Friends of Israel have been able to take some satisfaction in the fact that Peter Beinart’s intellectually vapid attempt to promote what he has the temerity to call “Zionist BDS” (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against the Jewish state has been panned by liberals as well as conservatives across the political spectrum. Few outside of the far left have been convinced by his call for a boycott of Jews who live in the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem so as to save Israel from itself and bring about Middle East peace. Unlike the foolish Beinart, most Americans — like the overwhelming majority of Israelis — understand the obstacle to a resolution to the conflict comes from the Palestinians’ inability to make peace with a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.
All this eludes Beinart, but the writer, who has assumed the pose of the self-appointed conscience of American Jewry, also misses another key point. He fails to comprehend that his distinction between boycotts of the settlements and of the rest of the country inside the green line (which he tells us he loves passionately) is not one that the rest of the world is necessarily going to respect. As Oscar-winning actress and writer Emma Thompson proved this week, efforts to stigmatize West Bank Jews have a curious habit of morphing into boycotts of other Israelis, including those who, like Beinart, are not part of the settlement project.
As the Times of Israel reports today, the much-loved Thompson joined with 36 other prominent figures in the English theater (including Jews like playwright and director Mike Leigh and director Jonathan Miller) to demand the exclusion of Israel’s prestigious Habima Theater Company from a dramatic festival taking place at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London next month. The excuse for this crude act of anti-Semitic incitement: the fact that Habima has not joined in efforts to boycott theater productions in the settlements.
Let’s understand what’s at work in this vile letter. Habima, as even Thompson and her cohorts surely know, is not exactly a bulwark of the Israeli right. If anything, it is, like the rest of the Israeli arts community, very much part of the country’s left and no friend to the settlement movement. Indeed, its choice to perform Shakespeare’s anti-Semitic “Merchant of Venice” at the Globe is a decision that many Jews would question. But by not agreeing to join in a boycott of a theater constructed in Ariel (a large town located not far from the green line), Habima is, in the eyes of Israel-haters like Thompson, equally guilty.
That’s one of the problems with Beinart’s “Zionist BDS.” As much as he may think he can draw a bright line between “good Jews” inside the green line and “bad Jews” in the West Bank, it’s one that will never be respected by Israel’s foes. Boycotts of the West Bank and Jerusalem are merely a tactic by which those who believe Israel has no right to exist will gain traction for their larger goal of Israel’s total isolation.
Treating every Jew and every house built by a Jew outside of the 1949 armistice lines as a criminal who must be isolated has nothing to do with peace. As even President Obama conceded, the vast majority of the settlers living in communities that are suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would be included inside Israel in the territorial “swaps” he envisions as part of a peace deal. Ariel is one such place. But by placing it, its large population and its theater in anathema, Beinart is lending his approval to efforts to the anti-Zionist BDS campaigns those European intellectuals back.
As most observers have noted of his screeds, democratic Israel does not need saving by American Jews, let alone an intellectual lightweight and opportunist like Beinart. But people like him do serve a purpose for those who wish to bring down the Jewish state. If Beinart can boycott the Jews of Ariel, then it is just as easy for others to boycott those Israelis who won’t do the same.
The slippery slope from Beinart’s version of Zionism to Thompson’s anti-Zionism couldn’t be clearer.
I guess I will have to add Emma Thompson to the list of anti-Semites that I won't patronize……But thinking about Beinart's strategy of dividing Israelis between good settlers (those living behind the Green Line) and the bad ones (those living in the biblical Israel of Judea and Samaria), I am reminded of those well-assimilated pre-war German Jews who joined their anti-Semitic citizenry in damning those "smelly, dirty, hirsute and obscurantist Ost-Juden," fearing that increasing numbers of these emigrant Jews would undermine their relatively privileged position in German society. Of course we know too well the results of this strategy then. There is no reason to believe that if Beinart is successful the results will be any different now.
Of course the Globe and the actors/directors/play-writes involved in this 'boycott' are allowing the Ashtar Theatre, a Palestinian company, to perform “Richard II” in Arabic. Interesting how their supposed 'morality' and 'high ideals' don't extend to banning a group with close ties to the P.A. which of COURSE, enthusiastically endorses terrorists and terrorism across the board. n nWhat a BUNCH of hypocrites and mindless tools/fools.
she is well known antisemit, she hates Israel to her rotten core and this is not going to change until she dies.
They have forgotten that in Spain it was the "New Christians", the conversos, who were persecuted the worst. The anousim quietly hid away but the conversos who made a huge pageant out of persecuting their own fellow Jews and who often themselves lead the efforts of the Inquisition, were, in the end, consigned to the flames. As any good revolutionary knows, the first people you kill are the turncoats because they're already demonstrated their lack of loyalty. Jew hate is a currency that only non Jews can pay. For Jews, Jew hate isn't a safe proposition.
Mr. Tobin's apartheid-justifying article repeats some of the most discredited, vile and racist slanders against Arabs that I have seen. The canard that Arabs deserve to be subjected to apartheid because there exist some people somewhere who would like to destroy Israel, is a thinly-veiled cover for the racist intimation that Arabs (or dark-skinned people) are sub-humans who are meant to be fenced into separate areas, with separate facilities and a lower level of rights. SHAME SHAME SHAME on Commentary magazine for allowing Mr. Tobin to spew his vile, racist hate in its pages. Racism and bigotry has no place in civilized discourse and never will!
I read the article twice. Exactly where does Tobin justify apartheid? And where are the vile and racist slanders against Arabs? I must have missed those too. As for the fencing, have you read the Hamas charter? Very informative.. Check it out.
I did not know this about Emma Thompson. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. England's pretty much lost, and has been for awhile. and the landslide election of the pro-Pal Jew-hater George Galloway the other day is another sign of it. n nfortunately, I already didn't watch Emma's movies, since I never cared much for her acting. and now we can all know what a rotten person she is besides. n nhypocrisy is indeed the word, Alan Cohn. while the Pals talk about killing Jews, the left pretends that it's Israel's fault. we can't talk sense into them because they're oblivious to facts. n nI can only hope I live long enough to see the UK completely taken over by Muslims, and Emma Thompson forced to veil. I'd say something about my wishes for Beinart's future too, but I'd get a warning from Jonathan about incendiary language–so I won't.
Considering the unwillingness of the British to defend their own nation from Islamist correctness, why should it be surprising that they will not defend another?