{"id":39755,"date":"2014-02-17T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=39755"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:11:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:11:06","slug":"the-boycott-isnt-economic-warfare-its-psychological","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/02\/the-boycott-isnt-economic-warfare-its-psychological\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boycott Isn’t Economic Warfare, It’s Psychological"},"content":{"rendered":"

It does not have to bring the Israeli economy to its knees, or even close, to force an end to the occupation.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Stock<\/a>

Stock photo boycott activists in France. (Photo by Olga Besnard \/ Shutterstock.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Now that it\u2019s a very common, almost consensus view that Israel faces isolation and serious economic pain if it does not end the occupation, the skeptics are weighing in. They\u2019re saying that the BDS movement, academic boycott and Europe\u2019s anti-settlement policy toward Israeli businesses, even though they are intensifying, have hardly made a dent in this country\u2019s material quality of life. (Here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.) Deals are still being made, rock stars are still coming to perform, Israel\u2019s economy is still outdoing most of those in the West. As for the future, such commentators, who are by no means all from the right, are saying that even if the number of boycotters grows, they will still amount to drops in the bucket, and Israel\u2019s economic and political power will thwart any attempt to pressure the country\u2019s leaders into changing course.<\/p>\n

I think they miss the point. It\u2019s true that the Israeli economy as a whole is hardly feeling the boycott (though a fast-growing number of companies are<\/a>), and it\u2019s unimaginable that the economic and political isolation of Israel will ever approach that of apartheid-era South Africa (for lots of reasons, including Israel\u2019s exalted standing in the U.S.). But it doesn\u2019t have to approach what happened in South Africa. The boycott doesn\u2019t have to bring the Israeli economy to its knees, or anything close, for the Israeli body politic \u2013 the public, the opinion-makers and the decision-makers \u2013 to decide to end the occupation. All the boycott has to do is keep growing, drop by drop \u2013 yes, like Chinese water torture \u2013 for it to succeed. Because finally, the boycott is not an economic war against Israel, it\u2019s a psychological war, and even the skeptics would agree that it\u2019s already had a deep, damaging effect on this country\u2019s will to continue fighting for the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n

The experience of the last nine months, starting with Stephen Hawking\u2019s no-show in Jerusalem for the Presidential Conference \u2013 which brought the boycott movement into the mainstream<\/a>, a process that has been escalating ever since \u2013 has begun to work a profound change for the worse in Israelis\u2019 view of the country\u2019s future. It\u2019s been many years since they believed it was going to improve, that peace was a realistic possibility. Except for a short-lived interlude of belief in \u201cSharon\u2019s way\u201d \u2013 unilateral withdrawal \u2013 after the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, there\u2019s been a sense of stagnation here since the Second Intifada killed the Oslo Accords in late 2000. The Netanyahu years have been secure but grim; the only movement has been toward more settlements and more loathing for leftists and Arabs, more of what the country is already stuffed full of. Five years of bloat and stagnation. It\u2019s not for nothing that the new hit of the last election, Yair Lapid, named his party Yesh Atid \u2013 There Is a Future. That\u2019s what the public wanted \u2013 a future, something to look forward to, because the future they saw was nothing but more of the same bellicose rut interrupted by periodic wars.<\/p>\n

\"bds<\/a><\/p>\n

But Israelis had learned to live with that and they could go on living with it. The future, if not inviting, seemed tolerable. And that\u2019s what the boycott has changed: Suddenly the future does not look like more of the same. It looks like it\u2019s going to be increasingly worse than the way things are now. The world is turning against us, and not just in word, but in deed. Even Germany is starting to crack down<\/a>. It\u2019s not going to get any better, the occupation is not going to win us any new friends, but evidently it is going to make us a lot of new enemies.<\/p>\n

In the Israel Democracy Institute\u2019s \u201cPeace Index\u201d poll for January<\/a>, Jewish respondents were asked to rate the chances that the boycott will \u201cintensify and harsh sanctions will be imposed on Israel, including a full boycott of the export of products from Israel.\u201d Fifty percent said the chances were high, 47 percent said they were low.<\/p>\n

This is the idea that the rise of the boycott has planted in the national consciousness: that for Israel as the oppressor of the Palestinians, there\u2019s nowhere to go but down. There\u2019s nothing to look forward to but more rejection, further isolation. And that\u2019s something Israelis can\u2019t live with. That\u2019s a future they will not tolerate.<\/p>\n

So as long as the boycott goes forward, even in fits and starts, Israeli anxiety over what the occupation is doing to their future will deepen. Because what do the nationalist powers-that-be have to stop its momentum? Better hasbara<\/i>? What future do they have to offer Israelis? More settlements? Bombing Iran? Eternal vigilance against Islamofascism? Except for the right-wing true believers, who are a minority here, that\u2019s not what Israelis want. That\u2019s what Bibi wants, not the public. The public wants to look up at the sky and not see black clouds, which are just what the boycott has become.<\/p>\n

And sooner or later, the boycott is probably not going to be the only thing bearing down on the Israeli status quo. The Palestinians in the West Bank have been amazingly quiescent for the last decade; they\u2019ve hardly begun to exercise their options for making Israel pay for their subjugation. They still haven\u2019t gone to The Hague, they haven\u2019t tried \u201cpeople power\u201d demonstrations to the wall, they haven\u2019t demanded enfranchisement as Israeli citizens, they haven\u2019t dissolved the Palestinian Authority and \u201chanded the keys back\u201d to the conquerors. They\u2019re not going to let Israel get off so easy forever. And whatever steps the Palestinians take \u2013 except terror, which they seem to know will backfire \u2013 will create a synergistic effect with the boycott.<\/p>\n

So lots of things could happen to Israel the Occupier \u2013 all of them bad. That\u2019s the realization coming over people in this country. They\u2019re not worried about the threat of poverty, or war \u2013 they\u2019re worried about the threat of the light going out in the distance. They\u2019re worried that Israel is about to enter its decline.<\/p>\n

Because of this, I believe the nationalists\u2019 control of this country is becoming vulnerable, and so is the occupation, their pet project. I\u2019m not saying a radical transformation of Israel is inevitable, but it\u2019s possible \u2013 thanks to the boycott. Before Hawking put the movement into gear, there was nothing out there to challenge the status quo, and there\u2019s nothing else out there to challenge it now. Only the boycott. If it keeps growing, there may be a future.<\/p>\n

Related:<\/b><\/p>\n

Boycott goes prime-time in Israel<\/a><\/p>\n

The academic boycott of Israel: No easy answers<\/a><\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Larry Derfner<\/i>: <\/i><\/b>I was a columnist and feature writer for <\/i>The Jerusalem Post, as well as the correspondent in Israel for the <\/i>U.S. News and World Report, for many years. I wrote feature articles for the <\/i>Sunday Times of London during the second intifada, and have been writing for American Jewish publications since 1990.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 972mag.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS<\/i> <\/b><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/b> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/b> BARCODE<\/b> STARTS WITH<\/b> 729<\/b>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It does not have to bring the Israeli economy to its knees, or even close, to force an end to the occupation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}