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.

