Last week, Morocco became the fourth Arab state – after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan – to reach a peace deal with Israel. The Abraham Accords, awarded to the United States, will almost certainly be remembered as the Trump team’s biggest foreign achievement. Among the advantages that have not yet been appreciated: the agreements will completely delegitimize Westerners trying to delegitimize Israel, especially the boycott, divestment and sanction movement of the Jewish state.
A decade ago, if I had asked pro-Israeli thinkers and activists to name the biggest threats to the Jewish state, a nuclear Iran would no doubt top the list, but BDS and delegitimization would more generally take a back seat. .
No, the BDSers could not commit mass violence against Israel as the Tehran regime or its representatives of terrorism could do. At that time, and still today, these movements were mainly limited to the heavier boundaries of the university campus. Again, as evidenced by the recent and explosive arrival of critical theory on the national stage, what remains is not what extends to the departments of Queer and Grievance Studies. Pro-Israel guys were right to be worried.
Israel’s fear – and the goal of the BDSers – was for the Jewish state to become something like South Africa around 1985, an internationally hated and widely sanctioned pariah. In fact, this is why anti-Israel activists often displayed the rhetoric of “apartheid.” It is unfair and unhistorical to compare Israel to that grotesque racial regime, but justice and historical probability are not exactly the hallmarks of the enemies of the Jewish state.
The BDSers achieved some success, especially in Europe. Performers often canceled concerts in Israel under pressure from BDS and sometimes headed the charge, as in the case of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Chris Martin of Coldplay. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even while the BDSers absurdly insisted that their movement was not anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts in Israel. Then last year, to the most alarming extent, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states should label West Bank products as “made in settlements”.
Was Israel’s economy ever in jeopardy? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s main trading partner, although boycotts and labeling could sting if expanded to include companies operating in Israeli or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-political. If BDS were successful, it would turn the permanent status of Israel into an abnormal country, rather than a normal element of the Middle East map. This would demoralize the Israeli people and aggravate the hostility they already face in world forums like the United Nations.
Well, both for all that. Today, just over a year after the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products, which are prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them, on the shelves of grocery stores. of the United Arab Emirates.
How far can the BDS go in a world where the enemies of the Jewish state, jurors, enjoyed Israeli citrus products and internal cultural exchanges? Who exactly do the Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the fundamental legitimacy of the Jewish state? Isn’t it just a little condescending that, for example, Roger Waters (birthplace: Great Bookham, Surrey, England) tells Arabs who they can do business with?
To be clear, I am not suggesting that BDS disappear tomorrow. The Arab world in general is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders are not about to give up what is certainly a very nice plan: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept the reality. BDS helps to give an overall credibility picture to your rejection. And university fanatical professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, distinguishing one state and one state (which seems to be Jewish) for the disgraceful.
But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, one of the most virulent anti-Israel states in the world, made peace with Jerusalem, BDS seems a cause boutique for gentle leftists, of those who put their pronouns on their Twitter biography. The real world – and the Middle East – has just moved on.
Sohrab Ahmari is the published editor of The Post. Twitter: @SohrabAhmari