(JNi.media) Writing for the prestigious website Patheos, Sunday, Robert A. H. Cohen, author of “Micah’s Paradigm Shift,” is trying to seduce Christians into overcoming their religious and cultural reluctance, and to support the economic boycott of Israel. Proclaiming himself Jewish, his article, “Why Christians are finding it hard to boycott Israel,” lists the “fears” Christians must overcome, in order to be brave and put Israel in its place.
“By supporting BDS you will straight away place yourself well beyond what your local community and establishment hierarchy considers an acceptable form of protest,” Cohen empathizes. “Friends and relations will think you have become extreme in your outlook. Vicars, priests and Bishops—who may [themselves] be sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians and even voice criticism of Israel from time to time, will decide that you have gone too far.”
And then, “very quickly you will be accused of being divisive, one-sided, morally inconsistent, naïve, anti-dialogue, anti-negotiations, and of course, anti-Semitic. You will also be told that you are undermining decades of interfaith dialogue that has sought to repair and atone for centuries of anti-Jewish Church teaching that incited murder and mayhem across Christian Europe and paved the way for the Holocaust.”
Thus, using a humorous approach and a fluent, chummy style, Cohen creates a foundation for his discourse in which nothing about Israel and its claims of moral values and righteous actions in a difficult conflict has any validity—the only reason real Christians don’t criticize and ultimately boycott Israel is peer group pressure. And so, Cohen manages to be condescending and insulting to the followers of two major monotheistic religions.
In his quest to talk Christians into joining the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), Cohen formulates talking points his readers should use, to defend themselves against that dreaded peer pressure. This may be a good spot, on a Sunday morning, to rebut his points, calmly.
1. I am pro talking and pro negotiation and absolutely pro peace. The question is the quality of the talking, the quality of the negotiations and whether the peace is a just one. BDS does not want to stop dialogue but it does want to create a political environment where Israel, which holds all of the cards in this dispute, knows it has to make serious concessions to maintain (or regain) global support and legitimacy.
Response: BDS eliminates any possibility for a dialogue, and, in effect, is the economic and cultural equivalent of attempting to twist someone’s arm until they cry Uncle. It is a frontal economic war on a sovereign country, perpetrated by its enemies. Look it up, the BDS movement was initiated and for the most part is still led and financed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Supporting BDS means you have sided with Israel’s worst enemies, next to Hamas and Iran. As to Israel holding all the cards — the current wave of terror which is claiming scores of Jewish and Arab lives, was planned and carried out by a Palestinian incitement apparatus that invented, out of whole cloth, Israeli designs against the Al Aqsa mosque. Israel may be richer and stronger than the Palestinians, but the Palestinian leadership has been manipulating its people for generations to hate Jews, to the point where they can turn terrorism on and off at will.
2. I choose to focus on Israel because of the central place it has in both Christian and Jewish history. I have a connection to this part of the world through my faith and the history of the Church.
Response: That reveals a lot. Christians and Jews have only begun to trust each other over the past 50 years. The Christians, for the most part, have dropped their accusations against the Jews of the first century, and the Jews have been willing to overcome the pain of the 20 centuries of torture and murder that followed. Your need to “fix” this part of the world while the rest of the region and the planet are burning in much, much bigger fires, is a guaranteed way of reversing the rapprochement and setting the stage for new “passion plays.”
3. I don’t believe it is necessary to resolve every other conflict in the world before turning my attention to this one. There may be other regimes with worse human rights records, but Syria, for example, has no shortage of sanctions imposed on it and let me know how to boycott ISIS or Boko Haram.
Response: This is a truly dilettante approach to human affairs. Since the start of hostilities between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, in 1860, there have been about 78,000 Arab casualties, and 25,000 Jews (source: Jewish Virtual Library, Total Casualties, Arab-Israeli Conflict 1860 – Present). That’s 103,000 killed in 155 years. That figure represents about two year’s worth of casualties in the Syrian civil war, and similar figures elsewhere. Your choice to attack Israel because no other country would heed your boycott is a lot like that Richard Pryor joke about the man who was asked why he murdered his entire family and answered; “Cuz they was home.”
4. It is because Israel is a democracy (albeit a failing one) and a country with strong economic ties to the West, that using economic and cultural boycotts is a practical tactic to use. And it is a tactic and not a religion. It makes sense in this context. There wouldn’t be much point in a cultural boycott of North Korea.
Response: First, the slight regarding Israel’s democracy— “albeit a failing one”—is crass and utterly false. If you followed the news from Israel in October, you couldn’t have missed the utter madness espoused by about 14 anti-Zionist Arab Knesset members, who have been elected legally and are free to cause the country (and their own constituency) as much damage as they want, short of passing military secrets to ISIS. You owe Israel’s democracy an apology. As to the “cultural boycott,” it would have to involve so many aspects of your everyday life, so many technological, medical, agricultural, environmental and whatnot that Israel has contributed to your personal life, that, were you honest about shedding Israeli goods from your life, would leave you naked, sick and without Internet service. Yours is not a tactic, it most certainly is a religion, and a hypocritical one at that. Also, remember, the next line you write in response will probably use your Intel processor, which was most likely designed or produced in Haifa, Jerusalem, or Kiryat Gat, Israel.
5. This is not a boycott against Jews it is a boycott against Israeli policies. If the rights of Palestinians are addressed then the boycott ends. There is all the difference in the world between the racially motivated boycott that the Nazis imposed in Germany and a campaign for political and civil rights for Palestinians.
Response: Like many on the left, you confuse your rights when attacking Israel. The fact is Arabs in Israel enjoy their full civil liberties, which include freedom from torture, freedom from forced disappearance, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, the right to own property, the right to bodily integrity, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Obviously, as is the case in every civilized country, the news is full of stories about individuals whose civil rights have been violated, but if you are an honest observer of Israel’s supreme court (which has an Arab member) and the rest of its judiciary, you know that it is one of the most fiercely independent systems, unafraid to stand up to government. What the Arabs cannot have in the Jewish State is an Arab state, because it’s a Jewish state. They can find it in Jordan, which is 80% Palestinian, or in the Palestinian Authority (100%). But to demand that Israel, too, become part-Palestinian is to ask for its destruction.
6. Through BDS I am certainly favoring one side over the other. That’s because this is in no way a battle between equals. Being ‘fair’ does not mean expressing concern or putting pressure on both sides in equal measure. That is a theology of moral equivalence that does recognize the reality on the ground. One side has rights, one side does not. One side is the Occupier, the other side are the Occupied.
Response: Speaking of occupiers, for 19 years, the state of Jordan had full ownership of the West Bank and never even imagined turning it into a Palestinian state, nor did Egypt dream of turning Gaza into Free Palestine. Neither country, incidentally, was recognized universally as the sovereign in those territories, which means that in 1967, Israel took over a no-man’s land. So that, legally speaking, those who never challenged Jordan’s and Egypt’s right to the territories may not now do so regarding Israel. As to one side not having rights — that is a blatant lie. Israel is the only place where Arab women may be elected to parliament, where Arab gays are not executed, where honor murder is against the law, in short, Israel is the only Western democracy for Arabs from Afghanistan to Morocco.
7. Universities should be places of free speech and the sharing of ideas, but what happens when Universities are deeply complicit in the oppression of another people? The British pro BDS academics give plenty of examples. Can normal relationships be maintained as if no problem exists? BDS, by the way does not stop individual academics talking to each other as individuals.
Response: The “examples” you cite are lies. To start, the number of universities in the West Bank and Gaza prior to the 1967 war was zero. Under the Israeli “occupation” there are now 20. They exist because Israel created the conditions to get them started and continued to fund them, even as they were becoming hotbeds of anti-Semitism. Israel’s major universities are full of Arabs at every academic level. Not recognizing the blossoming of Arab academia in Israel is simply dishonest.
8. The cultural boycott will be vital in bringing to the attention of the world the seriousness of the situation in Israel/Palestine. Our media is fixated on what celebrities do and say. Encouraging well known cultural figures to take a stand has greater impact on public perception than many small local economic boycotts. As for boycotting Israeli artists, just as with academics, the question is whether they are representing Israeli institutions which are complicit in the daily work of enforcing oppression.
Response: The BDS’ using celebrities to promote political goals is the best thing that has happened to Israel. First, because, sooner or later, the ugly anti-Semite is revealed behind the façade of the celebrity, because, most often, to hate Israel comes hand in hand with hating Jews. Just read your papers. Also, for every celebrity attacking Israel, five new celebrities rise up to defend her. And as many celebrities do the math of lost popularity when supporting a movement of a blanket boycott of a country fighting for its life—the result does not bode well for the BDS.
9. I support small scale local initiatives that bring Israeli Jews and Palestinians together. This is worthwhile bridge building and dialogue. But if you think this is going to bring the two sides together at a national level to conduct negotiations for a just peace you are going to be sadly disappointed. Something far more is required to break through the impasse and BDS can help to achieve that in a peaceful way.
Response: What the impasse needs is to be left alone for ten years. It needs the PA to simply follow the rules they signed in the Oslo accords. They need to stop siccing their young men and women through vile propaganda to murder Jews. They need to go to work, stop hoarding the billions they collect abroad and use them to benefit their people, pay their bills (they owe Israel billions in unpaid electric bills), go to school, establish proper police service, try to have legitimate elections, legislate for the good and prosperity of their people. The impasse will not budge by pushing it—the productive, prosperous relationship between Palestinians and Israelis will grow over a few years, if the PA will only do its job and govern.
10. I believe the oppressed have the right to resist their oppression non-violently and calling for BDS is one way to achieve that. I pray for peace but a peace that is just and not merely the absence of war.
Response: OK, you ran out of talking points so you’re just repeating yourself.