Below are two articles and a video from The Real News that discuss the growing calls for a boycott and divestment campaign against Israel, or at least against products coming out of illegal settlements in Palestine. Additional links are provided at the bottom of the article.
The threat of boycott has Israeli business leaders worried and the boycott against Soda Stream is being blamed for a slide in the value of the Israeli currency. Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issue of a growing boycott with Israel warning them that if the peace negotiations fail with Palestine. Kerry has been negotiation for Israel, more than as an unbiased middleman, and is repeating what many Israeli politicians are saying; other Israeli politicians believe boycotts should not be talked about because it only strengthens the movement.
In the US we have seen New York and Maryland consider bills to punish universities that support boycotts and a bill has been introduced in the US House of Representatives. The NY bill has faltered. The others have been introduced but not yet moved forward.
For more on the BDS movement visit http://www.bdsmovement.net/
‘Haaretz’ analyst says surging BDS movement may be contributing to falling shekel
Haaretz photo caption:”An ad starring Scarlett Johansson. Indirectly, she’s influencing the shekel, analysts say.” (Photo by SodaStream Frame grab) Rafi Gozlan, the chief economist at Leader Capital Markets, one of Israel’s top investment banks, is speculating that the threat of boycott and sanctions against Israel, as well as the controversy surrounding Scarlett Johansson’s global ambassadorship for SodaStream, could have contributed to the weakening of the shekel. There’s no doubt about it, we’re moving to another level of public discourse when Haaretz reports on the dollar reaching the highest rate against shekel in a month with a headline that reads Boycott worries may be undermining Israeli currency, economists say. The article included the above screenshot of SodaStream’s Johansson promotional with the caption: “Indirectly, she’s influencing the shekel, analysts say.” Haaretz:
The dollar shot up 0.7% to a Bank of Israel rate of 3.521 shekels, setting the month-plus record. In late trading, the U.S. currency was at 3.528 shekels. The euro strengthened against the shekel by 0.2% to 4.75 shekels even as it weakened against the dollar. ….. The central bank was apparently prompted to move when the shekel strengthened to 3.483 shekels on January 24. Since then the dollar has gained about 1% on the Israeli currency. FXCM said that as long as the greenback stays above 3.50, the trend favors the Bank of Israel toward a strengthening of the dollar. Another factor that may be weighing on the shekel, rather than pushing the dollar higher, is the threat of boycotts and sanctions against the Israeli economy, said Gozlan. He said a spate of announcements of boycott actions by European banks and pension funds, as well as the controversy around Scarlett Johansson’s appearance in an Israeli company’s ad campaign, had drawn attention to the boycott efforts and may have scared off some investors. “While the market isn’t assigning much importance to it right now, if the boycott issue grows it could easily weaken the shekel,” Gozlan warned.
The shekel weakened against the dollar after Israel’s central bank, the Bank of Israel, along with Israel’s Finance ministry “aggressively” intervened in the market by purchasing a “massive” $500 million last week to halt the appreciation of the shekel “to act to balance the exchange rate so it’s not hurting exports as much.” Israeli exporters have been lobbying for a halt to the climbing shekel, the world’s strongest currency last year, for awhile. Purchasing foreign currency is routine, but some of last months interventions were unexpected, characterized as “surprising” and intervening to a “major extent“. Monday Bloomberg Business Week reported ”the shekel’s best days may be over”. And as we reported last month, some Israeli exporters (settler farmers) in the Palestinian breadbasket of the Jordan Valley are getting nervous. According toBloomberg Business Week Israel’s exporters are expecting to double job cuts this year. So are those SodaStream bubbles beginning to look like falling shekels yet? Last week the Economist, in covering the SodaStream/Johansson fiasco, linked to Omar Barghouti’s excellent op ed in the New York Times explaining “Israel has watched with growing anxiety” as Palestinian activists forced Johansson to make a decision over her loyalties to Oxfam or apartheid SodaStream. It’s another great read. The Economist:
Israel has deliberately set about to erase the lines between its pre-1967 borders and the settlements, in both physical and economic terms. With the state subsidising housing and economic development in the settlements, Israeli financial institutions have no real way to extricate themselves from the settlement project. Earlier this year that led to the decision by PGGM, a major Dutch pension fund, to cut off its tens of millions of euros’ worth of investments in Israel’s top five banks: it could not reconcile them with its corporate code of ethics. Other large European financial institutions are considering doing the same. Israeli infrastructure companies are equally unable to separate themselves from activities in the territories, and European infrastructure firms have now begun cutting off joint ventures with Israeli counterparts. Like Ms Johansson, they are finally being forced to choose. …Ms Johansson isn’t the only one in this drama who has tried to have things both ways for as long as possible. Israel has watched with growing anxiety as Palestinian activists have succeeded in forcing Oxfam and Ms Johansson to make a choice. The divestment of European firms, the growing power of liberal Jewish organisations that oppose and denounce the occupation, the intense blitz of visits by John Kerry to force progress in the peace process, the widening cracks in Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition: all of this points to what Thomas Friedman characterised this week as a turning point in the relationship to the territories. The question of whether Israel has the intention and the willpower to ever pull out is finally going to have to be answered. Last week a top Israeli think tank laid out a new bottom line: if the peace talks with the Palestinians fail, Israel is simply going to have to unilaterally pull out of the 85% of the West Bank it hasn’t directly occupied. The indecision, the deferral, the fantasy of Greater Israel is going to have to end.
P.S. I got raked over the coals by the Jewish News yesterday for reporting that SodaStream stock fell Monday, and an analyst cited the negative effect of possible “sanctions over Jewish Settlements“. I can’t wait for the News to read Haaretz. (Hat tip Tom Pessah)
Israeli govt, businessmen to meet over global boycott threat
RT
A man walks in the Jewish settlement of Efrat at the Israeli occupied West Bank (AFP Photo)Amid faltering peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli politicians and business leaders are forced to consider a host of international boycotts that threaten to damage the economy of the Jewish state, local media reveal. Israeli Cabinet ministers are set to meet next week to address a growing international campaign to boycott trade over ongoing Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli daily Haaretz reported. In the latest development, Norway’s Finance Ministry directed its $810 billion sovereign wealth fund to blacklist two Israeli firms “due to contribution to serious violations of individual rights in war or conflict, through the construction of settlements in east Jerusalem.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry had no comment on the matter, The Jerusalem Post reported. The European Union recently moved to block funding to any Israeli organization operating on settlements built on Palestinian land seized during the Six Day War of 1967, which is viewed by the international community as illegal. The criticism has even reached into the upper star-studded strata of Hollywood. American actress Scarlett Johansson, who has come under criticism over her ad campaign for a company that operates out of the occupied territories, has stepped down as Oxfam ambassador. Finally, James Rawley, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, criticized Israel’s demolition on Thursday of 36 homes in the Jordan Valley that displaced 66 people, including 36 children. “I am deeply concerned about the ongoing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians… along the Jordan Valley where the number of structures demolished more than doubled in the last year,” he said in a statement. Amid this wave of boycotts and condemnation, a group of influential Israeli businesspeople has launched a publicity campaign calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to forge a peace agreement with the Palestinians for the sake of Israel’s economy, which is heavily dependent on exports. Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU’s ambassador to Israel, told AFP last week that Israel’s ongoing settlement construction was aggravating private initiatives to boycott products and services coming from the settlements.
Employees pack boxes of the SodaStream product at the factory in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim January 28, 2014. (Reuters/Ammar Awad)Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid emphasized what a failure to secure a lasting peace with the Palestinians could entail. “Europe is our primary market,” he noted. “Even a 20 percent fall in our trade with Europe would mean 9,800 workers being fired immediately.” “Even a partial European boycott would be felt by every Israeli, and the cost of living would go up,” he added. Last May, the Palestine Liberation Organization released an estimate of Israeli goods for export produced in settlements, which it put at 229 million euros annually. Amid the latest peace negotiations, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians seem overly optimistic about the prospects of a lasting settlement that both sides can live with. According to a Zogby Research Services poll, only around one-third of Israelis and Palestinians view a two-state solution as possible, although 74 percent of Israelis and 47 percent of Palestinians agree it is the desired outcome. “From the results of this poll, it is clear that the past 20 years have taken a toll on the confidence both Palestinians and Israelis have in the peace process that began with the 1993 signing of the Oslo accords,”the polling agency said. In early January, Israel published tenders for 1,400 new homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, once again putting the US-brokered peace efforts between the Jewish state and the Palestinians under threat. The announcement was expected in December, after Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners as part of the US-brokered deal to secure the resumption of peace negotiations. However, it was delayed to allow US Secretary of State John Kerry to conclude his visit to the region. The restarted peace negotiations saw Israel and Palestine returning to the negotiation table after a three-year break in July last year. The talks are set to last until April.
More
U.S. bill would cut funding to backers of Israeli boycotts
On sanctions, Israel hasn’t seen anything yet
Scarlett Johansson row has boosted Israeli settlementboycott, say activists
Sanctions against Israel: A Campaign that is Gathering Weight