Knesset report: BDS movement has no impact on economy

[King_David]

The global movement to boycott the Israeli economy is having no discernible impact even though Israel’s export-dependent economy is vulnerable, the Knesset Research and Information Center said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report noted that the boycott comprised several components, including the long-standing boycott by the Arab League and efforts by the European Union to dent the customs exemptions and other benefits of the free-trade agreement with Israel to the West Bank settlements.

But the report, which the Knesset research body prepared at the behest of Finance Committee chairman Nissan Slomiansky, focused on the global boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) movement, which coalesced in 2005 and has had its strongest influence in Europe.

The research center found that Israel’s merchandise exports to the European Union had nearly doubled since 2005. In the decade before, they averaged $7.8 billion annually, and in the nine years that followed they averaged $15.6 billion, despite a sharp drop in 2009 due to the world financial crisis.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.636172

[Scootaloo]

1. Oh good. The infliction of oppression upon palestinians can continue, then

[procon]

2. Sure, why wouldn't I believe that?

It's like the police department investigating itself and then announcing everything's fine... nothing to see here folks... we're OK... move along...

Sheesh, this propaganda crap wears me out.

[hack89]

3. BDS is a lot like OWS

lots of emotion but little organization and minimal results.

[shira]

4. It's a cult consisting mostly of antisemites obsessed w/ getting the Jews. n/t

[azurnoir]

5. Revealed: pro-Israel students plot “smear campaigns” to “attack BDS”

One student in the group is Jacob Silvermetz, a former Israeli air force pilot who immigrated to Israel from America and currently studies at the University of Manchester. He has campaigned against pro-Palestinian Right to Education initiatives there and tried to prevent Manchester students twinning their institution with Al Najah University in Nablus, an attempt which (despite the alliterative hashtag #TwinningWithTerror) failed.


In one discussion on the private group, Silvermetz, who also founded a website called “Students for Change” (principally, it seems, to oppose the twinning vote), discusses “trying to target and take down” the “leaders” of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), the non-violent Palestinian-led movement he says he finds “scary.”

When he pointedly observes that “smear campaigns work sometimes,” he is unmistakably, albeit implicitly, advocating such tactics. For their overall strategy, he believes Zionist activists should try to “show how idiotic” the BDS movement is and focus on “ridiculing it’s leaders.”

He comes across as somewhat ridiculous himself, however, commenting, for instance, that BDS has “moved in the direction of a faith-based religion” and become “a cult of personality,” even at one point comparing the human rights defenders who advocate BDS to “religious crusaders.”

It’s hardly surprising that his source for these claims is Mordechai Kedar of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, in whose twisted mind “the only thing that will deter” potential terrorists is “if they know that either their sister or mother will be raped.”

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/hilary-aked/revealed-pro-israel-students-plot-smear-campaigns-attack-bds

[King_David]

6. Kick

[leftynyc]

7. Kick and rec

BDS is more sound and fury signifying nothing at all.

[Peter Rollins]

8. How can we know it is all sound and fury?

There has been no disinterested body investigating consequences. The Knesset is not disinterested. It cannot investigate itself.

[King_David]

9. Investment in Israel is way up up up up up

http://www.democraticunderground.com/113495051