A small story about an Israeli dance troupe and a European magazine reveals worlds about the state of anti-Israelism and the inadequacy of our ability to confront it.

Stephanie Fried is a freelance journalist in Israel who was taken with the work of the Dance Drama Company in Tel Aviv. She approached a small London-based magazine, Dance Europe, about writing an article on the troupe. The editor’s response was to quiz her on the dance company’s politics and to ask whether it was government funded. “He tells me that because of the occupation, the magazine doesn’t run stories on dance companies out of Israel,” Fried explains on her Web log. A senior editor concurs. “We don’t allow advertisements or stories from Israel,” she tells Fried, “but if we are going to run something, it’s with a statement from the source renouncing the occupation.”

Never mind that a choreographer for the troupe grew up in apartheid South Africa and, according to the London Jewish Chronicle, “has devised a piece on breaking down personal and political barriers.” Fried has it about right when she accuses the magazine of “blatant ignorance and racism.”

It’s boycott season — or would be, if calls for economic and cultural boycotts of Israel were ever allowed to go out of season. Before the deal went kaput, Jewish groups complained that the parent company of Dubai Ports World participates in the Arab boycott of Israel. Arab leaders meeting in Saudi Arabia this week were reportedly scheduled to discuss ways to strengthen their anti-Israel embargo, leading Frank Lautenberg and 16 other senators to send an angry letter to President Bush. And the British architect Richard Rogers had to distance himself from a group that was considering a boycott of Israel before politicians and Jewish communal leaders would support his work on New York’s Javits Center.

At the center of these controversies there are no doubt people who are, as Fried would put it, ignorant and racist. The bigger problem, however, is that many of the proponents are neither, which is why I say Fried has it only “about right.”

Many of the boycott calls come from people who are well-informed about the Middle East and in their hearts believe they are not anti-Semites. In criticizing Israel, they say they are only attacking the policies of its government, not its people. And their animus is based not on age-old canards about the Jewish people but, they say, aimed at a policy that, in violation of international law, deprives Palestinians of their political and human rights. The analogy they invariably make is to the economic and cultural boycott of South Africa, which helped bring down the apartheid government.

To rhetoric like this, which sounds rational, we need to respond with rhetoric that is rational.

For example, when academics ban Israeli scholars from international conferences and journals, we need to emphasize the role Israeli academics play in the vibrant political debate within Israel. The Israeli universities are hotbeds of dissent and opposition, whoever is in power. Asking professors to pass a political test violates the principles of academic freedom that the boycotters are presuming to uphold. And if it’s the government’s policies that you can’t abide, the target for such protests is the government, not the citizenry. Those in the anti-apartheid movement would often stress that theirs was a campaign against apartheid, not the South African people. When a magazine bans Israeli artists from its pages, are its editors able to say the same thing?

As for the South Africa analogy — it needs to be remembered that the apartheid government was illegitimate, representing a small minority that gamed a system to oppress a majority. Israel’s elected government speaks to the will of its majority, while neither banning nor criminalizing its opposition (except in the case of Hamas, an organization that opposes the very presence of the Jews in the Hamas version of “Palestine,” not the positions of Israel’s leadership).

Many of today’s anti-Israel activists are similarly opposed to the very idea of a Jewish state. They are trying to turn the clock back, before six million Jews came to live and thrive on land promised to them by the international community. As part of their litmus test for Israelis, the boycotters demand support for a “one-state” solution or a Palestinian “right of return.” Both ideas are not only fantasies, but solutions that would mean the destruction of the Jewish state. Their boycotts are illegitimate because their positions are illegitimate.

We also need to point out the inconsistency in our opponents’ attacks — and targets. British boycotters regularly demand that Israelis “come clean” on the occupation but do not demand a similar litmus test when it comes to their own peers and, say, Northern Ireland or the Iraq war. I’m still waiting for the groundswell of support for a boycott over the Chinese occupation of Tibet, or India’s war in Kashmir.

Finally, we have to argue for the flip side of boycotts and embargoes — which means the benefits that flow when any country’s artists, academics, and citizens fully engage with the global community. Israel’s enemies ignore the string of compromises and sacrifices Israel has undertaken in hopes of separating itself from the Palestinians. In order to make these kinds of moves, Israel needed to feel more secure of its standing in the world, not less.

The boycotters want the Palestinians to have their own country. Fine. Even the acting prime minister of Israel agrees with them. So here’s what we need to tell the boycotters: Stop saying “no.” Stop the hypocrisy. Open the international dialogue to the artists, academics, and thinkers who are going to shape both countries when the two-state solution becomes a reality.

Comment | Print | Subscribe