I am one of many people disgusted with the ongoing Israeli
settlement of the West Bank and with the failure — should I say, nonexistence? —
of a viable peace process with any chance of culminating in a two-state
solution. Some, with similar feelings, look to BDS for redress. Here's another reason
why I can't and won't.
I've just learned that in late May George Soros bought stock
in SodaStream. Maybe Scarlett
Johansson made him do it; could be Soros, wizened investor that he
is, finds her, down to her stock tips, utterly irresistible. Or maybe Soros had
political motives, and thought SodaStream, though founded on West Bank land,
provides a living wage and decent working conditions for hundreds of Palestinians.
Or maybe it was all about the bottom line and Soros conceiving of SodaStream as
a moneymaker.
I don't know the mind of George Soros. I do know that he has
done an awful lot of good in the world — on behalf of human rights in what was
then the Soviet Union; against the militarism of G. W. Bush and his bunch; and,
when it comes to the Middle East, on behalf, lately, of Bedouins being kicked
off their land in favor of an Israeli village to be built.
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/demolishing-bedouin-village-build-israeli-town.
If we must have billionaires, would that there were quite a
few more like George Soros.
As for BDS, I won't pretend to be a fan.
The response of Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian founder of
the movement, to the Pope's visit to Israel this past spring, put an end to
whatever confusion I might have wished to entertain about BDS. To reprise: Pope
Francis, besides meeting with Mahmoud
Abbas, in a clear show of support for Palestinian desires for a
state of their own, also visited the grave of Theodore Herzl, in what was, for
the Papacy, given its abysmal record with regard to anti-Semitism, a belated
but welcome expression of sympathy for a Jewish State.
The visit to the grave of Herzl drove BDS founder Barghouti
around the bend. He called it, among other things, "a nauseating,
offensive act".
So I shouldn't have been surprised at the response of BDS to
George Soros investing in SodaStream. And yet I was.
BDS has come up with the term "aidcott" for what
it proposes to do to Soros and all his dreadful works. What is an aidcott? To
the degree I get it, I think it's meant as a directive to shun George Soros. Take
no money from him, no matter how the laudable the uses to which that money
might be put.
In other words,
George Soros is evil
If you believe that, throw in with BDS. If you believe the
visit by Pope Francis to the grave of Theodore Herzl was "a nauseating,
offensive act", BDS is just the thing for you.
I'm in a difficult place. I have always opposed Israeli
settlements on the West Bank, on the grounds that they are not only, patently,
bad for Palestinians but ultimately, also, for Jews.
I don't have a solution.
Still, I would say to people who feel as I do and turn to
BDS out of frustration, that they are making a mistake: beware BDS; it is no a solution.
Well, if you never went to a Presbyterian Church, you might announce that you never have and never will.
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