From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Israel should ‘drive wedge in heart of boycott calls,’ says Barak
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google“We live at a fascinating historical intersection. Israel finds itself in the meeting point of Huntington’s war of civilization, while at the same time we are at the eye of the storm between the factions, and the rise of a new anti-Semitism,” Barak says at the Herzliya Conference.
“This is a reality with many challenges but also many opportunities,” says Barak. The threat of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment campaign has “at once” become central, with “FIFA, Orange, Oxford and the Vatican.” Barak says he has been warning about the “diplomatic tsunami” Israel faces “for four years or more, but not in order to say that I was the one who warned first.”
“The prime minister,” Barak notes, “said that no matter what Israel does, they [the BDS activists etc.] will always fight,” since their fight is not about Israel’s policies but the sheer existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
Barak says the prime minister’s view “is indeed true about the ayatollahs in Qom, it is true about Nasrallah, it is probably true about Hamas and about the hard core of the BDS movement… but it is not true about Merkel, it is not true about Cameron, it is not true about Obama and it is not true about Putin.”
“Our main job,” adds the former prime minister, “is to drive a wedge between the dozens of leaderships of the free world and the hard kernel of BDS. Close your eyes and imagine – I know it’s hard — a government headed by Herzog, Lapid and Kahlon. Even more – imagine a government headed by Rabin. Does anyone have a doubt that this wave [of calls for boycott] would not have risen?” asks Barak.
“A government working with determination to separate from the Palestinians would automatically pass the onus [for the failure to make progress] to the Palestinians,” says Barak.
The Times of Israel Community.