Jerusalem think tank to Netanyahu: We must go on the offensive against BDS

By Sam Sokol, JPOST

Israel’s counter-boycott strategy needs a comprehensive overhaul, providing efforts to combat the delegitimization of the Jewish state with high level support and funding in order to move beyond mere rhetoric, a prominent Jerusalem think tank told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday.

The Jewish People Policy Institute briefed the premier during Sunday morning’s cabinet meeting, presenting the government with its annual assessment of the state of the Jewish people and calling for Israel to switch over to the offensive in waging public relations battles.

The report recommended that “the government promptly adopt an appropriately budgeted comprehensive strategy [to combat boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns], and task a senior government official, who reports directly to the prime minister, with coordinating its operational implementation.”

“There has been strong rhetoric about opposing BDS but there hasn’t been a concentrated strategy,” JPPI co-chair and former American ambassador Stuart Eizenstat explained during a call with the Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Israel’s current efforts are fragmented, with scant resources allocated exclusively to counter-BDS.

Describing the global BDS campaign as a “subtle” but “genuine war” against Israel, Eizenstat called for equally sophisticated responses that are not merely reactive but offensive.

“It is a highly sophisticated propaganda effort and the people leading this effort are hiding behind BDS and Palestinian rights but they are really people who are trying to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state,” he said.

In an email to the Jerusalem Post in 2013, a representative of the BDS movement in South Africa denied claims of bigotry, stating that his movement was opposed to “any and all incitement to violence and racism – including anti-Semitism and Zionism.”

Eizenstat explained that he believed that efforts to combat BDS required activists to differentiate between those who form the hard core of the movement and cannot be won over to those who may be “peeled off” with expressions of Israel’s willingness to make peace.

Efforts such as refraining from building outside of settlement blocs would show an Israeli commitment to a two state solution and would undermine the rationale of many opponents, he said.

Moreover, he added, that efforts to combat BDS “need to have the broadest kind of inclusion” and that arguments over who can march in pro-Israel parades or can be included in the “big tent” are counterproductive.

Several Jewish organizations accused of supporting settlement boycotts or being connected to groups that have endorsed such positions came under fire last year from groups stating that their groups placed them outside of the acceptable limits of Zionist discourse. During a separate incident in January, several groups running in elections for the Zionist Congress likewise came under fire from the right for statements opposed to the consumption of settlement products.

Instead of coming together to fight external enemies “we are tearing each other apart internally,”

Eizenstat said, citing the example of rivals David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin, who came together during the War of Independence, averting a Jewish civil war.

Israel’s strategy to combat BDS must include massive educational efforts on campuses targeting Jewish students “who don’t have answers to the kinds of sophisticated but erroneous narratives BDS activists are putting out.”

Moreover, both Jews and non-Jews must be made to understand that the BDS movement is based on double standards applied to no other nation.

Continuing in his critique of Israel’s efforts thus far, he said that Jerusalem’s BDS policy “has to be more than in name only” and that a counter-campaign “has to have the resources necessary” and to work closely with Diaspora Jewish groups.

Stating that “the best defense is a good offense [and that] it’s time to be on the offense,” Eizenstat told the Post that one of the best tools Israel has right now is legislation.

Citing US states that have passed anti-BDS legislation that precludes companies complicit in boycott campaigns from bidding for government contracts, he said that he wants to not only see such laws in every state of the union but also on a federal level.

Citing a 1977 law which imposed financial penalties on companies participating in the Arab boycott of Israel, Eizenstat said that also today if Congress “passed a law that said no company that participates in a BDS campaign will [get] US government contracts it will have an impact.”