Israel’s own version of BDS

From when Balfour gave Palestine away during British rule, to supporting the creation of Israel, through to what is happening today, all our mainstream political parties have backed the zionist project. The British state has never been friends with Palestine.

For those who doubt this, let’s talk about think tanks.

We know the usual suspects, the ones that provided agendas to Thatcher and neoliberal governments around the world — most recently Argentina.

But then there’s the Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv since 2004, to provide strategic advice to the Israeli government. This isn’t a conspiracy theory — Reut has openly published most of its documents about the strategy, plan, and tactics it had proposed to the Israeli government. Its recommendations led to the setting up of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Israel took on funding a “second front” to undermine its critics.

Following Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006, there was, in 2008-9, a military operation called Cast Lead. This was Israel’s first major war on Gaza. It pales beside the genocide happening now.

Reut had identified that Israel had a strategic weakness — it couldn’t win by military might or force of arms alone. It saw that Israel had lost the global media and political war — particularly in the West, and especially in London. London was a hub; the solidarity movement and the trade unions were the culprits of the outlandish plot to criticise Israel for its actions.

Reut’s report, “Building a political firewall against the assault on Israel’s legitimacy — London as a case study,” was accepted in full by Israel.

The tactics were simple and not subtle — one paragraph is headed: Outing, naming and shaming the delegitimisers. The objective is to force them to “play defence,” with the goal being to eventually “frame them as anti-peace, anti-semitic and dishonest.”

Tactics included:

• Orchestrate the outing-naming-shaming campaign against key delegitimisers

• Engage key figures and organisations in the elite of the liberal and progressive circles

• Focus on negatively branding the other side

• Mobilise key Israeli activists, particularly in academic institutions

• Prioritise delegitimising the BDS movement

• Avoid association with the South African apartheid regime

And then the line: “The effort should be led and conducted by the GOI (government of Israel), ideally in co-ordination with the British government (This section is not for public disclosure)”.

This is Israel’s version of BDS — ban, demonise and subvert your critics.

In this enterprise, the British government and political elite have been complicit and transparent in their support for Israel’s objectives. Perhaps not surprising given that Britain and Israel are part of a much broader Western, imperial, neoliberal alliance, which sees Israel as the main bulwark of the West, US and Nato objectives in the Middle East.

However, these actions demonstrate how Israel has been so successful in driving or piggybacking its objectives into British government policy and actions.

Prevent, the British government’s so-called anti-radicalisation programme, is an example of this symbiosis. Introduced in legislation in 2015, the Prevent duty directly mirrors the Israeli narrative. Palestinians are Arabs, Arabs, and Hamas in particular, are extremists and terrorists. So, all Palestinians are legitimate targets — inhuman animals.

Prevent has, in practice, disproportionately targeted Muslims. Vocal support for Palestine among students is seen as a possible sign of extremism, as is opposition to Israeli settlements. We’ve seen this in schools too, with the banning of flags, badges and meetings — brilliantly upstaged by the recent school strikes.

Since 2020, universities, alongside an already compliant Labour Party, have been officially pressurised to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-semitism. This has become a weapon of naming and shaming — MPs, academics, students, Labour Party members. Nearly all fit Reut’s target group.

To quote Reut: “The most effective voices against Israel’s delegitimisation come from the ‘liberal and progressive left’”. Not the obvious far-right racists whom friends of Israel choose to work with.

In this looking-glass world, everything becomes anti-semitic. Notwithstanding the reports by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, mentioning Israel and apartheid in the same sentence is “anti-semitic”. The ICJ is, of course, anti-semitic, having the temerity to suggest that Israel has a plausible case to answer on the crime of genocide.

From the River to the Sea — originally and still a zionist slogan for colonising the whole of historic Palestine — is “hate speech” when chanted by Palestine supporters, yet not worth mentioning if it is said by members of the current Israeli cabinet.

And now we have the Labour Party being torn apart again. This might not be Keir Starmer’s defining moment. It is instead the moment he’s proving his inability to stand up for international law, and to stand up to the Israel-supporting lobby in this country taking its lead from Reut’s strategy, as promulgated by the Israeli government.

The attacks on activism are real and growing, but the marches for Palestine, and the hundreds of thousands of potentially new activists — with an impending general election — allow us to build the biggest possible alliances and coalitions, locally and nationally — inside and outside the Labour Party — to put Palestine on the ballot paper.

Despite all of Reut’s recommendations for hostile plotting and planning against solidarity with Palestine, Israel knows it is still losing overwhelmingly the global war of public opinion. But failing to realise that the best way to win friends and to silence its opponents would be to stop bombing Gaza, stop the carnage in Rafah, and end the occupation.