WarSclerotic

WASHINGTON – The United States is suspending its compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia on Saturday and will withdraw from the landmark 1987 arms control accord in six months if Moscow does not end its alleged violation of the pact, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pomp said on Friday.

Russia denies violating the treaty, which bans either side from stationing short- and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe.

(JTA) — The British branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel possesses a weapon matched by few other affiliates: star power.

More than any of its international counterparts, BDS UK enjoys the support of renowned musicians like Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Richard Ashcroft and Jarvis Cocker, whom boycott activists like to parade in various petitions. Also on board are eminent filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, and even the celebrated actress Julie Christie has signed on.

(On Tuesday, several of those stars signed yet another petition, urging the BBC to push for the 2019 Eurovision song contest to be moved out of Israel, which they accuse of employing “apartheid” policies.)

The pro-Israel camp has its own British celebrity advocates, including singers Morrissey, the Australia-born (but U.K.-based) singer Nick Cave and the band Radiohead.

What effect are these celebrities having in the fight for British hearts and minds?

Some insight can be found in the largest-ever poll on the popularity of the BDS campaign in Britain, the results of which were published Wednesday.

It doesn’t look too good for BDS.

In the poll of 4,005 British respondents, only 10 percent agreed that Israel should be boycotted, compared to 46 percent who disagreed, according to the Ipsos MORI polling company. It conducted the survey in 2016 and 2017 for the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the Community Security Trust.

Significantly, another 42 percent said they either had no opinion or did not know, with the remaining 2 percent saying they would rather not express an opinion.

The study found a distinct correlation between support for BDS and the view of Israel as an apartheid state.

Asked whether they agree that Israel in an apartheid state, 21 percent of respondents agreed, compared to 19 who disagreed. Here, too, the largest group by far was the “don’t knows,” with 42 percent.

Muslim respondents were almost four times likelier to agree with the need to boycott Israel than the average, the report said. But also among Muslims, the boycott contingent was in the minority and no fewer than 16 percent of respondents from that group disagreed with boycotting Israel.

Another key finding came from the report’s attempt (the most comprehensive so far) to tackle the contentious claims that BDS is motivated by anti-Semitism. Boycott advocates say their response is merely to Israel’s human rights violations and control of Palestinian land.

In addition to being asked about BDS and apartheid, respondents to the poll were asked also to agree or disagree with a set of assertions regarded as anti-Semitic, including “Jews think they are better than others,” “Jews get rich at the expense of others” and “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes.”

The respondents who supported BDS and the apartheid analogy were significantly likelier than others to agree with these “more traditional anti-Jewish tropes,” the report said.

Among those who support none of the anti-Semitic tropes, 5 percent endorse a boycott. By contrast, among those who back five tropes, 58 percent endorsed a boycott. Among those who indicated that they think Israel is an apartheid state, 16 percent endorsed no anti-Semitic trope, while 47 percent endorsed six anti-Semitic tropes or more.

It “would be wrong to regard agreement with either the apartheid or boycott statements as being anti-Jewish under all circumstances,” the report’s authors wrote, noting that 16 percent of the respondents who agreed with the apartheid statement displayed no anti-Jewish feelings. But, they added, “the fact remains that agreement with either statement positively correlates with anti-Jewish sentiment.”

Yet perhaps the poll’s most significant finding is how many respondents, about 42 percent, had no opinion on the BDS and apartheid issues either way.

“It is all too easy in heated debates about complex political matters to forget, or even dismiss, the fact that not everyone has an opinion,” the report’s authors, David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, wrote. Boyd is the executive director and Graham is a senior research fellow of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

But the data they compiled shows that both sides have largely failed at engaging large swaths of the British public – with an emphasis on young people.

Women and young people are far likelier than other groups to be undecided or neutral, the study said. In the apartheid question, the undecideds accounted for the majority of respondents under 30, compared to only 26 percent undecideds among those in their 70s. And on the boycott question, undecideds accounted for 28 percent of respondents aged 16 to 29 – the largest proportion of undecideds of all other age groups.

To Mark Gardner, the communications director of the Community Security Trust – British Jewry’s watchdog and security group – these and other nuances show that the British celebrities promoting BDS “are largely irrelevant, despite the impression some of us may have about what they represent.”

By contrast, the ongoing debate about the British Labour Party’s spiraling anti-Semitism crisis, where Israel plays a central role, “is causing a lot of people to come out against anti-Semitism and come down on our side of the fence,” he said.

Mostly, though, Gardner said the analysis shows that there is “untapped potential for both sides.” He hopes the data from the survey “will be used as an effective tool to better understand where the fight against antisemitism is impacted upon by BDS and attempts to delegitimize Israel.”

(JTA) — The British branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel possesses a weapon matched by few other affiliates: star power.

(On Tuesday, several of those stars signed yet another petition, urging the BBC to push for the 2019 Eurovision song contest to be moved out of Israel, which they accuse of employing “apartheid” policies.)

The pro-Israel camp has its own British celebrity advocates, including singers Morrissey, the Australia-born (but U.K.-based) singer Nick Cave and the band Radiohead.

What effect are these celebrities having in the fight for British hearts and minds?

Some insight can be found in the largest-ever poll on the popularity of the BDS campaign in Britain, the results of which were published Wednesday.

It doesn’t look too good for BDS.

In the poll of 4,005 British respondents, only 10 percent agreed that Israel should be boycotted, compared to 46 percent who disagreed, according to the Ipsos MORI polling company. It conducted the survey in 2016 and 2017 for the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the Community Security Trust.

Significantly, another 42 percent said they either had no opinion or did not know, with the remaining 2 percent saying they would rather not express an opinion.

The study found a distinct correlation between support for BDS and the view of Israel as an apartheid state.

Asked whether they agree that Israel in an apartheid state, 21 percent of respondents agreed, compared to 19 who disagreed. Here, too, the largest group by far was the “don’t knows,” with 42 percent.

Muslim respondents were almost four times likelier to agree with the need to boycott Israel than the average, the report said. But also among Muslims, the boycott contingent was in the minority and no fewer than 16 percent of respondents from that group disagreed with boycotting Israel.

Another key finding came from the report’s attempt (the most comprehensive so far) to tackle the contentious claims that BDS is motivated by anti-Semitism. Boycott advocates say their response is merely to Israel’s human rights violations and control of Palestinian land.

In addition to being asked about BDS and apartheid, respondents to the poll were asked also to agree or disagree with a set of assertions regarded as anti-Semitic, including “Jews think they are better than others,” “Jews get rich at the expense of others” and “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes.”

The respondents who supported BDS and the apartheid analogy were significantly likelier than others to agree with these “more traditional anti-Jewish tropes,” the report said.

Among those who support none of the anti-Semitic tropes, 5 percent endorse a boycott. By contrast, among those who back five tropes, 58 percent endorsed a boycott. Among those who indicated that they think Israel is an apartheid state, 16 percent endorsed no anti-Semitic trope, while 47 percent endorsed six anti-Semitic tropes or more.

It “would be wrong to regard agreement with either the apartheid or boycott statements as being anti-Jewish under all circumstances,” the report’s authors wrote, noting that 16 percent of the respondents who agreed with the apartheid statement displayed no anti-Jewish feelings. But, they added, “the fact remains that agreement with either statement positively correlates with anti-Jewish sentiment.”

Yet perhaps the poll’s most significant finding is how many respondents, about 42 percent, had no opinion on the BDS and apartheid issues either way.

“It is all too easy in heated debates about complex political matters to forget, or even dismiss, the fact that not everyone has an opinion,” the report’s authors, David Graham and Jonathan Boyd, wrote. Boyd is the executive director and Graham is a senior research fellow of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

But the data they compiled shows that both sides have largely failed at engaging large swaths of the British public – with an emphasis on young people.

Women and young people are far likelier than other groups to be undecided or neutral, the study said. In the apartheid question, the undecideds accounted for the majority of respondents under 30, compared to only 26 percent undecideds among those in their 70s. And on the boycott question, undecideds accounted for 28 percent of respondents aged 16 to 29 – the largest proportion of undecideds of all other age groups.

To Mark Gardner, the communications director of the Community Security Trust – British Jewry’s watchdog and security group – these and other nuances show that the British celebrities promoting BDS “are largely irrelevant, despite the impression some of us may have about what they represent.”

By contrast, the ongoing debate about the British Labour Party’s spiraling anti-Semitism crisis, where Israel plays a central role, “is causing a lot of people to come out against anti-Semitism and come down on our side of the fence,” he said.

Mostly, though, Gardner said the analysis shows that there is “untapped potential for both sides.” He hopes the data from the survey “will be used as an effective tool to better understand where the fight against antisemitism is impacted upon by BDS and attempts to delegitimize Israel.”

Much attention has focused on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, and on foreign manipulation in social media targeting American voters. However, not as much attention is being paid to foreign cyberterrorism that is affecting the lives of individual citizens, or to foreign sponsors of terrorism.

In 2014, for example, North Korea was believed to have been behind a major hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and its executives. Last year, we learned that Qatar’s news outlet, Al Jazeera, ran a months-long spy operation aimed at US Jews and pro-Israel groups. And the Gulf nation had hacked prominent private citizens in the United States, including Rabbi Shmuley Boteach – known as “America’s Rabbi” – among many others.

Qatar also has supported other terrorist groups, including the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and al-Qaeda affiliates. The BBC reported that in April 2017, Qatar allegedly paid a ransom of as much as $1 billion to “a former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria and to Iranian security officials as part of a deal that resulted in the release of 26 royal family members reportedly kidnapped by Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militiamen and of dozens of Shia fighters captured by jihadists in Syria.”

The Anti-Defamation League last month – pointing to abhorrent, hateful antisemitic cartoons that demonize Jews and often appear on editorial pages – called on the Qatari government to follow its own press law that prohibits “the publication of ‘any ridicule of or contempt toward any of the religions or their doctrines, including any motivation of sectarian, racial, or religious trends’ or any content that harms goodwill toward a person through ‘defamation.’”

In recent years, we have seen Qatar become increasingly cozy with Iran. Qatar clearly is a problematic country, but the United States has not taken enough action.

It’s time to change that. All countries must be held accountable for their actions.

One way to hold Qatar accountable is the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2017, designed to “prevent Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any affiliate or successor from accessing its international support networks.” It would require the president to report to Congress on any individuals or entities connected to foreign states that are financing Hamas and other terrorist groups.

Another way to hold Qatar accountable would be to enable US victims of terrorism to sue in US courts the Gulf nations or entities it supports. For years, US victims of terrorism have been able to sue state sponsors of terrorism for the pain they have inflicted. Iran, for example, has billions of dollars frozen in US banks as victims attempt to claim its assets for restitution.

It’s time to change that and empower affected families to use civil litigation as an additional path to end Qatari support for Palestinian terrorist groups.

The 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) put into law a longstanding practice of honoring sovereign immunity when anyone files a civil suit against a foreign government in a US court. Amendments to FSIA are not without precedent: The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act allowed victims of foreign terrorism committed US soil to sue.

It’s time for another amendment to FSIA, one that would allow a terrorism exception to the jurisdictional immunity of a foreign state, whether that is physical terrorism or cyberterrorism. So long as Qatar sponsors terrorism, it should not be protected.
The writer is a retired US Marine Corps Lieutenant-General and the Representative for Michigan’s First Congressional District.