While BDS wants to undermine the spiritual foundation of the Jewish People it’s forcing the most assimilated Jews to ask themselves “Why can’t I just be accepted like all the other nations?” And while these questions become more troubling and pressing each Jew will have to find an answer
Much of the Jewish world is dismayed and indignant (and rightly so) over a recent wave of anti-Israel actions taken by commercial and political organizations around the globe. Orange Telecom contemplated cutting its ties with Israel; FIFA the world soccer federation nearly kicked Israel’s teams off its roster; and the BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) movement has been calling on the world to exclude Israel from the global economy ostensibly out of concern for the human rights of Palestinian Arabs but in fact out of a rabid desire to destroy the Jewish State.
But let’s not get carried away by the headlines. Instead let’s stop and think about what’s really happening. We might find that bad as it all looks something good is concealed within.
Indeed the BDS movement seems to be a huge societal danger. Its sophisticated propaganda portrays Israeli soldiers as cruel butchers of Palestinian children; it accuses Israel of being an apartheid state that discriminates against its Arab population and violates human rights. All this to an audience only too ready to believe such lies while many universities in Europe and the United States have aligned themselves with its cause. Sad to say this propaganda campaign has even won over a considerable number of Jewish students who are ashamed to be identified with a state they perceive as racist.
The BDS movement is fighting not only against Israel’s occupation of Judea and Samaria and the promotion of a Palestinian state on the West Bank but against the very existence of the State of Israel. Spokesmen for the movement have declared openly that their aim is force Israel to capitulate to dissolve itself and let itself be pushed out of the global community on every level. On the developmental level Israel is to be banned from the scientific community and corporations and investors are under pressure not to invest in Israeli industry; Orange is one example. Businesses and consumers are under pressure to boycott Israeli products. Tourists are urged to visit anywhere but Israel. The pipedream of BDS is that the Jewish State will crumble Palestinian refugees will return to their former homes and a single state with an Arab majority will hold sway from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean coast. And this dream is gaining support around the world.
Despite the inroads made by BDS the actual damage it has inflicted on Israel is negligible — so far. Very few sectors are in fact boycotting Israel. Big international investors continue to invest research foundations continue quoting Israeli studies. Yet the main concern is the long-range influence of the false propaganda. What will happen when the university students of today their minds poisoned by lies come to occupy key positions in the politics economy and culture of tomorrow?
And even now while the actual damage done is not significant BDS has filled the world with antipathy toward everything pertaining to Israel. Behind the mask of a pro-Palestinian stance lurks the evil face of classic anti-Semitism a phenomenon that has never disappeared. And day by day it is peeping out more and more from behind that mask. There is something very troubling in the air today.
What then could possibly be good about this situation?
The good lies in the very fact that Jews especially Jewish students on university campuses are facing an identity crisis provoked by the political climate around them. These students have grown up in a world where all borders are open to them. Most are estranged from their Jewish roots and live as equals in a society that seems to accept them with no more thought to their Jewishness than they themselves give to it.
But suddenly they are challenged. Because they are Jewish their fitness to serve as leaders of campus groups is questioned. They are attacked as representatives of the abhorred Jewish state although they’ve never set foot there and have no intention of doing so. So now they’re forced to confront an issue they have evaded all their lives: How could it be that in 2015 in an open pluralistic democratic society they are encountering anti-Semitism in the hallowed halls of academia and not as an abstract concept but as a tangible and personal thing? Judaism means little or nothing to them yet the unfamiliar label of “Jew” is being slapped on them regardless even as they always assumed they were regular citizens of a modern country along with everyone else.
Bewildered they wonder: “Why am I being singled out all of a sudden? I’m totally American. Why am I being discriminated against? Why are the other students (and professors too) looking at me that way? Will I never be able to escape the fate of being born a Jew?”
ON A DEEP LEVEL the Jewish student’s crisis is exactly what BDS is aiming for. The BDS movement wants every Jew in the world and the State of Israel itself to be thoroughly shaken. It wants to undermine the spiritual foundation of the Jewish People. It wants us to ask ourselves “What’s the matter with me? Why can’t I just be accepted like all the other nations? I try so hard to be okay to take the right position on every issue.” And the more strength the campaign accrues the more troubling and pressing these questions will become. And each Jew will have to find an answer.
The true answer to this critical question was provided by the prophet of the nations the wicked one-eyed Bilaam himself the archetypal anti-Semite who climbed a mountain in Moav to cast down his curses upon the Jewish People. Thousands of years ago he foresaw the plight of the assimilated Jewish student in Southern California or Boston or Paris in 2015.
Bilaam’s words are worth heeding. He pronounced the timeless unalterable law governing the character of the Jewish nation in one brief sentence: “They are a people that dwells alone.”
The Netziv of Volozhin elaborates in his commentary on the Torah Ha’amek Davar:
“And this is the form of the nation as a whole and such is the Will of HaKadosh Baruch Hu that they should so conduct themselves as is written above in the song of Ha’azinu ‘Hashem alone shall guide it and there shall be no strange god with it.’ Rava said ‘I said “And Israel dwelled secure and alone ” but now “How (Eichah) has she come to dwell alone?” ’ The explanation: The Will of HaKadosh Baruch Hu is that Israel be alone and not mingled with the nations of the world in honor and tranquility. Now that they have spoiled things and not preserved their form and have mingled with the nations they have been isolated in another manner; that is the nations of the world separate from them.”
This is the message that is being brought to us by the renaissance of global anti-Semitism. The Jewish People is meant to dwell alone maintaining spiritual and cultural separation from the nations of the world. And when hatred of the Jews reappears in one of its many guises it comes as a reminder that it is not for us to be a member of the rank and file of nations. “You are a Jew!” it screams. Or “You are supposed to be the Jewish state! Stop trying to be like the rest of us! Get back where you belong!” When we forget our true place the place where our blessing lies we are pushed back there with curses. But says the Netziv when the Jewish People do not aspire to be like the nations and instead maintain a separate way of life the non-Jews respect and idealize them.
Today BDS is the goad that is driving young Jews to look at themselves and their roots to reaffirm their identity. The BDS movement is merely a tool of Hashem’s hashgachah. It is bringing Bilaam’s message back to us a message we should heed. It is telling us “Do you feel alone in the world? Well you should! And that isn’t a bad thing. In fact it’s a blessing.” —