‘Boycott campaign endangering Israel’

‘Boycott campaign endangering Israel’

A top American Jewish leader says the growing international campaign to boycott Israel over illegal settlements is one of Tel Aviv’s greatest challenges.

On Thursday, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, called on Western governments to work against the phenomenon.

“We have to counter the BDS movement in the strongest possible way,” Hoenlein said, referring to an international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions — knows by its acronym, BDS.

“That means zero tolerance, and that has to become the mantra of our time,” he stated.

Israel has faced the widening boycott campaign by some European businesses over its illegal settlement activities on the occupied Palestinian land.

Two of Europe’s biggest financial institutions have boycotted transactions with Israeli companies involved in the settlement construction.

The European Union has also blocked all grants and funding to any Israeli entity based in the illegal settlements.

The American Studies Association has also announced a decision to boycott Israeli institutions and academics over the discriminatory treatment of Palestinians.

Israelis are frustrated in the face of the boycott campaign. Cabinet ministers will hold a meeting next week in an attempt to find a strategy to counter the boycotts.

In an interview with Press TV on August 2, 2013, Iranian political analyst Hamid Golpira said that there should be an international campaign “to show that Israel is an apartheid regime, just like South Africa was an apartheid regime. And there should be a worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the apartheid regime of Israel, just as there was a campaign against apartheid South Africa.”

Israeli officials have recently announced plans to build thousands of more illegal settler units on Palestinian territory, despite the opposition of the United Nations and the international community.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

The UN and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

And the apartheid regime of Israel denies about 1.7 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs that pay proper wages, and adequate healthcare and education.

Gaza has been blockaded since 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.