Israel Schemes to Paint Boycott Backers as Terrorists

Spies Ordered to Dig Up Dirt Ahead of 'Media Blitz'

Lets just call them terrorists.

It may seem like an incredibly lazy and not particularly inventive strategy, but Israel is willing to bet that, amid threats of a new push for boycott and divestment from the settlements, they can slander boycott advocates into silence.

Israel held a whole special “ministerial meeting” on the matter recently, according to the Times of London, and made it a point not to invite the two moderate members of the government, Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni.

The reason is obvious: the threats of renewed boycott push are coming with the collapse of the peace talks, with EU officials saying there will inevitably be a big push after the talks finally crumble. Lapid and Livni have been pushing to make concessions to save the talks, and would doubtless have mucked up a meeting about how to handle the failure of peace talks by arguing that they should keep the talks from failing.

With so many far-right coalition members opposed to peace in general, that’s not an option, and instead the plan is to have spy agencies dig around for dirt trying to link any advocates to “terror organizations and enemy states.”

Israeli officials have long tried to paint opposition to Israeli policies as tantamount to terrorism, or Nazism, or anything else that might scare people away from public criticism, but seem to be willing to dial things up with the peace talks hanging on by a thread. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz is reported planning an international “media blitz” to publicize whatever their spy agencies manage to find or manufacture, in hopes of stemming the boycott talk before it gets so serious Israeli officials have to start considering something rash, like a peace deal.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.