Repeat a lie often enough, and it may become truth. So goes the conventional wisdom, and so goes the insidious ongoing campaign to persuade institutions to divest from Israel.
Pro-Palestinian groups in this country have long made divestment a cornerstone of their strategy. If they could just convince universities and religious bodies that Israel is indeed an apartheid state, it would be a no-brainer to have them pull institutional investments out of companies that do business with Israel.
The latest offense on that score is the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s recent conference, held in the hallowed halls of Georgetown University. Beyond the usual heated rhetoric about Israel mowing down innocents with American-made tractors, the conference organizers came up with a new twist: recruit Jews and Israelis to support divestment.
Sadly, they will probably find a few deluded Jews to agitate for their cause, and will no doubt make them the poster dupes in any PR efforts. But those same organizers openly admit their purpose is to inoculate themselves from charges of anti-Semitism.
That won’t change the fact that divestment at its core borders on anti-Semitism. Any effort to whittle away at the financial infrastructure of Israel by definition weakens Israel, making the Jewish state and its citizens all the more vulnerable.
Says Yitzhak Santis, director of the Middle East Project at the JCRC, “Criticizing Israel is not in and of itself anti-Semitic. But with the three D’s — double standard, delegitimization and demonization — then you’re getting into a gray area of anti-Semitism.”
Institutions such as the Anglican Church of England voted to pull funds from companies with a stake in the “illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.” Last year, the World Council of Churches urged member churches “to consider economic measures to oppose Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory,” and two years ago the Presbyterian Church (USA) looked into “phased, selective divestment.” The United Church of Christ voted for the same. American universities like Columbia, Tufts and Duke all have active divestment campaigns.
Divestment is just one more flanking maneuver the world Jewish community must deal with. We as a people are long accustomed to such attacks, invective and canards, and we will combat this one as well.
But it says something about the intellectual capacity of religious and academic leaders that they can so easily be taken in by the moral banditry of divestment.
The battle continues.