The Boycott Movement Stoops to a new Shameful Low

There was never anything particularly gallant or admirable about the movement for Boycotting Israel. It’s targeting of goods, academics, cultural figures and even sporting and science events has always really just been terrorism in another form. Consistently those targeted by the Boycott movement were neither the Israeli government nor the Israeli military but rather private individuals who happened to be Israeli; many of whom no longer even lived in Israel.

One of the most shocking episodes in this crackdown on personal freedom and free speech was witnessed at the University College Union in 2008. Then a motion was proposed that would have demanded all Israeli and Jewish Academics in Britain to be compelled to denounce Israel if they wished to maintain the positions they held in their Universities. An academic union that you might have thought would have had defending free speech as its priority was instead instituting Thought Crime and a witch hunt. Fortunately this proposal was not only deemed immoral but also illegal and it was subsequently overturned.

However if the 2008 UCU affair was reminiscent of the Medieval convert or die policy on Jews then there have been other cases more chillingly similar to the 20th century anti-Semitism that attacks Jews simply for being Jewish regardless of their politics or religion. In one such incident two Israelis were sacked from the editorial board of a Manchester Academic Journal simply because they were Israeli Jews, what stance they took on the conflict was considered irrelevant; the crime of the ethnicity of their birth was enough.

In the past year the sight of small rag banned groups of anti-Capitalist protestors standing outside Marks & Spencers and Waitrose, waving the Palestinian flag and undertaking the occasional supermarket sweep of the few Israeli herbs and fruits they can find in store has increasingly become less of a rarity. But now this eccentric group has taken an all together more vicious twist in their approach. Not satisfied with protesting outside large highstreet brands they have now found a private business owned by just one Israeli woman to attack. Ahava may be a big label and big business but the Ahava shop in Covent Garden is a privately run franchise. That this is a woman’s livelihood and business that she has put so much work and investment into seems of no concern to the protestors, they come to scare away shoppers for several hours every weekend and say they won’t stop until the shop closes. What do they imagine this will do to the owner if they succeed? It seems that Israelis are beyond human concern for these people and that punishing this one woman for the acts of the government of the country where her products are sourced from is entirely legitimate.

The people instigating these protests clearly appeared to be rather unusual, one or two of them even seemed as if they might be slightly mentally ill. What they are not however is stupid. They know full well that the placards they hold about dead children in Gaza have nothing to do with this woman and that closing down her business will do nothing to help Palestinians. Yet they do not stop. For a long time those that hate Israelis but don’t love Palestinians either have been baying for blood and they don’t care where they find it. Victimizing this woman and trying to make her suffer because of a foreign conflict is a vicious and vindictive way to behave and it should make anyone who has any involvement in the anti-Israel movement think carefully about exactly who it is they are rubbing shoulders with.