10 | OCTOBER 21 • 2021
commentary
BDS Proves Once Again that
It’s All About the Antisemitism
I
rish novelist Sally Rooney
thinks that she’s an advo-
cate for human rights, and
that prejudice and hate have
nothing to do with her work
or her various
political stands.
As far as Ben
Cohen and Jerry
Greenfield — the
Ben and Jerry
who founded
the eponymous
ice-cream brand
— are concerned, they are
among the nation’s foremost
progressives. The pair believe
that they are righteous advo-
cates for social justice.
Yet despite their well-ad-
vertised good intentions and
enormous self-regard, Rooney,
Cohen and Greenfield are pro-
moting hatred against Jews.
What makes it so infuriating
is that none of them — and
others who also support the
BDS movement that targets
Israel — are honest enough to
own up to the consequences
of their actions. By refusing
to acknowledge that backing
a movement that seeks Israel’s
destruction is itself inherently
antisemitic, they are not only
in denial about what they are
doing but demonstrating the
way contemporary intellec-
tual fashions on the left are
enabling hatred that singles
out Jews.
Rooney’s case is pretty
straightforward, despite her
attempts to cling to the illu-
sion that she has the moral
high ground.
The novelist, whose third
book, Beautiful World, Where
Are You, has just been released,
has told the Israeli publishing
house that handled her two
previous works of fiction
that she would not allow
them to put out the new one.
According to the company,
Modan Publishing, she told
them that she wasn’t interest-
ed in having her book pub-
lished in Hebrew or in Israel.
Subsequently, she said that
prompted by a libelous report
put out by Human Rights
Watch that falsely labeled
Israel as an “apartheid state,”
she supported the BDS move-
ment, which calls for an end
to all commerce and contacts
with the Jewish state.
BOYCOTTING ISRAEL
She told the New York Times in
an email that while she had
nothing against having her
writing appear in Hebrew, “I
simply do not feel it would
be right for me under the
present circumstances to
accept a new contract with an
Israeli company that does not
publicly distance itself from
apartheid and support the
U.N.-stipulated rights of the
Palestinian people.” In a fur-
ther clarification, she said she
was “responding to the call
from Palestinian civil society”
and expressing solidarity with
“their struggle for freedom,
justice and equality.”
Two things about her posi-
tion need to be understood
clearly.
One is that the goal of BDS
isn’t to adjust Israel’s policies
toward the West Bank and
Hamas terrorist state in Gaza
or to advocate for Palestinian
independence as part of a
two-state solution. Its aim is
the eradication of Israel, the
one Jewish state on the plan-
et. The talk about apartheid
isn’t merely a distortion of the
anomalous situation in the
territories where Palestinians
have repeatedly rejected peace
offers; it’s their false descrip-
tion of life inside the only
democracy in the Middle East.
As the Guardian reported,
Rooney was one of many
literary types who signed a
“letter against apartheid” pub-
lished in May which spoke
of 1948 (and not 1967, when
Israel came into possession
of the West Bank as part
of a defensive war) as the
beginning of “Israeli settler
colonial rule” and referred
to Israel’s attempts to defend
its citizens — Jew and Arab
alike — against more than
4,000 terrorist rockets and
missiles fired from Hamas in
the Gaza Strip as a “massacre
of Palestinians.” Simply put,
the letter is not only a com-
pendium of anti-Israel lies and
antisemitic stereotypes but
incompatible with any notion
of peace that doesn’t involve
Israel’s destruction.
That means that in order to
comply with Rooney’s defini-
tion of an Israeli company that
distances itself from “apart-
heid,” they would have to join
that call for their nation’s elim-
ination.
Somewhat more subtle but
no less damning was Cohen
and Greenfield’s explanation
for the partial boycott of Israel
that is being carried out by
the company they founded
but subsequently sold to the
Unilever Corporation.
In an interview with Axios
broadcast on HBO, the pair
sought to defend the decision
of the woke independent
board that they insisted on
putting in place when they
sold their company. They
consider the decision to drop
their Israeli partner and ban
the sale of its products in parts
of Jerusalem illegally occupied
by Jordan from 1949 to 1967,
as well as in the West Bank,
to be a protest against what
they claim are Israel’s illegal
policies.
But when Axios reporter
Alexi McCammond asked
them why they thought it was
right to boycott Israel but not
other places whose policies
they disagree with, the pair
were stumped.
McCammond wanted to
know why they weren’t halting
the sale of ice cream in Texas,
which has passed a law against
abortion after a fetal heart-
beat is detected and which all
progressives oppose. She also
asked why they weren’t boy-
cotting the state of Georgia,
which has an election integrity
law that liberals blasted and
that motivated Major League
Baseball to move its 2021 All-
Jonathan
Tobin
PURELY COMMENTARY
SCREENSHOT
Irish author
Sally Rooney.