By Ronnie Olesker
In 2018, I was living in Israel while researching a book about the country’s fight against groups that challenge its legitimacy.
Every Wednesday, a new batch of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream arrived at my local supermarket, and I would snap up as many tubs of vanilla as I could. By Thursday, there’d be none left. Clearly, Israelis love their Ben & Jerry’s – which makes up about 75% of the premium ice cream market in Israel.
Still, even I was surprised by the ferocity of the Israeli reaction to Ben & Jerry’s announcement on July 19, 2021, that it would no longer sell its ice cream in Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. Many Israelis on my social media feed were outraged. Politicians condemned Ben & Jerry’s as “anti-Israel” and urged American lawmakers to sanction the South Burlington, Vermont-based company. Some states are already preparing to do just that.
Could it be that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – which targets the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – has finally found Israel’s soft spot?
What is the BDS movement?
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, known as the BDS movement, began in 2005. That’s when 170 Palestinian civil society organizations called for an economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel for its violation of international law and Palestinian rights, as well as its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
The movement, which soon included a loose network of activists based all around the world, also urged companies, universities and others to divest from Israel and countries to sanction it.
Inspired by the success of the global movement to end apartheid in South Africa, the BDS campaign seeks to enlist academics, countries, companies and others in its effort to punish and isolate Israel. Its biggest gains so far have been in getting some academic groups and churches to support its boycott.
Minimal impact on Israel
But the BDS movement appears to have had little impact on Israel’s economy or its diplomatic standing.
One reason for this is that Israel has faced boycotts since before it even became a state in 1948. As a result, its economy has become adept at producing high-quality, cutting-edge and specialized products for export, making boycotts less effective because trade partners can’t easily substitute goods from other countries.
Israel has also successfully lobbied some countries and lawmakers to condemn boycotts against it. In 2019, for example, the German Parliament designated the BDS movement as antisemitic. And U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has said it plans to pass a measure to curb boycotts against Israel.
In the U.S., some are boycotting the boycotters. Thirty-five states have passed anti-BDS laws, executive orders and resolutions since 2005. These typically limit state authorities from doing business with anyone who is actively boycotting Israel and prevent state pension funds from investing in BDS-linked companies. Officials in Florida and Texas have already threatened to add Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, to a blacklist of businesses that are ineligible for investments.
One of the main reasons why the anti-apartheid movement succeeded in isolating South Africa in the 1980s is that it convinced major companies, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Co, Reebok and Ford, to stop doing business with the country.
While French telecom group Orange ended its licensing agreement with an Israeli company in 2016, few other big companies have embraced the movement. In 2018, Airbnb said it would remove the listings of properties in Israeli settlements, but reversed itself a few months later after a flurry of anti-discrimination lawsuits were filed against it.
But despite the lack of substantive economic or diplomatic impact, I believe it would be a mistake to label the BDS movement as a failure. Rather, Ben & Jerry’s decision hints at a watershed moment in the BDS campaign.
Shifting views of Israel
The company, founded by Jewish friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978, has long embraced a liberal social mission – which it frequently expresses through its ice cream flavors, such as Save Our Swirled and Justice ReMix’d. Even after Unilever bought the company in 2000, Ben & Jerry’s remained independent in pursuing its progressive values.
In its statement announcing the shift, Ben & Jerry’s said selling ice cream in the West Bank and Gaza “is inconsistent with our values.” Cohen and Greenfield defended the company’s decision in an op-ed in The New York Times on July 28, 2021.
While I don’t doubt the company’s values were behind the decision, I also believe something else was at work: Israel is losing the battle for public opinion.
Israel currently has a net favorability of just 3% among Democrats and voters who lean Democratic, down from 31% in the early 2000s. Among liberal Democrats, Israel has a net unfavorability of 15%, as more of these voters express support for Palestinians. The trend is especially strong with younger Americans, who are much less supportive than their older counterparts.
A separate 2019 poll found that, although most Americans had never heard about the BDS movement, 48% of Democrats who were familiar with it said they support it. And almost three-quarters of all respondents of that survey said they opposed laws that punish people for engaging in a boycott.
During the anti-apartheid fight, big companies didn’t join the movement until public opinion began to seriously shift in response to vibrant grassroots activism, typically led by college students.
Ben & Jerry’s has faced a similar campaign from pro-Palestinian activists for years. The fighting in Gaza in May 2021 that left 253 Palestinians and 12 Israelis dead seems to have accelerated the pressure as social media activists bombarded the company with demands to boycott Israel. This prompted a 20-day silence by Ben & Jerry’s on social media, followed by the new policy just a few weeks later.
Shared values
In other words, public sentiment among a group of U.S. voters – including many American Jews – who used to be stalwart supporters of Israel has shifted, and they are increasingly turning their backs on the Jewish state.
For instance, while most Americans support a two-state solution that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories it occupies, the Israeli government and its citizens increasingly do not distinguish between Israel and the territories it has occupied since 1967.
The rhetoric of Israeli politicians condemning companies like Ben & Jerry’s that join the boycott of settlements – such as calling it a form of antisemitism or equating it with terrorism – makes the problem worse. In my own research, I found that it validates and perpetuates the illiberal image of Israel that the BDS movement paints.
In an interview in January, Christopher Miller, Ben & Jerry’s head of global activism strategy, said the “strongest bond you can create with customers is around a shared set of values.”
That’s why I believe Ben & Jerry’s is likely to stay the course – and why more American companies will follow suit.
Ronnie Olesker is Associate Professor of Government at St. Lawrence University.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
cgm says
Haven’t eaten from those LPSCD (liberal progressive social commie Dem’s) in years.
Notimpressed says
There are two sides to every dispute, which in this case may be a very long road to travel down when seeking to arrive at some semblance of “truth”. We are not talking about isolated acts here. There are plenty of aggressive incidents that have occurred on both sides of the “Bank”. There have been very fierce battles fought over that little piece of land for thousands of years.
You need to have a deep understanding of the psychology of displaced European and Asian Jews, who had survived the Holocaust. They fought hard to try and persuade the United Nations to recognize them as a nation and to allow them to formally be granted a specific piece a tiny of land, which was agreed upon, then reneged upon, until finally some generic demarcation lines were drawn. You are basically told them yes, we will allow you to establish a nation, but you are on your own. As can be anticipated, the resident locals were non too pleased when the new game in town arrived. And armed fighting did occur (as it basically had for recorded history). The Israelis were determined to get what was promised to them, or die fighting. As time has passed, the border has moved directions one way or another depending on who won what battle, who planted settlements there, etc. Areas of the West Bank have been in dispute for quite a while. It became a chess game of who could settle what area and attempt to claim it for their own.
I compare it to another familiar story in European history which featured the lack of love between the British and the Scots to the north. For over 400 to 600 years, “Border Reivers” ran back and forth across the “so called border”‘ raiding, stealing cattle, and doing anything else was in their minds at the time. This mutual love fest became enmeshed in the culture of the time. A man’s way of life and ethnic culture invariably involved raiding back and forth across the border (in both directions) for hundreds of years.
I personally think it is difficult to understand the cultural frame of mind of both parties, which might possibly explain why people in our current culture tend to focus on one particular event and deem it “egregious” enough to warrant some type of condemnation, while at the same time choosing to ignore what those “victims” had done to the “aggressors” a couple of hours prior. Honestly, this piece is a VERY simplistic statement simply reporting a few facts, with an opinion or two thrown in. Very basic newspaper writing. Please, if you want the facts, study history from every angle, become friends with people from both communities and listen to what they tell you has occurred, how it affected them personally, and ask questions if you don’t understand or need clarification about cultural practices, etc. But, that does not sell newspapers. Targeting a certain incident and firing it up until they can create some type of reaction, then sell, sell, sell those newspapers! Can you see where I am going? Be smarter than that for Pete’s sake!
Pogo says
@Notimpressed
Well, uh, well said. But, a “wee” ironic, IMO, i.e., the reference to the “times” of Bilbo Wallace. Remember the Crusades?:
“The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to liberate Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Islamic rule…”
https://www.google.com/search?d&q=the+crusades
“…between 1095 and 1291…”
The local goyim, ‘scuse me, gentiles, all “got it” when ted cruz slouched a cross (sic), pun intended, a stage at the recent cpac drum circle/circle jerk for trump at orlan-doh. cruz monkeyed with the menagerie in attendance by aping Mel’s portrayal of Bilbo’s martyrdom in “Braveheart”, exclaiming freeeeeedom so lustily that he exposed his uvula to the known universe! More irony, a stage whose shape was straight out of German Nazi iconography. Do ya think they (the suckers at cpac) know about the significance of 1290 to English Jewry of 1290 – and all Jewry since?:
Edward I (Longshanks) Expells the Jews from England
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2258
Kinda odd, well – maybe not, Mel left that out of “Braveheart”. But anyway, let’s us historians look a wee bit deeper:
“…In 1274, Edward I codified the “Statute of Jewry,” which stated, “Each Jew, after he is seven years old, shall wear a distinguishing mark on his outer garment, that is to say, in the form of two Tables joined, of yellow felt of the length of six inches and of the breadth of three inches.”…” A little eerily familiar?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-magna-cartas-very-jewish-underpinnings/
I’ll have another pint of Cherry Garcia, and Haaretz.
Yummy, what a way to go!
https://www.benjerry.com/flavors/cherry-garcia-ice-cream
Think, it won’t kill you if practiced in moderation.
https://www.haaretz.com/
Ray W. says
The key term in Notimpressed’s comment is “promised.” But he casts the term in the context of 1948, not in the context of the “promised land.” If anyone thinks the ultraorthodox element of Israeli life and politics will ever agree to a two-state solution, he or she is gravely mistaken. And the Palestinians are similarly entrenched in their claims to the land. Statements from Jewish intellectual leaders dating from the 1920’s establish the existence of a belief among many in the ultraorthodox community that the only way for a Jewish homeland to survive, regardless of whether Israel as a state is to survive, is to forcibly remove Palestinians from the land and the Palestinians know it.
Notimpressed greatly weakens the several good sides to the presented argument when he or she engages in the poor attempt to cast the article as a means to sell newspapers. If Notimpressed had simply left out the last four sentences, he or she would have been better off. I can see where Notimpressed is going. He or she is not really interested in persuading others to engage in a more well rounded study of the many issues in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip; it is about his or her own personal rant against newspaper articles. If Notimpressed had really been interested in persuading others to engage in a studied review of the conflict, he or she would not have written in the first sentence the limiting description of “two sides.” There are hundreds of sides to this conflict. Notimpressed trying to pass the conflict off as two-sided is “VERY simplistic.” Hoisted by his or her own petard.
Notimpressed says
My statements were never meant to be simplistic. The point I was trying to make was that you cannot boil this down to what a lot of people view as a “right or wrong” status unless you first understand from EVERY angle, up, down backwards, and sideways, and then be prepared for yet one more twist to inject into the situation. Yes, I was being sarcastic, toward journalists who tend to sensationalize just to sell newspapers. I wasn’t attempting to “persuade” anyone, just merely to point out the flaws in the article. This article was lacking and I merely expressed that opinion within the space and time that is allotted us. I am happy to see that at least two readers appear to have a brain and could comment intelligently. Believe me, as a historian and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I know all too well the history of the region in great detail. I could go on ad nauseum about it, but won’t consume my time with trying to make ignorant people get the point. Bottom line, take your time when reading this type of article and take it with a grain of salt.
Ray W. says
I suppose every person has at least one pet peeve. While I am not a journalist, nor have I ever considered journalism as a career, I know enough about the educational requirements to know that for a journalism student to receive a degree in journalism he or she must invest a significant amount of time into absorbing journalistic ethics. I am not writing this to assert that Notimpressed belongs to any political party or other organization. I am writing this to state that one of my pet peeves is that so-called conservatives, who by and large lack any ethical training or boundaries, consistently attack journalists whose research follows all journalistic ethical guidelines through use of the mantra “fake news.” The press is called the fourth branch of government for good reason. Much political corruption and trickery has been uncovered by quality journalism, yet such journalists are routinely attacked, denigrated, maligned, minimized, repudiated, etc., for publishing articles that are important, even if the article only starts a discussion that would never otherwise have started. Of course, Mr. Tristam properly covers his bases by including the disclaimer at the end of this opinion piece that details the purpose of “The Conversation”, as any ethical journalist would do.
Sarcasm of the type described by Notimpressed certainly has a place and it can be very effective when used correctly. But, when so-called conservatives have an agenda that is detrimental to our liberal constitutional form of government (Jan. 6th insurrection, Stop the Steal, etc.), sarcastic salvos launched at opinion writers, who are not journalists, only emboldens the so-called conservatives, with a corresponding loss to all of us. I agree with Notimpressed about the need to take any news article with a grain of salt. We should take ideas expressed in any editorial column with a grain of salt, too. Perhaps this is the best comment Notimpressed posts about this editorial, as skepticism is an important element to apply to ideas, whatever the source. I also agree with Not impressed that the opinion piece lacks a fully developed commentary about the multi-faceted and deadly situation that is ever-present in the Occupied Territories. Perhaps Notimpressed should consider the possibility that standard editorial page submission requirements often carry a word limitation. While FlaglerLive may have a relatively high word number value assigned to editorial submissions, I suspect just about any editorial writer would find it difficult to adequately cover even the smallest facet of the Israeli/Palestinian issue in a word-limited format.
Notimpressed says
My point exactly. Journalists are taught to fit their point into a limited number of words, which is often woefully inadequate. I have no aspersions about journalists one way or another, unless they out and out lie , which I do have a problem with. But, is it no longer acceptable to critique a piece? And is it no longer acceptable to reject falsehoods put forth into the media stream whose sole purpose is to incite and inflame? For some, they don’t get published unless their article is as provocative as possible. These are the money grubbing “rags” that are only interested in the $$$. And by the way, sarcasm is a style of response to any given situation, good or bad. But some people never “get it” and pounce on you like the world has come to an end, OY Vey!!
Ray W. says
Great reply, even if I don’t agree with every point you make! You pounced on an editorial writer as if he were a journalist. I pounced on you for pouncing on the writer. I think we have a meeting of the minds, if only on a few limited points. Success can take many different forms. I see value in several of your points and appreciate you for those ideas. It appears that you see value in several of my points, though I am not convinced that you appreciate me. But, as an old and long-suffering Montreal Expos baseball fan, I realized long ago that hope springs eternal! Or at least long enough for the Nationals to take it all in 2019.
Ray W. says
To expand on my most recent reply to Notimpressed, please remember that I was trained in an era when prosecutors and defense attorneys would zealously, but amicably, with emphasis on amicably, advocate on behalf of their clients in front of jurors who were chosen for their perceived ability to listen to testimony, review evidence, and consider all arguments and then deliberate and render a verdict that one of the two attorneys was likely to disagree with. Afterwards, both attorneys would go out together for a drink or two, because in my early days, tradition required that the loser buy drinks. We would talk over the case, talk about life, congratulate our adversary about good points and critique the perceived flaws. We were professionals. Today’s version of prosecutor is not nearly so accepting of defeat, but prosecutors are no longer trained in the same way I was trained (more on that issue when the right comment comes along). Whether that is better or worse depends on one’s point of view.
I have mentioned some of these comments before. Once, in a domed-ceiling courtroom with very poor acoustics if you stood in the wrong spot, I misheard a juror during jury selection. He said his hobby was building dollhouses. I thought he said he built outhouses as a hobby. I immediately blurted out: Outhouses? Is there still a market for them? The entire courtroom erupted in laughter and the juror corrected my unwitting misunderstanding. Later that evening, after selecting the jury, the defense attorney and his wife attended a legal function with me. As I was talking to her husband, she commented that her husband had told her he was worried about the trial as he thought my easy-going style had the jurors eating out of my hand.
As time passed, I changed the drinks after trial format to winner buys lunch. After all, drinking and driving home afterwards was losing its social favor and prosecutors really shouldn’t have a drink purchased by the defense attorney and then drive home after winning a DUI trial. It was the social side of the process of advocacy that was important.
I have long been able to recognize good points presented by opposing counsel, even if I disagreed with the presenter’s conclusion. Perhaps, Notimpressed has not had that long experience of waiting for and depending on others, such as jurors, to accept or reject their points. Without decades of such experiences, will Notimpressed ever “get it”? I never bore any malice towards Notimpressed and I perceive that Notimpressed bears no malice in his or her comments directed back towards me. Frustration may better describe Notimpressed’s state of mind. It doesn’t bother me if Notimpressed vehemently disagrees with me; I encourage his disagreement. Other commenters on FlaglerLive display venom in levels consistent with malice or viciousness. In the courtroom, judges usually put an end to such shenanigans in very short order.
As a one-year veteran juvenile prosecutor with some misdemeanor time included, though possessing the experience gained from trying about dozens of trials, a defense attorney called me to discuss a juvenile sexual battery case. He insisted that it was important that the alleged victim’s father was a delivery man for a local bakery who provided free bagels to a video-rental store owner in exchange for free use of x-rated videos. I kept replying that his point went to the weight of the evidence, which was the juvenile judge’s job and that I was not going to drop the case. My job was to present the evidence and argue for guilt, not to decide guilt or innocence. Frustrated, the defense attorney blurted out his belief that I must be accepting bribes from the alleged victim’s family to continue prosecuting the case. I paused and then told him that the only reason I was not hanging up on him was that I wanted to hear what he was going to say next. About a month later, I attended another bar function (in those days bar functions were common and attendance was widely encouraged). I knew his wife, who was friendly with my first wife. I was talking with her husband and both wives joined the conversation. I mentioned her husband’s bribery comment. His wife recoiled and turned to her husband and asked if he really had said that. He admitted he had. She demanded that he immediately apologize, so he did. We laughed about the bar function episode over the years. I knew he had been trying to rattle me, without success. Had I thought he bore malice to me, I would have responded to the situation differently.
For over 30 years, I listened as hundreds of zealous opposing counsels told judges and jurors that I was wrong. I did the same to them. We shook hands afterwards, shared drinks, ate meals together, talked at bar functions, commiserated each other’s adversities in life and relished each other’s successes. Venom was the key dividing point. Without venom, society can function. With it, not so well. But I live in a good, better, best/bad, worse, worst world. Many FlaglerLive commenters live in a perfect or bad world. If they don’t get what they want in the way they want it, and right away, it must be bad. My mother used to call this mindset the “I wantie curse.” She would intone: “I want, I want, I want. You have the I wantie curse.” Well, I have lost two of my brothers, both in their early 20’s, but my other four siblings turned out to be a now-retired criminal defense lawyer, a CPA who is the CFO of one of the larger women’s shelters in America, another retired criminal defense lawyer and former chief prosecutor (me), yet another criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor, and a physician who specializes in treating cancer patients in a large regional oncology center. All devoted to helping others in need. I have to consider the possibility that my mother’s “I wantie curse” regimen bore some fruit. Can it be legitimately argued that those who festoon a truck with vulgar slogans before parking it in a public park and then spiritedly accost and harangue motorists at a nearby street corner lacked good mothering and suffer from the “I wantie curse”? That the only thing they wish to accomplish is to hurt others?
Not MLNot lOhsooverthis says
Ray I could go tit for tat concerning educational achievements, but you are assuming a lot when you imply incorrectly regarding someone who you have never met. That is what is wrong with this society. Everyone tries to outdo the other and somehow it has become acceptable to insult another person’s intelligence? Please! You my friend need to learn empathy toward others. Perhaps you spent too many years prosecuting others and should have spent some time doing Pro Bono work with some immigrants or those seeking asylum in our country and report your experience s with that. Don’t know your life experiences, don’t care. I just don’t appreciate you r unnecessary rude comments about me. I hope you have a blessed day.
ASF says
There was another “Pro-Palestinian protest” just this past weekend in Brooklyn, New York. The marchers were shouting their desire for another Intifada–and their shouted refusals to even consider a two-state solution. That is hardly surprising, given that the Palestinians have been offered at least five two-state solutions–including one that offered them 95% of the ‘Occupied” territories and parts of Jerusalem to control–and have turned down every single one of them. Roving gangs of Palestinians regularly patrol the Temple Mount area and chase away and throw rocks at the heads of anyone who isn’t sufficiently Muslim–while the Jordanian Waqfs look the other way. So, when you refer to the “ultra-Orthodox element”, that finger you are pointing at the Israelis are on a shaky hand that has three fingers below it pointing straight back in your own “Anti-Zionist” direction.
Pierre Tristam says
As usual when it comes to Israel, ASF goes all AIPAC PR, ignoring or mischaracterizing Ray’s thoughtful analysis into a straw man of her own. But since she brings up the matter of extremist and bigoted demonstrators: I recall Trump’s invention of “Muslims” dancing on the rooftops after the 9/11 attacks. This is no invention: “This Is Not Fine: Why Video of an Ultranationalist Frenzy in Jerusalem Is So Unsettling.” A reminder: the article had a point, underscored by the sort of brazen, celebratory bigotry we see in these videos, though of course it isn’t just the ultra-Orthodox who have denied Palestinians the right to exist as better than second-class citizens within Israel or apartheid-addled cogs in the occupied territories. That’s state policy.
Pogo says
@Thank you Ronnie Olesker, Pierre Tristam, Ray W.
Very, very well said. Just wanted to go on record.
@Detractors of Ronnie Olesker, Pierre Tristam, Ray W.
Here’s another type of heart disease, and you may well be a carrier — and victim:
https://www.google.com/search?d&q=moral+injury
And so it goes.
Ray W. says
I agree with Mr. Tristam that ASF’s response is deeply flawed for the very basic reason that offering Palestinians a two-state solution complete with conditions that Israeli negotiators know in advance will be rejected, provides a poor foundation for any argument. A less than complete analogy is our own country’s debate over an infrastructure deal. Democrats come to Republicans with proposed legislation that they know Republicans will reject and on and on the debate rages. I do not agree with the Palestinian point on this issue, but I acknowledge that Palestinians insist on a two-state agreement that restores Palestine’s borders to the pre-1967 boundaries of the State of Israel. Doing that would require all settlements in the Occupied Territories to be abandoned, something Israel will never agree to do. Since ASF leaves that important impasse out of his or her reply, the logic providing the foundation for ASF’s reply falls apart, i.e., he loses without chance of recovery. However, ASF does hint at a very good point. The ultraorthodox are not the only element in Israeli society that opposes a two-state solution. Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a member of a right-wing extremist group, but Yigal Amir was not identified as belonging to any ultraorthodox group; he came from an Orthodox family. He allegedly belonged to a group that opposed the Oslo Accords, which granted Palestinians partial control of parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with emphasis on the term, “partial.” The Oslo Accords, in their time, were extremely popular with vast swaths of Israeli society, but certain elements in Israeli society punch above their weight class, which hinders the peace process. I suppose it can be legitimately argued that popularity for the peace process has waned in Israel, due to increasingly violent intervening events, but it remains a valid political movement across Israel.
I wonder if ASF sees the irony in hinting that my comment was too narrowly focused on the ultraorthodox when he or she paints with the broad brush of the “anti-Zionist”, which misses the point entirely. One can be a strong pro-Israel advocate and still offer a critique of the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
For the record, I reject the anti-Zionist stance promulgated by Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood (founded decades ago by a Egyptian student who returned home after studying in the United States), and the Palestinian and other Arab national movements that attacked the State of Israel within minutes of its recognition as a legal entity, and attacked Israel again and again over the decades. No nation should ever have to face the challenges Israel has faced. The fact that Israel thrives under the weight of its opponents says much for its fortitude as a nation and a people
On the other hand, no one can ignore the flashpoint of settlements and how they come to be recognized as lawful under IDF military law, bypassing Israeli civil laws that apply to all Israeli citizens, including Israeli Arabs who lived within the boundaries of Israel prior to the 1967 Six Days War. One of the triggers of the latest crisis erupting in the Gaza Strip was the announcement by the IDF that yet another set of Palestinian residences were subject to demolition. If it is wrong to recognize the validity of Palestinians objecting to having to leave one’s farms and homes in order to stand by as they are bulldozed because the IDF asserts, as it has on many occasions, that the Palestinian residents stopped paying taxes to the Ottoman Sultan who lost power at the end of the first World War and cannot show proof that the family then registered the home to the British authorities who also lost power over the area after the second World War, then ASF has to reject the portion of a recent opinion by one of 11 Israeli Supreme Court justices who wrote of the problems inherent in arbitrarily applying some civil laws and ignoring others in the Occupied Territories, which portion of the opinion was published in FlaglerLive. In ASF’s view, is that Israeli Supreme Court justice an anti-Zionist, too? Any nation can be morally right and morally wrong at the same time. Israel possesses the moral, legal and religious right to survive and to do everything possible to defend itself and its citizens against all enemies who openly proclaim a desire to drive its people into the sea. The IDF just happens to claim that using archaic “miri” laws enacted during Ottoman Empire rule over Palestine to justify bulldozing Palestinian homes and farms falls into the “defense of Israel” category. It is no secret that lands taken by the IDF for settlement are strategically important locations, with settlements laid out in a manner that allows multiple residents to observe and report on nearby Palestinian activities.
ASF will always lose arguments if he or she continues to present them in the incomplete fashion that he or she chose to present in this argument, but that may be his or her style. Thus lies the fate of many arguments based on indignation instead of reason.
JimBob says
Strangely, Israeli apartheid is perfectly acceptable to most Americans.
ASF says
Probably because Israel does not practice apartheid. the only thing strange about this is your insistence on calling something “apartheid” which isn’t.