The BDS campaign, begun in July 2005 by the Palestinians, which claims that Israel is an apartheid nation, seeks by boycott, divestment and sanction, to enfeeble Israel’s economy.
Howard Epstein – BDS LAYS AN EGG
(Pace the Vanity Fair headline of October 30, 1929: “Wall Street Lays an Egg”)
The BDS campaign, begun in July 2005 by the Palestinians, which claims that Israel is an apartheid nation, seeks by boycott, divestment and sanctions, to enfeeble Israel’s economy by the boycott of its goods and services, weaken it fiscally by divestment from capital investments into Israel and Israeli companies, and sanction it, such as in Durban in 2001, at the UN (with its innumerable anti-Israeli resolutions) whilst ignoring extreme human-rights abuses by most if not all of those voting to censure Israel, and elsewhere.
The apartheid canard is laughable to anyone who knows anything about South Africa and about how apartheid manifested itself there. That can be researched. For these purposes, we need merely to note that, in Israel, Arabs enjoy the standard Israeli educational curriculum, attend the universities, are (with many Russian immigrants and indigenous Israelis) the backbone of the medical services, are large-scale users of the medical services, frequent shopping centres and streets all over Israel (and why not – unlike in Ramallah, the visitor has no fear of lynching), have parliamentary representation (in the Knesset) and indeed enjoy open access to every walk of life and profession that Israel has to offer. An Arab judge sat on a the judicial panel that sent President Katsav to jail for rape, to the shame of the people for an aberrant figure-head and their pride in the robustness and transparency of the Israeli legal system.
So far as the boycotting of goods is concerned, BDS are going to have to try much, much harder. They may have caused Sodastream to relocate from the West Bank town of Maale Adumim with the loss of up to 500 jobs formerly performed by West Bank Arabs, but that is a narrow view. The broader view is this: the Shekel has been one of the world’s strongest currencies for many years now, and certainly through the Credit Crunch experienced by the USA and Europe. Israel did not suffer because its banks did not behave egregiously by buying into exotic financial products that were bound to fail when euphoria gave way to reality. This has enabled the Bank of Israel, not least when it was led by world-renowned Stanley Fischer (now vice-chair of the US Federal Reserve System), to buy large quantities of US dollars against the day when they will be worth more and Israel will need to buy F35 fighter-bombers at some $200 billion dollars a time.
Further, whilst both Israel and Germany have export-led economies, what might have been the German currency has been vastly subsidised as and by the Euro. (Look at what happened to the Swiss Franc once it was unshackled from the euro on 15 January 2015. It rose 30% overnight. What would happen to German exports were that allowed to occur? Answer: Audi, Mercedes and BMW would sell a fair few less of their cars.) For that matter, ask the Greeks what they think about this theory. No wonder their economy barely functions any more. They pay the price for subsidising Germany. On the other hand, the Israeli currency’s strength has not prevented its exports from earning it a rare place in the West (not to say globally) of enjoying four years’ balance of payments surplus. (The British would struggle to remember one such year since WWII.) Check it out. The Israeli figures are awesome.
Why this strength in the economy should be so is not hard to find: Israel (unlike Russia at the other end of the scale) makes things that people want. Firstly, they make the avionics for US planes that the IAF prefer over the US factory-fitted variety. That is emblematic. They make, in short, all the stuff for which Israel is recognized as world leader in some twenty fields of industry and commerce, from sewage treatment to medical devices – not just military, see!
Europe prefers to fiddle, Nero-style, with labeling to exclude goods leaving Israeli ports, while London, Madrid and Paris burn, and the ground is laid by Merkel-induced mass-immigration, guaranteeing greater conflagration in the future. Israel responds by looking East. (It was the Oriental puzzlement with anti-Semitism that led the Japanese to refuse Hitler’s request to send 30,000 Jews from the Shanghai ghetto to the Nazi extermination camps, possibly the most decorous thing that the Japanese did in China.)
The oriental markets are similarly apolitical where Israel is concerned, as the Chinese are when they invest in Africa, with no sanctimonious human-rights, humbug-flavoured, strings attached. (The hypocrisy and barbarity of the Americans is easily discernible by considering that they have the worst death-by-firearms record in the world and maintain the death penalty in many states. In any event, where were human rights at Guantanamo Bay?) Israel will soon find markets alternative to those in Europe, which continues its thousand year war against the Jews by means other than the Inquisition and the extermination camps.
So far as divestment is concerned, nothing succeeds like success, so the UK universities and institutions that seek to sell Israel out will not lose much on their investments in Israeli companies, as there are always willing buyers into successful companies. Perhaps the more honest course would be for them to eschew the profit and return the share certificates to the companies.
Be all that as it may, Kuwait Airlines have just made a suggestion as to how Israelis and Jews everywhere could hit back and hard. According to the CNN website[1] of 18 December 2015:
Did Kuwait Airways just scrap an entire flight service to avoid carrying Israeli passengers?
The airline has this week pulled its connection between New York’s JFK airport and London Heathrow after U.S. authorities threatened legal action over alleged discrimination.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in September warned the Kuwaiti carrier that it had “unlawfully discriminated” against a passenger using an Israeli passport by refusing to sell him a ticket.
It sent a letter giving the airline 15 days to outline how it would in the future comply with anti-discrimination laws.
Kuwait Airways response, according to the DOT, appears to have been to drop its London-New York route.
The answer is clear, chevra: book as many seats with Arab airlines as time will allow. Before long, the skies will be wide open to El Al who can increase their business by filling the vacuum. Perhaps buying, blatantly as a Jew/Israeli, into Arab banks will encourage them to close their offices in the West. Indeed, everywhere that it is illegal to refuse Jewish and Israeli money is fertile ground for Arab-oriented Inclusiveness, Investment and Legitimisation – IIL, the anti-dote to BDS. It’s worth a try. Just don’t become IIL with laughter.
Howard Epstein
[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/17/aviation/kuwait-airways-flight-israeli-passengers/
© 2015
Howard Epstein – BDS LAYS AN EGG
