Conflating boycotts of the settlements with opposition to Israel’s existence has been a central element of the government’s policy, reflecting a desire not just to protect settlements but to stem the tide of selective boycotts that could spread to Israel as a whole. “We are saying there is no difference between a settlement boycott and a boycott of Israel,” Yossi Kuperwasser said. “If you want to promote the boycotting of Israel, any part of Israel, you are not a friend of Israel. You are actually an enemy of Israel. So we have to deal with you.”
The government has passed a law that bars entry to foreigners who have publicly supported a boycott of Israel “or an area under its control”. Its minister of strategic affairs has called for imposing financial penalties on Israeli organisations, companies and in some cases individuals who advocate boycotts of either Israel or the settlements. After Hagai El-Ad, the head of the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, addressed the UN security council and called on it to take action against Israel’s occupation, the chairman of the governing coalition called to revoke his citizenship and to create a bill that would do the same to any Israeli who calls on international bodies to take action against Israel.
Israel and its allies have pursued the same strategy abroad. In 2014, Netanyahu convened a meeting of top Israeli ministers to discuss possible counter-BDS measures, including, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, “legal suits in European and North American courts against [BDS] organisations”, “legal action against financial institutions that boycott settlements”, and “whether to activate the pro-Israel lobby in the US, specifically Aipac, in order to promote legislation in Congress”. Since then, major banks around the world have shut down the accounts of pro-BDS groups. In 24 US states, bills and orders that stifle free speech by discouraging, penalising or restricting support for boycotts of Israel or of settlements have been passed, and have been challenged in two states so far by the ACLU. Following Hurricane Harvey, last summer, the city of Dickinson, Texas required residents who wanted relief to
certify that they do not and will not boycott Israel, a demand the ACLU’s Texas legal director called “an egregious violation of the first amendment, reminiscent of McCarthy-era loyalty oaths”. A federal anti-boycott bill supported by Aipac has also met with opposition by the ACLU, which argues that “political boycotts are fully protected by the first amendment”, regardless of whether the boycott is of Israel or the settlements.
This deliberate elision of Israel and the settlements has caused no small amount of consternation among the state’s more liberal supporters in the American Jewish community. For years they have sought to protect Israel itself from sanction, by arguing that only boycotts of settlements are legitimate. Now they feel themselves under attack not just from BDS, on the left, but the Israeli government, on the right, both of which disdain the centre-left notion of being “pro-Israel and anti-occupation”, and both of which reject the position that wine produced in West Bank settlements should be boycotted while the government that created, financed and maintained the settlements should not.
Israel’s strategy has been to force a choice on companies subjected to pressure to withdraw or divest: stay in Israeli-controlled territory and ignore the boycott campaign, or accede to its demands and face potential lawsuits and losses in much bigger markets in Europe and the US. Given that choice, Kuperwasser said, most companies would be very reluctant to withdraw from Israel or the settlements: “But if it’s going to happen, there are going to be more laws around the world that are going to make these companies suffer. We can retaliate and come up with a response.”
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs has outsourced much of its anti-BDS activity in foreign countries, helping to establish and finance front groups and partner organisations, in an attempt to minimise the appearance of Israeli interference in the domestic politics of its allies in Europe and the US. Kuper said that anti-BDS groups were now “sprouting like mushrooms after the rain”. He and a number of other former intelligence and security officials are members of one of them, Kella Shlomo, described as a “PR commando unit” that will work with and receive tens of millions of dollars from the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. In 2016, Israel’s embassy in London sent a cable to Jerusalem complaining that the strategic affairs ministry was endangering British Jewish organisations, most of which are registered as charities and forbidden from political activity: “‘operating’ Jewish organisations directly from Jerusalem … is liable to be dangerous” and “could encounter opposition from the organisations themselves, given their legal status; Britain isn’t the US!” Last year, al-Jazeera aired undercover recordings of an Israeli official working out of the London embassy, who described being asked by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs to
help establish a “private company” in the UKthat would work for the Israeli government and in liaison with pro-Israel groups like Aipac.
To Israeli liberals, the gravest threat from BDS is that it has induced in their government a reaction so reckless and overreaching that it resembles a sort of auto-immune disease, in which the battle against BDS also damages the rights of ordinary citizens and the organs of democracy. Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has utilised the intelligence services to surveil and attack delegitimisers of Israel. It called to establish a blacklist of Israeli organisations and citizens who support the nonviolent boycott campaign, created a “tarnishing unit” to besmirch the reputations of boycott supporters, and placed paid articles in the Israeli press. Leftwing Israeli Jews have been summoned for interrogation or stopped at the border by agents of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, who described themselves as officers working against delegitimisation. Israel has banned 20 organisations from entry for their political opinions, including the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that won a Nobel peace prize for helping Holocaust refugees and that now supports self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians while also endorsing BDS.
Last year, the Israeli intelligence minister, Yisrael Katz, called publicly for “targeted civil assassinations” of activists such as the BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, a permanent resident of Israel. Barghouti was also threatened by Israel’s minister of public security and strategic affairs: “Soon any activist who uses their influence to delegitimise the only Jewish state in the world will know they will pay a price for it … We will soon be hearing more of our friend Barghouti.” Not long after, Barghouti was prevented from exiting the country, and last year Israeli authorities searched his home and arrested him for tax evasion.
