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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/22/the-tide-is-turning-israel-is-losing-on-two-war-fronts/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/22/the-tide-is-turning-israel-is-losing-on-two-war-fronts/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Tide is Turning: Israel Is Losing
on Two War Fronts</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">by Ramzy Baroud - November
22, 2018<em><strong><br>
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<p>The November 12 botched Israeli military operation in
the Gaza Strip is delineating Tel Aviv’s failure to
utilize its army as a tool to achieve Palestinian
political concessions.</p>
<p>Now that the Palestinian popular resistance has gone
global through the exponential rise and growing success
of the Boycott Movement, the Israeli government is
fighting two desperate wars.</p>
<p>Following the Gaza attack, Palestinians responded by
showering the Israeli southern border with rockets and
carried out a precise operation targeting an Israeli
army bus.</p>
<p>As Palestinians marched in celebration of pushing the
Israeli army out of their besieged region, the fragile
political order in Israel, long-managed by right-wing
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was quickly
unraveling.</p>
<p>Two days after the Israeli attack on Gaza, Defense
Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, quit in protest of
Netanyahu’s ‘surrender’ to the Palestinian Resistance.</p>
<p>Israeli leaders are in a precarious situation. Untamed
violence comes at a price of international condemnation
and a Palestinian response that is bolder and more
strategic each time.</p>
<p>However, failing to teach Gaza its proverbial ‘lesson’
is viewed as an act of surrender by opportunistic
Israeli politicians.</p>
<p>While Israel is experiencing such limitations on the
traditional battlefield, which it once completely
dominated, its war against the global Palestinian
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is
surely a lost battle.</p>
<p>Israel has a poor track record in confronting civil
society-based mobilization. Despite the vulnerability of
Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation, it took
the Israeli government and military seven long years to
pacify the popular Intifada, the uprising of 1987. Even
then, the jury is still out on what truly ended the
popular revolt.</p>
<p>It should be accepted that a global Intifada is much
more difficult to suppress, or even contain.</p>
<p>Yet, when Israel began sensing the growing danger of
BDS – which was officially launched by Palestinian civil
society in 2005 – it responded with the same superfluous
and predictable pattern: arrests, violence and a torrent
of laws that criminalize dissent at home, while
unleashing an international campaign of intimidation and
smearing of boycott activists and organizations.</p>
<p>That achieved little, aside from garnering BDS more
attention and international solidarity.</p>
<p>The war on the Movement took a serious turn last year
when Netanyahu’s government dedicated a largesse of
about $72 million to defeat the civil society-led
campaign.</p>
<p>Utilizing the ever-willing US government to boost its
anti-BDS tactics, Tel Aviv feels assured that its
counter-BDS efforts in the US is off to a promising
start. However, it is only recently that Israel has
begun to formulate the wider European component of its
global strategy.</p>
<p>In a two-day conference in Brussels earlier this month,
Israeli officials and their European supporters
unleashed their broader European anti-BDS campaign.</p>
<p>Organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA) and
the Europe Israel Public Affairs group (EIPA), the
November 6-7 conference was fully supported by the
Israeli government, featuring right-wing Israeli
Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Ze’ev Elkin.</p>
<p>Under the usual pretext of addressing the danger of
anti-Semitism in Europe, attendees deliberately
conflated racism and any criticism of Israel, of its
military Occupation and colonization of Palestinian
land.</p>
<p>The EJA Annual Conference has raised Israel’s
manipulation of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ to a whole new
level, as it drafted a text that will purportedly be
presented to prospective members of the European
Parliament (MEPs), demanding their signature before
running in next May’s elections.</p>
<p>Those who decline to sign – or worse, repudiate the
Israeli initiative – are likely to find themselves
fending off accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>This was certainly not the first conference of its
kind.</p>
<p>The anti-BDS euphoria that has swept Israel in recent
years, yielded several crowded and passionate
conferences in luxurious hotels, where Israeli officials
openly threatened BDS activists, such as Omar Barghouti.
Barghouti was warned by a top Israeli official in a 2016
conference in Jerusalem of “civil assassination” for his
role in the organization of the Movement.</p>
<p>In March 2017, the Israeli Knesset passed the Anti-BDS
Travel Ban, which requires the Interior Minister to deny
entry to the country to any foreign national who
“knowingly issued a public call to boycott the state of
Israel.”</p>
<p>Since the ban went into effect, many BDS supporters
have been detained, deported and barred from entering
the country.</p>
<p>While Israel has demonstrated its ability to galvanize
self-serving US and other European politicians to
support its cause, there is no evidence that the BDS
Movement is being quelled or is, in any way, weakening.</p>
<p>On the contrary, the Israeli strategy has raised the
ire of many activists, civil society and civil rights
groups, angered by Israel’s attempt at subverting
freedom of speech in western countries.</p>
<p>Only recently, Leeds University in the UK has joined
many other campuses around the world in divesting from
Israel.</p>
<p>The tide is, indeed, turning.</p>
<p>Decades of Zionist indoctrination also failed, not only
in reversing the vastly changing public opinion on the
Palestinian struggle for freedom and rights, but even in
preserving the once solid pro-Israel sentiment among
young Jews, most notably in the US.</p>
<p>For BDS supporters, however, every Israeli strategy
presents an opportunity to raise awareness of
Palestinian rights and to mobilize civil society around
the world against Israeli occupation and racism.</p>
<p>BDS’ success is attributed to the very reason why
Israel is failing to counter its efforts: it is a
disciplined model of a popular, civil resistance that is
based on engagement, open debate and democratic choices,
while grounded in international and humanitarian law.</p>
<p>Israel’s ‘war-chest’ will run dry in the end, for no
amount of money could have saved the racist, Apartheid
regime in South Africa when it came tumbling down
decades ago.</p>
<p>Needless to say, $72 million will not turn the tide in
favor of Apartheid Israel, nor will it change the course
of history that can only belong to the people who are
unrelenting on achieving their long-coveted freedom.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong> has been writing
about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an
internationally-syndicated columnist, a media
consultant, an author of several books and the founder
of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father
Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press,
London). His website is: ramzybaroud.net</em> </p>
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