The Sorry Specie of American Jewish BDS Activists

Wednesday, 15  March 2017

How can one be Jewish and yet engage in pro-BDS activism?

This is a question that boggles my mind. I have hard time figuring out these folks.

When I was raised in Turkey, I was taught that moral loyalty to one’s people, to my fellow Jews, is sacrosanct.  The following are the components of this loyalty.

1. If you did not have something nice to say about them on a particular issue, you say nothing.

2. When your people are on the frontline battling for its safety, the trenches are not the place to argue on the merits of their government’s policies.

3. If your people need you to fight in a war, you go and do that.

4. Do not be presumptuous or self-righteous enough to think that your personal beliefs, honestly held as they may be, can excuse you from abiding by the sacrosanct duty.

5. You certainly do not do or say anything that gives enemies of Israel moral comfort by aiding and abetting them in their actions and movements such as BDS and anti-settlement movements.

6. You certainly do not engage in any action that would hurt the average Israeli on the street as BDS and anti-settlement movements would.

7. When your people live in a sovereign country with a democratically elected Parliament and a democratically and lawfully formed government, if you want to criticise the government’s policies, you first go and live there and vote.

8. In this world, there are so many anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli individuals, movements, organizations, peoples,  countries, governments, and enemies of   both Diaspora  and Israeli, that they can certainly  manage without you; and

9. Do not think that by helping the enemies of your people you will acquire a better or longer lease on life.

To this day, I hold the foregoing principles to be true and I act in accordance with them.

And conversely, I consider those who do not act in accordance with them, to be treacherous to their own people, since any way you slice it, the anti-BDS and anti- settlement movements do not help but hurt both the Diaspora and the Israeli Jews.

Consequently, I always wondered why the Israeli government did not do something about these people who are nothing more than useful “infidels`” or “idiots”.

And finally it did. In a 46-to-28 vote, the Knesset passed a law to enable the Interior Ministry to refuse entry or residency visas to non-Israelis who have “issued a public call”   to boycott Israel-including settlements in the West Bank. The Ministry is presently formulating the definition of the phrase “issued a public call” and the manner in which the law will be enforced.

And now we read that Jewish BDS activists are eyeing anxiously the travel ban, and hear the “so-called” “liberal” and “progressive” Jews, who are neither liberal and certainly far from being progressive, moan about and protest the legislation and insist on their right to free speech, whose exercise in this particular case, certainly would not come free for the Israeli Jews, nor for that matter for the Diaspora Jews in certain countries.

I hope Israel will enforce the ban strictly to teach these self-righteous, self-indulgent, misguided, bad-mouthing Jews in the U.S. and now in Canada, a good lesson.

 The sole reason for the existence of Israel is not to receive them and/or protect them at their pleasure or convenience when things get tough in the Diaspora. 

My present hope is that in due course the scope of the ban will be extended to deal with those who issue a public call to demand the Jewish people of Israel to disband the settlements without further ado; an apocalyptic demand, if there ever was one.