Israel’s professional left wingers, politicians and “talking heads” have gone into paroxysms of hysteria over the anti-boycott law passed by the Knesset last week by a vote of 47-38. They are insisting that the law and its supporters are hysterical, anti-democratic and McCarthyite, and more and more they don’t forget, “Fascist”.
The latter is a curse word, much beloved by leftists to denigrate their opponents without having the faintest idea what fascism means. All that can be said in their defense is that it is a tradition of the left wing of the Zionist movement dating back to the 1930’s, Then they not only called the Revisionists fascists, but called Jabotinsky, Vladimir Hitler.
Their present argument, in a word, is that everything is permitted to leftists in the name of free speech. This includes professors calling on the international academic community to boycott the universities from which they draw their salaries, as racist, apartheid institutions. They have no conscience pangs about continuing to draw their salaries from these tainted institutions, as long as they can spread their anti-Zionist, even anti-Semitic poison in their lectures, exclude and insult students in IDF reserve uniforms and other such “good deeds”.
It also includes forcing Israeli contractors who are building Arab cities in the Palestine Authority, to boycott Israeli suppliers which are located in those areas and which employ many Palestinian Arabs. As always, it is important to “stick it” to the Jews, even at the expense of many Arabs losing their well-paying jobs with these Israeli companies. It is called “cutting off your nose to spite your face” or by left wingers “free speech”.
On the other hand, any effort by Israel to protect itself, its companies, universities and citizens from the intentional damage of these boycotts is an “infringement on free speech.” They are allowed and encouraged to attack us. We are forbidden to defend ourselves. It would be laughable if it were not so sad.
In Friday’s Jerusalem Post the Propaganda Minister of the PA government repeatedly attacked this “racist” law. Consider the hypocrisy of this statement when P.A. Chairman Abu Mazen repeatedly insists that not even one Israeli Jew will be allowed to remain in the Palestinian State which will be “judenrein”. In other words 600,000 to 700,000 Jews will be expelled from their homes, but in the eyes of the leftists, we are the racists.
It is instructive to compare the Israeli anti-boycott law with the vastly more draconian American law, which has been on the books, and enforced, for many years. The U.S. law provides for jail sentences and substantial fines to deter would-be boycotters. The new Israeli law has no criminal penalties whatsoever. It creates a civil tort so that the victim of a boycott can sue the boycotter for damages caused him. It also permits Israeli entities to ban boycotters from participating as bidders in tenders for government contracts. That is a draconian law? The essence of racism, McCarthyism and Fascism? The death knell for free speech?
“Give me a break” as the Americans say.
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