It is not difficult to guess that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers would rather have been watching Scarlett Johansson instead of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Johansson, who starred in a Super Bowl commercial for SodaStream — the Israeli company that has a production facility in Mishor Adumim — chose to leave her position as spokeswoman for the human-rights organization Oxfam when they called upon her not to do the ad for SodaStream.
On the other hand, Kerry annoyed the Israeli top echelon. In an appearance at the Munich Security Conference, he behaved like a mediocre commentator who had gotten there by accident, and not like a person who had been put in charge of the foreign relations of a mediating superpower that was supposed to be fair in its quest for the agreement it seeks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Kerry said that Israel was taking a risk. Its security was an illusion. If there were no agreement, he warned, everything would blow up in our faces and we would suffer terror attacks alongside political terrorism. The Palestinians would turn to international institutions, the international court in The Hague would rule against Israel, and the Israeli economy would suffer boycotts.
By his statements, Kerry also created irritation on the diplomatic plane as well as the political one. Diplomatically, one can conclude from his statements that he sees Israel as the only one to blame for the possible failure of the talks, and is using the Europeans to put pressure on Israel.
On the political plane, Jerusalem officials accused Kerry of meddling in Israel’s internal affairs in favor of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid and against Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. They also accused him of trying to influence public opinion in Israel to press for an agreement.
Kerry used the terminology of the Israeli left-wing camp, a policy supported by a significant bloc of the coalition — in other words, Lapid and Livni. When they spoke of a binational state or fear of boycotts, Kerry did so publicly as well.
Officials close to Netanyahu, Lieberman, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz spotted the Americans using Lapid’s and Livni’s talking points and exploded on Sunday, before the cameras, at the doorway to the cabinet meeting. “The attempts to impose a boycott on the State of Israel are immoral and unjust,” Netanyahu said.
Steinitz spoke more harshly: “Kerry’s statements are offensive, unfair and intolerable. The State of Israel cannot be expected to hold talks with a gun held to its temple.”
Later, the sharp responses came from the U.S. State Department and from American Jewish organizations as well. Officials in Jerusalem realized that even if the anger was appropriate, their tone was too harsh. Talks took place at various levels, and things were straightened out between Netanyahu and Kerry.
In about a month, Netanyahu will attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in the United States, and is also expected to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama. At the same time, a framework agreement is also expected to be solidified, together with the fourth and last release of terrorists from Israeli prisons. With all that going on, a calm conversation with Washington is required. Maybe that is why the anger among officials of the Prime Minister’s Office and some ministers has softened, and in talks that received far less prominent headlines, they have already declared that Kerry is a friend of Israel.
The double-standard machine
To get to the heart of the matter, if the talks do not result in an agreement, but blow up, and “the occupation continues” as the Europeans put it, certain kinds of economic sanctions will follow. But unlike the Arab boycott of past years — a boycott initiated by enemies — here the boycott will be initiated by friends: a boycott whose purpose is to speed things up.
The prime minister believes that like any threat, this one must also be taken into account, but we must not go too far, and must keep it in proportion. Netanyahu says that those who threaten Israel with a boycott encourage the Palestinians not to move forward in the talks and maintain an inflexible position. After all, no matter what happens, Israel will get hurt.
Netanyahu also told his ministers that Israel would not act under pressure or make concessions under pressure. He cited as evidence Israel’s steadfast position regarding the Horizon 2020 program of scientific cooperation with Europe, in which Israel did not consent to treat the settlements differently in the agreement that was signed, and Israel’s position was accepted.
Netanyahu says that anyone who would like to contribute to the peace process needs to go to the Palestinians and say: “This is the price you will pay if the process fails.” The international community is not conveying any messages to the Palestinians regarding what their future will be if they do not continue with the process. They will be able to go on their way without paying any price, Netanyahu says.
He says that we should not be put under pressure. We have already proven that we are willing to make bold concessions in exchange for peace, from Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University to the unprecedented construction freeze to the release of terrorists who committed murder. The Palestinians have not proven any significant desire for peace to this day. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, the message is clear: the pressure from now on needs to be directed at Mahmoud Abbas.
Steinitz, the minister who spoke the most harshly, went onto the deck of a Canadian missile boat that had arrived in Haifa Bay this week. In a conversation later, he explained that he really thought that Kerry was a friend of Israel. Kerry’s remark was inappropriate, he said, because even if Kerry had not intended to make a threat, his statements were perceived as one.
Steinitz said that the difference between a warning and a threat was very fine. At this sensitive time, if the talks should fail, Israel would be punished. That was what Kerry’s statements hinted at. How? By a European boycott and Arab terror, which the media and the public certainly saw as a threat. It was also not fair to threaten only one side. Steinitz spoke of hypocrisy, saying: “There are double standards only regarding Israel. Take northern Cyprus, which is occupied by Turkey; 150,000 Turkish settlers are living there, and the European Union has an unequivocal stance against that. So what? Did you ever hear about European companies boycotting Turkish banks that had branches in northern Cyprus?”
A positive effect?
The Foreign Ministry has a department devoted to activity in civilian society. Established after the Durban conference in 2001, its purpose is to combat delegitimization and boycotts. The head of the department, Amir Sagi, says that as of now, there is no real boycott against Israel, but there is also no smoke without fire.
The active campaign of 171 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions groups began at Durban, and since 2005, an organized campaign has been under way whose purpose is to pressure world governments to boycott Israel. Foreign Ministry officials say that the groups leading this campaign are strong in their anti-Semitism. Their activity trickles into the pro-Arab sphere and from there to Islamic communities in Europe, which eventually affects the governments there.
So we need to add the standard answer that left-wing groups give whenever high-ranking European officials ask them what needs to be done to bring about change.
“Only pressure works,” they say, and here, you can see better why in July 2013 EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton sent an email to high-ranking EU officials telling them that she was putting together guidelines for all 28 EU countries regarding marking products from the settlements. While the marking program is on hold for now because of the talks, 14 EU countries have already announced that they were ready to begin marking the products immediately. Officials of the Foreign Ministry’s Center for Political Research say that all the EU countries, except for the Czech Republic, support marking products if the talks should fail.
“Another typical day of boycott,” Bennett wrote on his Facebook page, on which he posted a photograph of the first page of the financial newspaper TheMarker. The headline read: “Microsoft and Amazon plan to open cyber centers in Israel.” Livni accuses Bennett of adopting an ostrich policy, while he tries to project an attitude that says, “Of all the gang, I am the most faithful to the source.”
Lieberman, who had Bennett’s job until recently and got an official stamp of approval from President Shimon Peres as the “local responsible adult” when he began his term as foreign minister, acted this week as national historian. He said that boycotts were a kind of background noise for terrorism, and just as terrorism began against Zionist Jews in the Land of Israel in 1921, so did the boycotts. Lieberman also concluded that these boycotts were not all bad, since the boycotts of the 1960s had led to the development of Israel’s independent military industry.
As Lieberman spoke with reporters, he read a clipping from the newspaper Davar from 1959 saying that “Renault surrendered to the Arab boycott,” as he said derisively: “Well, today you see that everything written in this newspaper is intimidation and nonsense. Surprisingly, the embargo had a positive effect, not a bad one.”
He went on: “Things were not easy after the oil embargo that followed the Yom Kippur War either, but we survived it. After that, the Arab boycott was imposed. No Japanese cars came here, and there wasn’t even any Pepsi Cola. In the end, the boycotts are behind us. Boycotts are nothing new. Throughout the history of Zionism, we have known how to deal with boycotts. This time, too, we will prepare a plan with answers, and next month things will be understood and clear to everyone in the country.”
Lieberman also said that the boycott was not a result of construction in the settlements, and it would not go away if we withdrew from the territories. Today it is a boycott because of the settlements; tomorrow, it will be because of the treatment of the Bedouin. There is no reason to look for guilty ones among us, he said.
A terminology of threats
On the other side of the barricade, while Livni speaks about how “Kerry is holding up a mirror to the anticipated situation,” Lapid seems much better organized in this fight. He recruited professionals in his office and spread a fog over a “classified report” by the Finance Ministry’s chief economist. Lapid says, “Out of caution, I decided to keep part of the report classified because I do not want to give Israel’s enemies any ideas.”
Lapid goes on: “The bottom line is clear: Israel is a country that is slanted toward export, which makes it particularly vulnerable to pressure from without. If there is no peace agreement, Israel’s economy could face a dramatic downturn that will cause real harm to the pockets of every Israeli.” Lapid also provides small examples of starting a boycott against Israel to illustrate the potential snowball effect.
He mentions an Irish workers’ organization that decided to boycott Israeli goods and services, and divestment from companies in the territories. Canada’s postal workers’ association, which adopted a policy of boycotting Israel, was also mentioned, as was a boycott of the exhibition “Tel Aviv: The White City,” which was supposed to take place in Brussels and was cancelled.
“We can argue as much as we like, but that is the reality. A boycott is rolling toward Israel. We are fighting it. We will not give in to it, and of course it should not dictate our policy, but ignoring reality is never a good idea,” writes Lapid. It seems that this week, the finance minister found the winning combination: dealing with matters of his ministry and linking arms with the peace process, in a channel where one can warn of a great threat against Israel that is anticipated and must be stopped. Lapid provides the problem and also has the ability to solve it.
Livni, for her part, explains that Lapid’s use of threat terminology is legitimate. There is no difference between the finance minister’s warnings of a boycott and the defense minister’s warnings of a security threat. After all, if I were the defense minister, who came and said that disaster could befall unless we acted in a certain way, you would listen to me very carefully. But are economic disaster and diplomatic isolation all right? asks Livni. After all, they are just as dangerous. The subtext of her statements is as follows: The fact that Lapid and I are not retired defense officials does not give Ya’alon any advantage in the political arena.
The debates over the boycotts have now emerged into the public space, but they have also taking place in closed meetings of the security cabinet for some time.
Ya’alon displays open contempt and anger toward Lapid. “Why don’t you say what damage the state will suffer if a shoulder-fired missile is fired at an aircraft that’s about to land at Ben-Gurion Airport?” Ya’alon asked Lapid during a security cabinet meeting. “How will an incident like that affect tourism and the economy in Israel? Maybe the current situation is better?” Ya’alon asked. Of course, nobody in the room answered.
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