Tsvi Bisk: Counter Attack Time for a Jewish BDS
Machiavelli claimed that “it’s nice to be loved, but it’s better to be feared”. It’s time the Jews grasped the wisdom of this view. Some might retort that it’s best to be respected. But when raped and mutilated Jewish women have been treated to the dismissive disregard of every women’s organization and “humanitarian” organization in the world then the only thing left is fear. When there are no consequences for the contempt and disrespect Jews are shown all the Hasbara and “education” against antisemitism doesn’t mean a thing.
We should have learnt this from our Muslim cousins. People are afraid to offend them. They are afraid of being beheaded or attacked or harassed or having their businesses ransacked. Book stores remove books that might offend Muslims lest their windows be smashed or they are fire bombed. The English will detain Jews for demonstratively wearing a star of David near a pro-Palestinian demonstration because it is a provocation but will do nothing against Imans that preach the killing of Jews or those that demonstrate noisily opposite a synagogue chanting anti-Jewish slogans or those that ripped up pictures of hostages because authorities “know” the Jews will not yell Allahu Achbar and cut someone’s head off. I am not saying we Jews should adopt the violent behavior of our cousins, but only that we should make people terrified of offending us. I propose an entirely different course of action. No insult or slight, no matter how insignificant should be let to pass unaddressed – not with words, but with actions.
It is time we initiated our own BDS. Our useful idiot enemies should know that their lazy virtue signaling does not come free of charge. A Jewish BDS (JBDS) would challenge the tax-exempt status of those feminist and “humanitarian” organizations that were silent or dismissive about the atrocities of October 7th on grounds that their very silence represented political advocacy as well as discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion and national identity. It would also unmask their donors. We may lose in the courts but the cost to these organizations in time, money, PR, and donors will set a new standard – offending Jews carries a price.
The celebrities and actors who declared they will never work with any project employing Israelis should themselves be boycotted and sanctioned. If they want to destroy the careers and livelihoods of Israelis then they should know they are putting their careers and livelihoods on the line also. A JBDS, along with non-Jewish allies would initiate petition and letter-writing campaigns to the studios as well as to Netflix, Amazon, Prime, and so on, declaring that productions employing such persons will be picketed and subscriptions cancelled. Investors and producers especially would be targeted. Pension plans would be pressured not to invest in companies that employ these people. It might not affect super stars particularly, but it could ruin the careers of a plethora of second level actors, writers, composers and technical people. Whatever the case, the self-anointed must know that trying to ruin Israeli careers and livelihoods to indulge their own recreational activism has a price.
The names and photos of people who have torn down hostage pictures or students who have signed petitions calling for the dismissal of Jewish professors for supporting Israel should go onto a website. This digital record should follow them for the rest of their lives (being very careful not to misidentify innocent people with the same name). JBDS, along with non-Jewish allies, should proactively petition major companies and institutions to never hire such people. Again, we may not succeed in a significant way but it will certainly give pause in the future to those people who might engage in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activity, not out of real conviction or any knowledge but simply out of the desire to appear cool and “in”. People should know that their capricious ignorant behavior might follow them the rest of their lives – that there are consequences for their leisure-time dissent. One of the conversations parents must have with a child off to college should be “don’t piss off the Jews just to be popular with the ‘in’ crowd, it could affect your future in a serious way”.
The Media
An attack mode must be adopted. Again, no insult or slight, no matter how insignificant, should pass unaddressed – not with words, but with actions. For example, Louis Theroux made a BBC documentary about the most violent settlers in the West Bank. A perfectly legitimate exposé of 5% of Israel’s Jewish population. It was terrible PR for Israel but the bad PR came from the mouths of Israelis, so no complaints. My complaint would be that there was no corresponding exposé of UNRWA-run schools’ anti-Semitic indoctrination of 100% of Gaza’s children. Israel should insist the BBC air a documentary that reflects the fact that 80% of the Palestinian population does not and never has supported a two-State solution and how their education system is dedicated to perpetuating this attitude. We should make it clear that unless they do this, they will have their press credentials revoked and their reporters and staff expelled from the country.
Offensives should be addressed in real time. When the British Daily Mail and Daily Express front-paged a picture of an emaciated baby as an example of how Israel was starving Gazan children and it was immediately discovered that the picture was a baby suffering from a congenital disease, cropped so as not to show his chubby non-starving sibling, the reaction should have been immediate. Israel should have held a press conference and revoked their press credentials publicly calling them an active ally of Islamo-Fascist propaganda, declared them persona non-grata and expelled them from the country.
No offense to the truth should be ignored. For example an item reporting that Israel is no longer providing sick Gazan children access to East Jerusalem Hospitals, purposely ignoring that actually most were referred to Israeli hospitals. Or an entire documentary about agricultural development in Africa that contained pictorial items about advanced irrigation systems without even mentioning that the technology being discussed was Israeli. We should have insisted that the reporter in the first case be fired and the producers of the documentary exposed by JBDS.
Academia
The real intellectual and moral sewer. A militant JBDS would lobby for laws preventing foreign contributions to Universities that are dedicated to particular departments or studies programs. It would also initiate campaigns against woke academic departments that substitute advocacy for scholarship – challenging their academic accreditation in the various Regional Accrediting Associations.
Consider, also, the invidious nature of much so-called “scholarly” writing today. For example the following extract from a paper uploaded onto a self-described academic platform:
“… beginning 3000 years ago with Cyrus the Great’s construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in which Palestinians were expelled from their homes by force, the pattern of expulsion continues today. As seen in the 20th century alone, when Hitler returned the Jews to former Canaan (Palestine) with the transference agreement signed by him with the Zionists, Hitler precipitated the revolutionary wheel of time that allowed for the Jews to repeat the cycle of expulsion of Palestinians during the creation of the Jewish State.”
This is the kind of primitive propaganda being published in peer-reviewed journals and subsequently taught in Universities. Using AI the JBDS could trace the myriad papers, lectures, and study programs that rely on such sources and expose them on an Academic Charlatans website, demanding they be fired and suing Regional Accreditation Associations for not revoking accreditation, and notifying employers paying people on the basis of their charlatan degrees. Wikipedia should also be sued for permitting Jihadi propaganda to dominate its platform. We must make anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel activities as annoying, and as costly, and as dangerous to the livelihood of their perpetrators as possible.
The foundational pillars of a Jewish BDS already exist. The Lawfare Project and The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) could join and translate their combined resources and research into a more aggressive proactive strategy rather than the current reactive, counter-punching tactic. In this context Israel must task its intelligence services to uncover Arab “contributions” to media people, politicians, public personalities, “humanitarian” organizations and academics. The moral sewer this Operation Counter Attack will expose and its positive consequences for Israel’s standing in the world is inestimable.
Tsvi Bisk’s most recent book is Cosmodeism: A Worldview for the Space Age (available on Amazon)
