This is a clueless op-ed. The point of BDS, just like the point of the pro-Israel advocacy that Yossi Klein Halevi practices, is to promote the interests of one group over other groups.
A Jewish state of Israel is great for Jews and it sucks for Arabs and Muslims. The destruction of the Jewish state of Israel would feel great for Arabs and Muslims. The success of the Jewish state of Israel results in shame and mortification for Arabs and Muslims, who can’t keep up due to their low average IQs.
What is good for one group, such as Jews, is often horrible for other groups.
Judaism and Torah do not accord democracy much respect, but democracy is useful when you are arguing the case for Israel to people who believe in democracy.
What would the pro-Israel crowd prefer? That those opposed to them use violence or use the non-violence of BDS? Or dream that people opposed to Israel do not assert their own interests?
Jews would support a Jewish state even if it was not a democracy, even if it had no Muslims and no freedom to practice any religion but Judaism, and no free press and no universal healthcare. Why? Because a Jewish state is good for Jews.
As far as what is moral here, as far as who God has given the land to, that’s a matter of faith and it is silly to argue about faith.
As the Middle East devours itself, leaving behind the worst human devastation since World War II, an international movement seeks to delegitimize Israel, the region’s only intact society. Israel alone in the Mideast has an independent judiciary, a free press, universal healthcare and religious freedom. Yet the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS, has singled out the Jewish state as the world’s most pressing problem in the early 21st century.
BDS is at once immoral and a threat to peace. Immoral, because it perpetuates the lie that Israel is solely or even primarily to blame for the absence of a Palestinian state — rather than the repeated rejection by Palestinian leaders of peace plans presented over the decades. Immoral, too, because it ignores the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate education on which generations of Palestinians have been raised, an education that denies any place for a Jewish state in any borders.
