Photo Credit: Anne Mandlebaum
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, speaking at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, emphasized that the BDS Movement hopes to destroy Israel politically. He asserted they hope to succeed where the Arab armies and terrorist organizations failed.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, speaking at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism hosted by IDC Herzliya, noted that in the wake of Operation Protective Edge, the delegitimization of Israel has increased in the world: “In California, port workers would not unload Israeli goods. Some places won’t deliver mail to Israel. Israel Apartheid week is ongoing. I was called a criminal in a lecture. In Europe, millions was withdrawn from Israel.”
He noted that these are just the declared boycotts and he was not referring to Israeli companies that are forced to hide their identities: “BDS wants to turn Israel into a leper state. BDS is very coordinated and is designed to undermine the security and existence of Israel. The fuel for the engine is the Palestine issue.”
Oren claimed that the strategy of Hamas is not to defeat Israel militarily, but to “drag Israel to deal with the local population live on television. Much public opinion turned against Israel. They seek to blame Israel for war crimes and to impose sanctions.”
Oren believes that the Hamas strategy has so far been successful. As we speak, the U.N. has opened a committee of inquiry to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel, yet has failed to scrutinize Hamas. This remains the situation, even though Hamas massacred their own people for protesting against them, stole U.N. food stamps to feed their terrorists, fired rockets from densely populated areas at civilian targets in Israel, and even blew up a U.N. facility.
According to a Gallup poll cited in Haaretz, only 25 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29, 25 percent of non-whites, 33 percent of women, and 31 percent of Democrats believed that Israel’s actions were justified during Operation Protective Edge. While Republicans, males, Caucasians, older Americans, and most members of the U.S. Congress were more supportive of Israel, the fact that so many women, Democrats, minorities, and young Americans were not supportive of Israel during this critical juncture is a disturbing statistic.
According to Oren, the BDS Movement is the last attempt “to prevent the Jews from having a state.” The first phase was to militarily defeat Israel, but that ended in 1973 with the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War. The next phase was terrorism, which ended after Israel built the Security Barrier and concluded the Second Intifada. Now, the Palestinian side is hoping to destroy Israel politically in order to achieve what they failed to do militarily or via terrorism.