[News] Israel's new strategy: sabotage and attack the global justice movement

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Israel's new strategy: "sabotage" and "attack" the global justice movement

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11080.shtml
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 16 February 2010

An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by 
Israel's influential Reut Institute has identified the global 
movement for justice, equality and peace as an "existential threat" 
to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial 
resources to "attack" and possibly engage in criminal "sabotage" of 
this movement in what Reut believes are its various international 
"hubs" in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

The Reut Institute's analyses hold that Israel's traditional 
strategic doctrine -- which views threats to the state's existence in 
primarily military terms, to be met with a military response -- is 
badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined 
threat from a "Resistance Network" and a "Delegitimization Network."

The Resistance Network is comprised of political and armed groups 
such as Hamas and Hizballah who "rel[y] on military means to sabotage 
every move directed at affecting separation between Israel and the 
Palestinians or securing a two-state solution" 
("<http://reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3769>The 
Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, Reut 
Institute, 14 February 2010).

Furthermore, the "Resistance Network" allegedly aims to cause 
Israel's political "implosion" -- a la South Africa, East Germany or 
the Soviet Union -- rather than bring about military defeat through 
direct confrontation on the battlefield.

The "Delegitimization Network" -- which Reut Institute president and 
former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein provocatively claims 
is in an "unholy alliance" with the Resistance Network -- is made up 
of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and 
justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) 
activists all over the world. Its manifestations include protests 
against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid 
Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and "lawfare" -- 
the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for 
alleged Israeli war criminals. The Reut Institute even cited my 
speech to the student conference on BDS held at Hampshire College 
last November as a guide to how the "delegitimization" strategy 
supposedly works 
("<http://reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3766>Eroding 
Israel's Legitimacy in the International Arena," Reut Institute, 28 
January 2010).

The combined "attack" from "resisters" and "delegitimizers," Reut 
says, "possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a 
comprehensive existential threat within a few years." It further 
warns that a "harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the 
two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a 'one-state 
solution' as a new alternative framework."

At a basic level, Reut's analysis represents an advance over the most 
primitive and hitherto dominant layers of Israeli strategic thinking; 
it reflects an understanding, as I put it in my speech at Hampshire, 
that "Zionism simply cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, 
demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance."

But underlying the Reut Institute's analysis is a complete inability 
to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic 
erosion in Israel's international standing since its wars on Lebanon 
in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the 
"delegitimization network" to which it imputes wholly nefarious, 
devious and unwholesome goals -- effectively the "destruction of Israel."

It blames "delegitimizers" and "resisters" for frustrating the 
two-state solution but ignores Israel's relentless and ongoing 
settlement-building drive -- supported by virtually every state organ 
-- calculated and intended to make Israeli withdrawal from the West 
Bank impossible.

It never considers for a moment that the mounting criticism of 
Israel's actions might be justified, or that the growing ranks of 
people ready to commit their time and efforts to opposing Israel's 
actions are motivated by genuine outrage and a desire to see justice, 
equality and an end to bloodshed. In other words, Israel is 
delegitimizing itself.

Reut does not recommend to the Israeli cabinet -- which recently held 
a special session to hear a presentation of the think tank's findings 
-- that Israel should actually change its behavior toward 
Palestinians and Lebanese. It misses the point that apartheid South 
Africa also once faced a global "delegitimization network" but that 
this has now completely disappeared. South Africa, however, still 
exists. Once the cause motivating the movement disappeared -- the 
rank injustice of formal apartheid -- people packed up their signs 
and their BDS campaigns and went home.

Instead, Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and 
possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation 
Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national 
security actually calls on Israel's "intelligence agencies to focus" 
on the named and unnamed "hubs" of the "delegitimization network" and 
to engage in "attacking catalysts" of this network. In its "The 
Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall" document, 
Reut recommends that "Israel should sabotage network catalysts."

The use of the word "sabotage" is particularly striking and should 
draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and 
university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their 
students and citizens. The only definition of "sabotage" in United 
States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when 
carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, 
the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as "Treacherous 
action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate 
subversion." It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this 
term in a political or advocacy context.

At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel's spy agencies 
to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal 
free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, 
Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to 
individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel's possible 
intent -- especially in light of its long history of criminal 
activity on foreign soil -- should not be taken lightly.

The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of 
tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called 
American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its 
public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 
2006 and 2007.

In addition to a state-sponsored international "sabotage" campaign, 
Reut also recommends a "soft" policy. This specifically involves 
better hasbara or state propaganda to greenwash Israel as a high-tech 
haven for environmental technologies and high culture -- what it 
terms "Brand Israel."

Other elements include "maintain[ing] thousands of personal 
relationships with political, cultural, media and security-related 
elites and influentials" around the world, and "harnessing Jewish and 
Israeli diaspora communities" even more tightly to its cause. It even 
emphasizes that Israel should use "international aid" to boost its 
image (its perfunctory foray into earthquake-devastated Haiti was an 
example of this tactic).

What ties together all these strategies is that they are aimed at 
frustrating, delaying and distracting attention from the fundamental 
issue: that Israel -- despite its claims to be a liberal and 
democratic state -- is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on 
the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of 
Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the 
status quo. There is no "game changer" in Reut's new strategy.

Reut is apparently unaware even of the irony of trying to reform 
"Brand Israel" as something cuddly, while at the same time publicly 
recommending that Israel's notorious spies "sabotage" peace groups on 
foreign soil.

But there are two lessons we must heed: Reut's analysis vindicates 
the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, and as Israeli elites 
increasingly fear for the long-term prospects of the Zionist project 
they are likely to be more ruthless, unscrupulous and desperate than ever.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of 
<http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/store/548.shtml>One Country: A 
Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.



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