Response to a Comment

I understand the purpose of the boycott bill - but I think it would have been more strategic to make the bill include all boycotts of Israelis and Israeli products. Netanyahu's statement on being "against all boycotts" was a much smarter political statement than than the political language used in this bill. If the bill had included calls to boycott Israeli Arabs (ie calls for excluding them from housing), calls to boycott military service in the territories, calls to boycott settlement evacuation, etc. Each of these 'delegitimize' Israel because they chip away at the rule of law and circumvent democratic decision making.
Clearly the point of the law was to make a political statement. However, I think the law was somewhat misguided. Even most of Israel's liberal NGOs are against the BDS movement and have called out the movement's leadership on the true goal of the movement: one bi-national, secular state. In passing this bill, Israel gave the BDS movement 'more proof' of Israel's 'unfair, undemocratic' process AND great publicity. What made Zionism so successful was that the movement (and later government) always realized that the PR/narrative of Zionism was JUST AS important as the substance/institution building. In some ways, I think that realization has been lost in the past decade.
I also question the wisdom of conflating the settlements and 'Israel proper.' They are not the same - they don't operate under the same legal code and they have not been officially annexed by Israel. A significant number of the settlements are illegal even under Israeli law - I think it is reasonable for people to have the right to protest and refuse to support actions which are illegal in their own country. Conflating criticism of actions which are illegal (even in Israel!) with criticism of Israel's entire existence seems odd...
Personally, I disagree with this law - and the Nakba bill, loyalty oath bill, NGO transparency bill, Supreme Court Appointment bill - because it's based on a principle of populism rather than liberal, democratic values. Israel NEEDS a constitution. And, I honestly think that discussion will be even harder than the decades of discussing the peace process.


It is not surprising that you oppose these laws. It is very easy to say that Israel should do this and shouldn't do that in terms of restricting the rights of Arabs or its opponents. Israelis and the Israeli government are reactionary and aggressive in these situations for a very good reason: they have been under attack since Day 1. When I say under attack, I don't mean by the Arab neighbors who fought wars against it, I mean the Europeans and Americans who have bought into the false Arab narrative of Israel as a colonial holdover and land grabber and Jews as having little to no connection to the land and no basis for being there. The ease with which narratives like "the Nakba" are accepted in European and American academic circles and the intellectual laziness with which people accept the "Arabs as victims" story has shown Israelis and Jewish supporters of Israel that Israel cannot get a fair shake in the court of global opinion. To this day, the only nationalist movement that has been condemned as "racist" is Jewish nationalism.

Economic boycotts of Israel are just the latest in a series of campaigns against Israel. It started with conventional war, and when that failed, the Arabs used Palestinian nationalism as their primary weapon against Israel. However, the Palestinians proved corrupt, disagreeable and unfocused (often focusing their attacks on other countries) and their nationalist movement has pretty much been a failure because their goal and the goal of their supporters was never to form a state, but to destroy Israel. Economic assaults have been another weapon in the arsenal, used with great power during the 1973 Oil Embargo.

Another great example is the language of settlements. You say that it is improper to conflate settlements and "Israel proper" because they are not governed by the same laws. This is of course true, but the same can also be said of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, whose citizens do not have voting rights and no Senate or House representation. There are plenty of other examples of territories with ambiguously defined legal status, such as Western Sahara, Kashmir, Tibet, and the Spratly Islands to name a few. But even if I grant your point, I think you are wrong about the fact that criticism of settlements is not the same as criticism of Israel.

Ask yourself this, why do "settlements" exist as they do? Well, before Jews lived in cities in the West Bank in cities like Hebron and Nablus for thousands of years. When Jordan renounced all claims to the West Bank in 1988, it ceded the land away with taking any specific actions to ensure that it actually went to the Palestinians. While it would obviously have been preferable for Jews to simply live in cities with Arabs and live among them, this was clearly not possible given the large scale anti-Jewish violence that had historically taken place. So unless your contention is that it is illegal for Jews to live in the West Bank, it is difficult for me to see how else they can live in those territories. They must live in fortified cities because otherwise they will be killed. The fact that Arabs in Israel don't need to live in fortified cities is a testament to the relative tolerance that Israeli Jews have for the Arab population. Or would you consider Arab cities in Israel to be "settlements" too?

Demanding that Israel remove all settlements and withdraw Jews from the West Bank is an extension of the Nazi policy of Judenrein, the creation of areas in which Jews do not and cannot live. Gaza is now Judenrein, as are most of the Arab states surrounding Israel. It's easy to say "settlements are bad" without thinking what underlies that comment, which is an assertion that it should be improper for Jews to live in any presumptive Palestinian state or, better yet, that the international community has the right to tell Jews where they can and cannot live.

I would accept the removal of all Jews from the West Bank on one and only one condition: the immediate expulsion of all Arabs from Israel. Arabs have made it de facto illegal for Jews to live in their countries, or at least any Jews living there must be second class citizens (or dhimmi). How is that not a greater injustice than the presence of Jewish cities in the West Bank?

I'm also not sure what you mean by Zionism's success relying on its message over its institution building. Successful with whom? Zionism has pretty much failed as a compelling narrative in most of the world and much of the world has no vested interest in Israel's survival and many see its existence as a pain in the neck or a problem to be solved. Many more see it as a colonial holdover and a state whose very birth was a mistake (like the founder of J Street, who said that Israel's founding is act that was wrong). If your point is about Zionism's success among Jews and Israeli's I think you are only partly right. The idea itself was great, but it was the purchases of territory in the Holy Land that made it possible. The idea was great, but it was defeating the Arabs multiple times and getting their hands dirty and taking actions that the UN or other international organizations didn't like (the Osirak bombing, for example). At this point, I don't care and I don't expect anyone else to understand Zionism or support it. They said it was a racist ideology, and there is really no turning back from that despite the much belated renunciation of that UN resolution. If Jews have to step on a few toes to get their nationalist goals to happen, so be it. America stepped on the toes of a lot of Native Americans and Mexicans to realize their nationalist dream, and nobody is calling for us to go back now and renounce what we did.

However, I find your last point far more interesting: the idea that Israel needs a Constitution because its laws improper under some vague "liberal democratic" standard. I'm not going to focus on the fact that America's Constitution based government is far, far from perfect and has led to all sorts of funny business with Justices making up rights and calling them "Constitutional rights" (for better or worse) and the entire amendment process. Many liberal people are often frustrated with America's Constitution because of entrenchment concerns and the inability for it to stay current. The fact is, one system isn't better than another, they are just different. To say that Israel needs a Constitution is an easy thing to say just because you disagree with a particular policy or because you don't like that Israel is trying to protect itself economically, but I very much doubt it would make a big difference. A Constitution did not prevent the United States from passing the Export Administration Act of 1979, which has been used to prevent U.S. companies from carrying out or supporting Arab boycotts of Israel.

I agree that this law was not a good idea because it creates bad publicity for Israel, not because I am concerned about the rights of those who live in Israel and want to cause economic damage to the country. It's difficult for someone in America to understand Israel's historical background and the fact that it is a country that has to fight for its existence and legitimacy on a daily basis.

Israel has long allowed for substantial freedom of speech within its society, certainly beyond the bounds allowed in its neighbors and indeed more than in many European nations (think about Britain's very strict libel laws or Germany's ban on denying the Holocaust). But there is a greater issue here and that is the clash of history. The Nakba Bill, for example, is an attempt to strike at a serious problem that continues to create clashes: the teaching of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material in Arab schools. Just as Germany has the right to ban people from denying the Holocaust, Israel has the right to prevent people from claiming its very existence is a catastrophe because of its unique history and circumstances. And quite honestly, they don't need to justify to anyone else in the same way that Islamic countries don't feel the need to justify their sexist and discriminatory laws to anyone else. Israel does not have to live up to any other country's standards just as it has no right to demand other countries conform their laws to its own. Quite frankly, people can vote with their feet. Those who are dissatisfied with Israel and its policies are welcome to leave. It's not Gaza, where trying to leave can get you killed by Hamas.