Israel’s man in Scotland admits: boycott is biting

Revealingly, this Israeli official admits for the first time what other Israeli officials have been at pains to deny, that the BDS campaign is biting: "They do some damage in trying to promote boycotts of Israeli produce.” Poor Golombok has let a rather large cat out of the bag, admitting what his political masters have long been keen to deny in public.

An Israeli spokesman admits in today's Jewish Telegraph (26.02.10) that

  • the Boycott campaign is "doing damage"
  • constant anti-Semitism baiting of opponents doesn’t wash any more
  • support for Palestinians is rising

Ezra Golombok works in Scotland for the Israeli regime. He has orchestrated several campaigns of lies over the years against “enemies of the Sate”, e.g. an absurd villification of Glasgow University Rector, Mordechai Vanunu, as a terrorist. Defending ethnic cleansing, however, is a pretty thankless task these days, as he lets slip in an article in today’s Jewish Telegraph. Golombok notes a ‘steady increase in support for the Palestinians in Scotland in recent years’ and sees “a highly active anti-Israeli lobby in Scotland,” behind “so many … distressing…motions against Israel in the Scottish Parliament.”

Ignoring the obvious cause in public disgust at repeated Israeli massacres, bulldozing of homes, state-enforced racism and other crimes, the Israeli apparatchik attributes the Zionist State’s unpopularity to the fact that local "activist leaders are knowledgeable, expert in exploiting any situation for” what Hajo Meyer with two of the Palestine campaigners accused of racismhe claims is “sniping at Israel”. He unwittingly praises the "Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign [as] one of the main sources of anti-Israeli action" and claims the “disturbing…activities of a vociferous anti-Israel body” lie behind an “upsurge in anti-Israel content in the media” in Scotland. He is clearly rattled by the testimony of Hajo Meyer and Hedy Epstein, each of them a “Holocaust survivor who compares Israel's actions with that of the Nazis”. 

So, a malevolent minority exerts undue influence on the media and Parliament. There are, of course, simpler explanations for opposition to a State born in ethnic cleansing and needing regular bloodletting to keep down its victims in their refugee camps and ghettoes.

Revealingly, this Israeli official admits for the first time what other Israeli officials have been at pains to deny, that the BDS campaign is biting: "They do some damage in trying to promote boycotts of Israeli produce.” Poor Golombok has let a rather large cat out of the bag, admitting what his political masters have long been keen to deny in public, while admitting the effectiveness of the BDS campaign in private. We must none the less be grateful that he lets the many unsung heroes of the BDS campaign, those who selflessly protest outside Waitrose or elsewhere every week, or push BDS motions through trade union or church meetings in draughty rooms on rainy nights, that our work is having an impact and that the tide us is turning.

The official spokesman of the State of Israel claims that “The SPSC website is filled with virulent hatred of all things Israeli,” ignoring the many articles by Israelis who stand up for human rights, e.g Warschawski, Machover, the Alternative Information Centre, and others. The racist Golombok’s words, however, do reflect our burning hatred of Israeli ethnic cleansing and state-enforced racism. Guilty!

Violent Jewish settlers: why do so many people hate Israel?One can hear the distinct sound of whistling in the dark when Golombok suggests there is little hostility to Israel and its crimes.
No Zionist can quite let go of the tired old racist conflation of anti-Semitism with support for Palestinian human rights, and Golombok goes through the motions, but he also sees that this no longer plays well and that another strategy is called for. The Jewish Telegraph article simply asserts that “a steady increase in support for the Palestinians in Scotland in recent years…has led to raised levels of antisemitism in the country” evidencing an email, a blog comment and a single school gibe, so thin really that Golombok concedes that such “incidents are rare”. That hasn’t prevented Scottish Zionists almost certainly fabricating an anti-Jewish incident in the past to smear human rights campaigners. (Article to be published shortly on this site.)

The Israeli spokesman is not a complete fool, though, and at no time alleges that the Scottish PSC is anti-Semitic. He knows that the last group of Scottish Zionists who went publicly down that road had to reverse out by pulping 6,000 copies of the slanderous book that contained the malicious and false allegation after being threatened by our libel lawyers.

He also seems to have realised that smearing Scottish trade unionists and Government Ministers, or for that matter, the entire population of Europe, as racist is a no-brainer. The Israeli spokesman sees the need to vacate this losing position and admit that the mass of people’s “basic sense of fairness has not departed” and that defenders of Israel need “to respond…be well-informed…and then to put the Israel - indeed the Jewish - case…” Leave aside the racist smear against Scottish Jews that they are all implicated in Israeli ethnic cleansing, Golombok is now calling for the Zionists to play a different note from the failed one of constantly screeching “anti-Semitic” at supporters of Palestinian human rights.”

The Israeli Information Office in Scotland may now feel the need to abandon the one-size-fits-all use of ‘anti-Semitism’ it has deployed for so long to silence some opponents of the apartheid State of Israel but the basic facts of Israel’s crimes will largely build the case for BDS by itself.

Scottish PSC will patiently explain to people that, according to the Israeli Information Office in Glasgow, we really are making a difference. .

Mick Napier
Chair, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign