexual appeal. The game ends with a new genocide of Jews, a new Holocaust, which is not based on gas chambers or using the bodies of the victims to produce soap and agricultural fertilizers. Who are the victims of this new massacre? Jews. The Jews who live in the Jewish nation of Israel. There are at least one billion Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians, and more millions of their allies and partners, who dream of eliminating this country. It is not an obsession, and it is not Jewish-Israeli paranoia. Many leaders, such as those in Iran, expose this dream in public.
Not too long ago, this dream was exposed in New York by members of a Park Slope Food co-op in Park Slope, Brooklyn. They tried to boycott the selling of Israeli goods. Many of their members were described as idealists who ignore crimes around the world, only on Israel, in order to save the Palestinian victims.
Since 1948, Israel itself was a victim of such 'isolationism.' Israel was continually attacked in the media by anti-Semites, including former Nazis, Arabs, Muslims, and various anti-Israeli lobbies. It took place since 1948 and had nothing to do with wars of 1956, 1967, 1980, nor the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Even the U.N. was often the partner of these enemies of Israel. These enemies directly, or indirectly, and by all means, tried to annihilate Israel, threatening her survival, her safety, and her economic viability. One way was the boycott of Israel's economy and culture. The idea to destroy Israel, via an economic diplomatic and psychological boycott, was created by the Arab league. It became a weapon that many countries, including Great Britain, used against Israel. There were also many countries such as the Soviet Union and Indonesia that sued boycotts in order to improve their relations with Muslim and Arab countries.
The boycott syndrome became more modern and more sophisticated. It became a universal, international movement known as BDA or 'boycott divestment and sanctions.' Please note that these boycott admirers, so called liberals, idealists, peace lovers, and anti-military promoters, use Israel's West Bank settlements, and the products they produce, as their justifications for these anti-Israeli boycotts.
Even though Israel was established in 1948, long before its victory in the 1967 War, the Arab-Muslim, pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian world, also churns out a non-stop propaganda crusade in order to label Israel as a criminal, fascist-apartheid state that persecutes another innocent nation and steals its lands, such as Palestine. It is hard, historically, to find a nation that suffered from a boycott like the Jewish nation and the Jewish people. There were Christians that boycotted Jews, at least since the Middle Ages. They burned Jews and their holy books. The Nazis improved boycott techniques as anti-Jewish weapons. They burned books and they burned Jewish stores. Those who detest such actions should never boycott a Jew, a Jewish store, or a Jewish nation. Boycotts are a historical Jewish trauma. It touches a raw nerve in the Jewish people.
More recently, we have witnessed a new kind of Jew -- 'Jews for Boycotts.' This creates another trauma - Jews who join the pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian, boycott movement, and are anti-Israeli. The 'peace lobby' that J-Street invited to its convention, in Washington D.C., unveiled a new celebrity and supposed expert on the Middle East, a religious Jewish intellectual named Prof. Peter Beinart. He published an op-ed in the New York Times: To Save Israel Boycott the Settlements.
Like many enemies of Israel, he attacks Israel based on his desire to help foster 'peace.' One of Israel's most admired scholars, Benny Morris, who defended the rights, in his books, of the Palestinian refugees (1948) declared that he changed his life's belief. Today, he said, the Arabs and the Palestinians are not looking for peace with Israel. They do not recognize Israel as a state or as a Jewish state. They are looking for its annihilation and collapse. They consider Palestine as their land and territory. But Prof. Beinart still preaches in favor of the boycott. He published a new book which demonstrated his ignorance of Israel's political history. Discussing settlements, he ignored big cities such as Ariel or Maale-Adumim, which was established by Rabin. He also ignored the future of the Golan Heights and Assad, the Syrian dictator who is massacring his own Muslim people.
One wonders if Beinart would urge Israel to sign a peace agreement with Assad? Well, as an educated Jew, Beinart did not hesitate to boycott (like the Nazis, for example) other Jews, nor was he ashamed to suggest that others utilize the boycott against Israel. He defended himself as a liberal. Furthermore, what proof is there that he is any kind of expert of the Israeli economy? Did he argue that the West Bank economy had nothing to do with the Israeli economy or with Israeli banks?
Many residents work in places that are not located in the West Bank. Did he argue that there are two economies, one Israeli an one settlements? Conclusion: a boycott is a boycott of Israel without limits. How can he discuss Israel's security-military-survival problems? In Israel anyone knows that there are security-military considerations involved in most decision making. Ariel Sharon evacuated the Gaza Strip. Today, Hamas uses these lands in Gaza as bases for attaching Israel with missiles. In the South, in Beer Sheva, it is a non-stop, daily, dangerous experience. Often, they have to save their children. They have to close their schools. At the same time, Prof. Beinart enjoys a good safe life in New York City and his children enjoy the studies in one of the best schools in this country, a Jewish, west-side of Manhattan school.
I still remember Minister Avi Dichter, former Shin Bet director, telling me that one Hamas missile almost murdered his mother in the city of Ashqelon, not far away from Tel-Aviv. Prof. Beinart never learned about it. He does not argue that without Israeli military superiority, Israel would collapse. Any sign of a weakness is to fill the taste of Abass!
Prof. Beinart's ignorance of Israel's history and Zionism has been exposed in his book: The Crisis of Zionism. First, Zionism is dead since 1948. Those who hate Israel and wish to destroy it, such as Iran, define Israel as 'the Zionist Entity.' Even the pro-Israeli lobby changed its title from Zionist to Israel lobby. Beinart wrote that this crisis is the result of Israel's occupation and its settlements are an anti-peace reality. He believes that the Palestinians, the Arabs, and Hamas, are dying for peace. Is he blind? An idiot? Or crazy? If he makes mistakes will he pay for them or will he go on enjoying his, and his family's, good life in New York?
Democracy? He did not discuss the history of Israel's democracy since 1948. He did not discuss Ben-Gurion's democracy when his party controlled political life in Israel. Since 1967, the Labor party built settlements in the West Ban and the Golan Heights. Prime Minister Eshkol declared Jerusalem to be the united eternal capitol of Israel. The recent Democratic Party with its Jewish liberals, peace lovers, Jewish voters (85%) and rabbis for Obama, forgotten, ignored to include Eshkol's declaration in its platform! Obama dying for Jewish votes rushed to change it and to relax a minority in the convention.
How can an educated Jew argue that Israel's democracy is in crisis and why? Israel was, and is, the only real democracy in the Middle East! What aspect of democratic life of a society has been destroyed? Freedom of elections? There are many parties in the Knesset. The media is more than free and strong. There are popular street movements like the 60,000 young people Rothschild movement, an anti-government, anti-Benjamin Netanyahu one. Of course, there are problems, but they have nothing to do with Israel's issues of survival and security.
Beinart wrote that "�Israel's foes will eventually overthrow Zionism itself." Who are these foes? He cares about the fate of Zion. Zionism has been dead. There is a Jewish state. If her occupation will be eternal, Israel will die. Israel was, and will continue to be, a great democracy. Its survival has always been a defense of Jews. Can history repeat itself? Nazis murdered Jews who, by assimilation, defined themselves as 100% Germans. So how can a Jew, whether he is a liberal or not, who claims to be concerned with Israel's survival, preach for boycotting, when such boycotts actually threaten Israel's survival?
