opinion

BDS a bust in Middle East, alive in America

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BDS activists who think they are succeeding in isolating the State of Israel aren’t paying attention. On Sunday, reports surfaced that negotiations surrounding a gas pipeline to connect Israel’s natural gas resources to Cyprus, Greece and Italy have finally succeeded. The pipeline network will reportedly be the longest and deepest ever built. Initial estimates of the cost to build it start at $7 billion.

The good news doesn’t stop there. And that should influence the way we think about BDS.

The European Union invested $100 million into a feasibility study of importing Israeli natural gas. The plan, dubbed the EastMed Pipeline Project, will give Cyprus and Israel preference over other potential importers of gas to Europe.

The project, which will hopefully be completed in five years, will provide Israel’s already strong economy with a boost. But the preference for Israeli imports also signals that Arab influence over Europe, rooted in its ability to export oil and gas, is waning. With Europeans wanting alternatives to Arab and Iranian oil as well as Russian natural gas, Israel will not only profit from the transaction; its standing as an economy and a military power with will also grow.

The fact that Italy, Greece and Cyprus are prepared to join Israel and Egypt in joint military and civil exercises to protect the pipeline and regional security is equally important. Despite continued threats from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the Jewish state no longer stands alone.

Nor was that the only good news for Israel.

As part of Israel’s continuing effort to foster better relations with Africa, Idriss Déby, the president of Chad, arrived in the country for a state visit. Though in some ways a typical Third World authoritarian — Déby is a graduate of the late Libyan dictator and terror funder Moammar Gadaffi’s World Revolutionary Center — he now looks to the West and Israel for aid in the fight against the Boko Haram Islamist terrorists who threaten his country.

The visit is part of what appears to be a successful effort to normalize relations with the nations of Sudan, Niger, Mali and Chad — all of whom have predominantly Muslim populations. During the press conference with the Chadian leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that he would again travel to unspecified Arab countries — he was recently in Oman for an official visit — a step that would indicate that talk of Israel’s isolation is a fantasy.

Just as important were reports from the MED 2018 Conference in Rome that Arab countries who usually used such international forums for Israel-bashing were no longer doing so. Arab indifference to the Palestinian cause is painfully obvious. This trend stems more from antipathy to Palestinian rejectionism, and the recognition that Israel is the best ally the Arab world has against Iran, than any affection for Zionism. But it’s also proof that Arab nations are wary of schemes to create a Palestinian state that is likely to be dominated by radicals.

All that is bitter news for supporters of BDS. They blithely talk about widespread disdain for Israel. Even friends of Israel sometimes succumb to despair. Some on the right exaggerate the strength of its enemies, and many on the left assume that their criticisms of the Netanyahu government’s policies are so widely shared that it is only a matter of time before Israel faces total isolation as an “apartheid” state.

Both are wrong.

Israel’s enemies haven’t given up, and their hatred — rooted as it is the powerful virus of anti-Semitism that continues to fester around the world — isn’t going away. It’s also true that the hostility of academic elites and many in the media remains a powerful force seeking to delegitimize Zionism. Yet neither trend can erase the fact that Israel is more powerful and accepted today than it has ever been.

But all the good news about Israel’s acceptance should remind us of what is at stake. BDS advocates have had a few successes, such as the decision of Airbnb to single out Jews in the West Bank for discrimination. They’ve also managed to gain a foothold in the American Jewish community, with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace mainstreaming their anti-Zionist and even anti-Semitic views about Israel and its supporters.

But while such victories have been far fewer than their defeats, they have still managed to create an atmosphere on many campuses that makes it difficult for Jewish students to speak openly of their support for Israel.

Support for intersectional ideology, which claims the war against the one Jewish state on the planet is analogous to the struggle for civil rights in the United States, has grown on the left, on college campuses and with popular protest groups like the anti-Trump Women’s March. The willingness of those who embrace anti-Semites gives the lie to the assumption that left-wing Jew-hatred is confined to the fever swamps of American society, as it is on the far right.

We should celebrate Israel’s successes, which point to the utter failure of BDS on the international stage. But those stories only make it clearer that real battlefront against BDS is here in the United States, not in the Middle East.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.