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Boycotting Israel Doesn't Help Bring Peace

(Los Angeles Times) Yossi Klein Halevi - The movement to boycott, divest and sanction fundamentally misreads the Israeli temperament. When Israelis feel unfairly judged, they push back. Israelis don't believe their country deserves unique opprobrium. The UN denounces Israel more often than violations in all other countries combined. Yet rather than eliciting contrition, the resolutions convince Israelis that the international community isn't motivated by genuine concern for the Palestinians but by hatred for the world's only Jewish state. Israelis shrug: The Jews have been here before, and we'll survive this too. Is our flawed democracy more morally offensive than the world's many dictatorships? Israelis vehemently reject the notion that their country is primarily responsible for the impasse with the Palestinians. In 2000, when President Clinton proposed a two-state solution, the Israeli government said yes and Palestinian leaders rejected the offer, opting for four years of suicide bombings known as the second intifada. Then in 2005, when Israel unilaterally uprooted its settlements and army bases in Gaza and withdrew to the international border, that withdrawal was met by years of rocket attacks launched from Gaza on Israeli communities. Israelis believe the conflict is ultimately about the right of a Jewish-majority state to exist in any borders. The writer is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
2019-02-21 00:00:00
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