BDS HURTS MORE THAN ISRAEL

BDS is a global campaign against Israel that encourages increased economic and political pressure to force Israel to leave the West Bank, welcome all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from 68 years ago, and to give back the Golan Heights. Essentially, if BDS gets what it is demanding, it would come close to wiping Israel off the map.

The BDS movement calls on the global community to boycott Israeli products, investors to divest from Israeli companies, and governments to sanction Israel. After more than a decade of activism the BDS movement has proven to do nothing more than hurt the people they intended to help, the Palestinian people.

For instance, BDS played a role in nudging the popular Israeli company, Sodastream, from its West Bank location in Mishor Adumim to the south of Israel. I’m confident the BDS movement felt a sense of pride as they watched a major Israeli company move its operations out of what they call “occupied land.” However, now that the dust has settled, BDS has been silent on the after effects. When Sodastream left the West Bank, 500 Palestinian employees working at Sodastream––earning a wages more than the average Palestinian––lost their jobs.

Arab countries have spent far too long boycotting Israel, when a true partnership with the Jewish state could help advance the Arab world into the 21st century!

Sadly, the Israeli founder of Sodastream wanted to build his business in the West Bank for the sake of cultivating a peaceful relationship between Israelis and Palestinians through work. I wrote more extensively about this issue in one of my previous posts Creating Peace from the Ground Up.

Now that BDS has been hard at work for more than a decade promoting a destructive anti-Israel agenda, a recent op-ed from Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom came out urging its readers to see the potential damage BDS would do to the entire Middle East, not just the Palestinians.

Guest columnist and Jordanian politician Abed Almaala argues that the long term damage BDS could do to Israel would have a profound impact on the stability of the entire Middle East. While many Middle Eastern countries already look down on Israel, Almaala believes that without Israel they would all fall.

Almaala quotes the president of the Jordanian opposition, “If the day were to come when Israel falls, Jordan, Egypt and many others would fall, ‎too, and ‎Westerners would be begging Iran for oil. ‎We can hate Israel as much as we like, but we must realize that without it, we too ‎would be ‎gone.‎‏”‏

Israel is also leading the way in combating terror in the Middle East region. Their advanced technology provides information to help nations like Jordan and Egypt push back against the tide of Islamic terror. Without that vital technology and information, Almaala admits, Jordan would suffer the most.

The danger of BDS goes beyond the lies they spread on college campuses, or the possible economic damage to certain Israeli companies. It has the potential to disrupt the already fragile stability of the Middle East.

Almaala closes his column with a call to Middle East nations to embrace Israel and not BDS. Arab countries have spent far too long boycotting Israel, when a true partnership with the Jewish state could help advance the Arab world into the 21st century!

Finally, he says, “… let us all put BDS ‎where it belongs, in the dust bin of history.‎”