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Progressive? Then Don't Boycott Israel

(Huffington Post) Ben S. Cohen - Unlike, say, the African-American boycott of segregated buses, which aimed to change a racist policy and did not apply to whites in general, the boycott of Israel reaches much wider. Any Israeli who does not explicitly disavow his or her country is fair game - and those who declare their solidarity with Israelis are, as a consequence, equally suspect. A recent issue of The Nation included a piece by Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss endorsing BDS - a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel - with zealot-like enthusiasm. Crucially, the "United Call for BDS," which Horowitz and Weiss approvingly link to, dates the Israeli occupation as beginning not in 1967, following the Six-Day War, but in 1948, when Israel was created. This is no accident, for the aim of the BDS movement is not to effect a change in Israeli policy, but to dismantle the state which makes those policies. The writer is associate director of communications of the American Jewish Committee.
2010-06-29 08:30:47
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