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Apartheid, genocide, boycott Israel, in London rally. |
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Hezbollah flag in London pro-Palestinian demo. |
There is room for stating
Israel’s historic and legal rights to a Jewish homeland in a reasonable manner,
but this does not seem to be making much progress in projecting Israel as a
normal country with the same system and values of regular democratic countries.
Indeed, it is these democratic
countries that outrageous demonstrations based on lies and intimidation are
being allowed to be perpetrated with increasingly hostile actions against
Israel.
The reason we are not making
headway is because we have considered it impolite to be as rude and forceful in
our arguments as our detractors are. We don’t want to appear as aggressive as
the intimidators that trash us 24/7. And so we lose the fight for the broad
middle ground by conceding without a fight or, even worse, by adopting parts of
our enemy’s narrative just to appear reasonable.
It’s time for a change.
The streets, the campuses and the
media have become the battlegrounds that are under the control of the radical
anti-Israel voice posing as human rights activists on behalf of the Palestinian
people. This high moral tone perfumes the stench of the lies and hypocrisy of
their tainted message. There real intent, admitted in rare moments of honesty,
is to see an end to Israel and they justify this aim by drowning out the Israeli
voice under a choking tsunami of disproportionate accusations and imagery.
It’s time to take to the streets
and the campuses by adopting the same tactics the anti-Israel provocateurs are
using so successfully. It’s working for them. It will work for us.
Enough already! The soft
reasoning approach is losing us the ability to state our case against their
shrill hatred that closes down our message.
I have been shocked by
provocative anti-Israel demonstrations, built on unchallenged lies, that have
taken place publicly in the UK under the guise of protesting “Israeli
crimes” or supporting “Palestinian human rights.” These frightening
spectacles have been allowed under the free speech rule. The poisonous atmosphere on campus is now
spilling over onto the streets.
A wonderful event, the
International Shalom Festival, a major fringe event of the Edinburgh Festival
highlighting the true face of Israeli diversity, is being organized by a
Scottish Christian teacher. Troublingly, this event is under serious threat of
disruption from the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign who claimed to
have stopped the Jerusalem String Quartet from performing in Scotland in
2006 because, in their words, the artists had, “a violin in one hand and a
rifle in the other as the ultimate Zionist statement.”
They also claim to have
interrupted the BatSheva dance group in 2012 that faced “vigorous
protests” both outside the theater and during their performance in
Scotland.
They brag about ejecting the
Israeli Incubator Theater group from performing during the 2014
Edinburgh Fringe Festival by their mass protest. Arik Eshet, the artistic
director, said, “I felt terrible. You are facing a movement you can’t do
anything about. They block your show.”
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity
Campaign makes the false claim that they allow cultural trips unencumbered by
links to the “murderous Israeli state” to go ahead unimpeded. They lie!
They have already released a YouTube video calling for mass protests against
privately organized International Shalom Festival by claiming it is “a
promotional event to whitewash the crimes of the Israeli state.”
So away with the soft face of
reason that doesn’t stand a chance in the boiling cauldron of anti-Israel
rhetoric. There is no reasoning with this heinous hyper-activity. It’s time to expose
their lies and crimes against Israelis, Jews and Israel supporters as an
integral part of our advocacy work.
It’s time to get tough and to act
with courage. It’s time to get brutally honest with our counter-narrative. It’s
time to noisily and publicly expose the fact that these people support and
justify bloody Palestinian terrorism and
use this fact to counter the emotional imagery they produce of dead
Palestinians. Dead Israelis, killed at the hands of Palestinians incited by
their leaders, are nowhere to be seen in their rhetoric. We are the ones who
must force this truth on to the public conscience abroad.
If they are allowed to mount mass
rallies drenched in lies we should organize massed rallies that highlight their
heinous lies and the awful truth of what they really represent.
It’s time to expose Palestinian
racial hatred and Jew-hatred. It’s time to expose Palestinian incitement to
jihad and violence against Jews.
It’s time to expose the Palestinian
anti-Semitism that denies the right of Arabs to sell property to a Jew under
pain of death, denies a Jew the right to live under Palestinian control. It’s
time to expose Palestinian denial of Jewish human and civil rights to exist in
peace in their own homeland.
It’s time to expose Palestinian
murderous intentions against Israelis and for the ultimate annihilation of
Israel, intentions clearly inscribed in their founding documents and whose aims
are fully supported by the haters that now control the streets and campuses of
Western capitals and major cities.
It’s time to expose the deep
divide within Palestinian society in which the majority favor and vote for
Hamas, an officially designated Islamic terror organization.
It’s time to expose official
Palestinian killings and torture of Palestinians that go unmentioned by the
so-called “Palestinian human rights” groups, a sure sign of the
hypocrisy of their language.
These “Palestinian human
rights” activists have nothing to say about appalling Palestinian human
rights abuses against their own women, gays, and the brainwashing of their children,
forcing them into military (terrorist) training before they become teenagers.
It’s time to expose the hypocrisy
of anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian,” activism that has nothing to say
about the apartheid policies of Arab countries that have kept Arabs in refugee
status for seventy years. So much for their professed devotion to Palestinian
human rights!
On this point, how about the
nonsense of Arabs living in Palestinian controlled territories in the West Bank
and in Gaza, and yet they are still referred to as “refugees” by their
Palestinian rulers and the United Nations. How can you be a Palestinian refugee
while living under Palestinian authority?
It’s time to expose “Palestinian
human rights activism” that shouts about a blockade of Gaza but has nothing
to say about the Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Israel allows hundreds of trucks a
day and tons of construction material to flow into the Gaza Strip but nothing
goes in via Egypt. Yet, they remain deliberately silent about this. No protests
are heard against Egypt. We need to embarrass them by demanding to know why.
Simply put, let’s adopt a new,
tough and truthful messaging. Let’s increasingly get in the faces of our
detractors by concentrating on the false narrative of the Palestinians and
their anti-Israel henchmen. Their arguments may be emotionally eloquent but
they are intellectually dishonest. As such, their case is relatively easy to
deconstruct. We simply need more courageous warriors to take them on. It is the
lack of brave confronters that has lost us important battlegrounds.
When we cower, they win. On the
few occasions we take them on, we have won. Just look how successful local UK
initiatives have given birth to the Israel Advocacy Movement, Sussex Friends of Israel, North West
Friends of Israel, the Coalition of Scottish Friends of Israel, UK Lawyers for
Israel, We Believe in Israel, Christian Friends of Israel, and Time to Stand
with Israel in Holland, and so many other groups.
When we repeatedly and
steadfastly stand up to our enemy’s provocations we gain support and eventually
outnumber and defeat them.
It’s time to take to the streets,
the campuses and the media with a bolder, more forceful, campaigning by using
the harsh facts that expose the reality of Palestinians and Palestinian
activism and use them as tirelessly and as actively as our enemies are doing
against us.
Only by making effective and
courageous alternative noise can we expect to win over the hearts and minds of
the silent majority.
Barry Shaw is the Senior
Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
He is the author of ‘Hamas,
BDS and Anti-Semitism’ and his new best-selling book, ‘BDS for IDIOTS.’
Who finance to them? Groups? We are ready to make a boycott for the company that are under them.
ReplyDeleteI want to fight vs them.....But I can´t understand why my files are in Microsoft and aren´t in Google.....
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