Pro-Israel advocates decry and bemoan BDS (the boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions movement of anti-Israel activists), which celebrated its ten years anniversary in July 2015. BDS is more about psychological terror than impacting Israel’s economy. Annihilate BDS not with volumes of logic, but changing perceptions by exacerbating their flaws with psychological manipulation, focus, passion, and ardor for plunder.
Counter BDS activities are heating up on four fronts. First, Israel advocates are compiling a $50m war chest to “take on” campus-based BDS. Knesset members under guidance from leadership on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committees are targeting BDS using counter-intelligence tactics to stop what ministers label a form of terrorism.
Third, independents like Stand With Us are using social media in proactive ways. Last, Gilad Erdan is PM Netanyahu’s sobriquet Minister of BDS. His charge is to strategize against BDS under the rubrique “public safety, strategic affairs and public diplomacy.”
Build on a reputation of Jews as powerful, manipulative, tough (thanks to the IDF), and cunning...It is the right reputation to have in a bloody fight.
My decades in community-organizing work including the U. S. Civil Rights Movement taught me nothing short of a mission to destroy BDS is acceptable. Concerted, threatening, rigorous and resolute actions brought down Jim Crow and freed Soviet Jews.
The most effective tactics are political theatre, the willingness to appear to respond to violence with violence, and initiating retaliations against anti-Israel professors and corporate decision makers. The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan taught us.
Build on a reputation of Jews as powerful, manipulative, tough (thanks to the IDF), and cunning, rather than take offense and shirk away. It is the right reputation to have in a bloody fight. It’s the appearance of power that is critical. The BDS fight needs be personal at every turn, in every location, at every level, everyday.
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and The 48 Laws of POWER (Robert Greene and Joost Elffers) are valuable reads. Here are some other tips.
Pro-Israel groupthink must be mean and tough. Change the language, tone and tenor. Battling BDS is a political/psychological war against terror. Roundtable discussions, dinner circuit speeches, and Jews’ penchant for kumbaya shackle Israel advocates to defensive instead of proactive actions.
Think like Tony Soprano and God’s Chinese son, Hong Xiuquan. He said our enemies “ought to come kneeling” and show “the principles of true submission…conspicuous filial piety to us.” No less, PM Netanyahu said before Congress, “The days when the Jewish people are passive in the face of threats to annihilating us, those days are over. Today we have a voice.”
Finance legal actions as a tactic. Tie up the local chapters and collaborators in court for threats to the peace, violations of university anti-race baiting rules, free speech infringements. Challenge their non-profit tax status in court. Make BDS and supporters feel pain. Jews pressured the Canadian government to de-fund The Canadian Arab Federation.
Kudos to the students arrested a year ago September filibustering an Ohio University student senate meeting protesting the president’s blood bucket challenge in support of BDS. Kudos to the law firm representing them pro bono. The students ought to have been given an honor seat at Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. How sensational for him to have welcomed them. Instead, the PM and pro-Israel groups ignore these heroes.
If a movement is not controversial it’s not worth the fight. Teach the art of political theatre to thousands of Israel advocacy students and professional demonstrators. Deploy them as ready-to-roll commando units flooding campuses, administration buildings, and TV news stations, students or not, on critical days like anti-Israel Apartheid Week.
Cactus is a Luxembourg based food store chain caving to months of picketing by pro-Palestinian protestors. Cactus and their Swedish counterparts boycott Israeli products. Here is where a coordinating committee can dispatch a tactical team to picket stores and the homes of corporate executives. The message, to warn women away from shopping here, especially with children in tow, because Muslims are allegedly responsible for the 300% increase in rapes of Swedish women and the skyrocketing rate of rapes of children according to studies reported on BBC.
Manipulate perceptions and exacerbate their flaws.
Occupy washrooms; block the exits and refreshment bars in theatres performing plays with themes like The Death of Klinghoffer. Nobody cares about pickets in the streets at these events unless the faces of patrons crossing picket lines are plastered all over the media.
BDS supporters physically assaulting Jews at UC Irvine and Berkeley, U of C, and Maryland, and other universities must be punished and prosecuted. Jews must be willing to defend themselves. Demand investigations, expulsions, and firings; occupy administration offices at schools.
Demand zero tolerance where social media carry attacks like the one from someone at the University of Chicago: “Gas them, burn them and dismantle their power structure. Humanity cannot progress with the parasitic Jew.” Always make the counterattack to BDS public in language that stirs the soul.
Play loud music when BDS Muslim students are trying to pray.
Put on street theatre performances portraying the beheadings and rapes of gays and non-Muslims.
Replicate Muslim slave markets by pulling cages with girls and boys.
Train videographers to capture these actions, and share them on You Tube.
Change tactics often. Be as vile as the law allows if the object is to annihilate BDS. In the words of King David, “Let all my foes be shamed and utterly confounded….”