Stuff and nonsense! That's my response to
Israeli President Isaac Herzog's overheated claim that Ben and Jerry's decision
not to distribute its ice cream in the occupied Palestinian territories amounts
to "a new form of terrorism." The announced decision by the ice cream
firm from Vermont to discontinue distributing its product in areas that Israel
has illegally occupied for 54 years and filled with settlers, even while making
clear that it intends to continue its operations inside Israel proper, is not,
as Herzog claims "economic terrorism that tries to harm Israeli citizens
and the Israeli economy" but is rather a principled stand in support of
the right to self-determination by Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and
the West Bank who are harmed daily by living under occupation.
To be clear, I myself am opposed to BDS calls
for a total economic boycott of Israel until it agrees to conditions that would
amount to its undoing like the the Right of Return of 1948 refugees and their
descendants to all of Israel. However, I support an economic boycott of the
settlements as something long overdue. If there is something we have learned
clearly over the past half century, unless there are costs--political and
economic-- exacted for the settlement enterprise it will continue and expand.
As Meretz MK Yair Golan, a former IDF chief of staff, put it: “As someone who
knows terrorism and has been fighting terrorism all his life, what is happening
in the international arena is not terrorism. We must fight against the boycott
with one hand, and for a two-state solution with the other....An ice cream
boycott is not terrorism,” Golan added.
Even more disturbing than Herzog's rhetorical
excess is the call by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid for 33 US states that have
passed anti-BDS legislation to now come after Ben and Jerry's in their own
jurisdictions, even though, as pointed out, Ben and Jerry's stand is very
different from BDS. In other words, a private U.S.-based company that decides
not to distribute its product in areas under Israeli control that are not
recognized as part of the Israel by the U.S. government) should now by punished
by US states? Since when did it become illegal an American business to decide
not to do business in certain territories abroad?
I repeat that I am not
for BDS, but I strongly oppose its criminalization. Since the Tea Party (the
18th Century version), organizing economic boycotts of governments and companies
involved in wrongful actions has been a part of the American scene. Are we
going to say its OK to boycott California grapes as so many of us did in the
1970's to protest the treatment of farm workers, but not OK for a company like
Ben and Jerry's to specify that they don't want their ice cream sold in Israeli
settlements set up illegally in occupied Palestinian land? That's completely
mishugah, crazy!.
