Last week, Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban convened a coalition of more than 50 organizations in Las Vegas to pioneer new strategies to identify and neutralize BDS — “Boycott, Divestment and Sanction” — the spreading effort to boycott Israel.
The key decision at the conference was that there would be a concerted effort to curtail BDS activity, which is hardly an independent, grass-roots movement.
Bdsmovement.net, the BDS website, makes it clear that BDS acts as a subsidiary of the Palestine Liberation Organization, working under the aegis of the Arab League boycott of Israel. The league has fought an economic war against Israel ever since Israel came into being in 1948, recruiting each Arab country to promote a boycott of all companies that do business in Israel.
The Arab League confirms that all data of the Arab League boycott and Arab League blacklist has now been transferred to BDS, which now works under the control of each PLO legation in more than 100 countries, which coordinate their activities with the central offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and in Jerusalem.
“BDS” sounds better to the ear than “boycott” or “blacklist.” BDS activists, from campuses around the world, now make timely visits to the Palestinian Authority offices in Ramallah, where cash is allocated for an untold number of BDS activists to take home with them for BDS activities.
Since supervision hardly exists for international relief efforts for Palestinian humanitarian services in the Palestinian Authority or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a cash surplus exists which the Palestinian Authority allocates for BDS activists to finance their operations.
One of the challenges of the anti-BDS movement will be to close that spigot of funds from Ramallah, with the understanding that if each donor nation that funds Palestinian humanitarian services — beginning with the United States — would demand transparency in funding, those funds would not be siphoned to “other purposes.” If that transparency happened, the BDS spigot could dry up.
And then there is a diplomatic avenue. The PLO embassy in Washington, D.C., which coordinates BDS activity in the United States, was opened in May 1996, with the permission of the U.S. government, on the proviso that the PLO would cancel its charter to destroy Israel. The PLO charter remains unchanged.
The anti-BDS activists can now be expected to invoke the noncancellation of the PLO charter order to choke off the PLO office in Washington, D.C., the fulcrum of support for the BDS.
Last, the Israel Legal Forum has distributed copies of a strong anti-boycott law enacted four years ago in Israel. This law mandates that anyone or any organization that engages in advancing a boycott of Israel or Israeli firms can be sued for damages.
Following the energy of the Las Vegas conclave, one can expect a spurt of unprecedented legal cases where the Israeli government and Israeli citizens will take action against those who promote BDS, the new Arab boycott of Israel.
David Bedein is director of the Israel Resource News Agency’s Center for Near East Policy Research.
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