The Biblical
roots of BDS
Uniting the nations of the world in a common
hatred I BY Steve Apfel
Plots and characters in Torah are said to
portend what history will have in store
for the Jewish people. That being so, the
Balaam narrative foretold the plot against
modern Israel: if war could not bring
down the nation, then cursing would.
The compelling intrigue with its twists
and turns and bad forebodings is familiar
enough. It begins with the desire of Balak, King of Moab, to stop the redeemed
slaves in their tracks after unlikely victories over real armies. Military might was
not behind the juggernaut Jews, so Balak
understood. The power of the start-up nation, he learns, resided in their leader’s
power of speech. Moses was the secret
weapon. And this gave Balak an idea. If,
by speaking with G-d, Moses could empower the Jews, then equally they could
be disempowered by speech.
So the king contracts with a pagan
prophet for hire. A militant curser and
master of talking donkey, Balaam was
made for the job. This grandson of the
18 JEWISH LIFE n ISSUE 83
schemer Laban was born to curse. Up to
now, he made a good living out of plaguing
people to untimely and ugly deaths. The
Near East was rife with practitioners of
similar stamp, but here was a commission
that would make Balaam immortal. He was
offered a king’s ransom to badmouth G-d’s
own people. The end game is not necessarily to wipe the wandering multitude off the
face of the desert, but to keep them from
going into the Promised Land.
“Let us drive them out,” the king said at
a meeting with the elders of Moab and
Midian. It was not the Jews they feared, as
much as the idea of a sovereign state.
Homeless and stateless Jews were no problem; as far as the elders were concerned, Gd’s chosen could keep their difficult laws
anywhere they liked; or almost anywhere.
The Moabs and Midians were prepared to
live and let live. But a Jewish people in
possession of G-d’s own country – that
would be a different kettle of fish. Happy
with their deities and quaint perversions,
they feared that a sovereign Israel would
fundamentally make the world a different
place. So it was imperative that Moses and
his crowd be cursed into spiritual oblivion.
Listen, myriad voices urge at a farahead point in history, at which time the
people of Israel are living, and thriving, in
the Promised Land, and “human rights”
delegates by the thousands meet on the
side of a game-changing conference at the
Indian Ocean city of Durban. The year is
2001, and plots are afoot. Listen, the
plotters gabble; war after war has left Israel not just intact, but invulnerable. Why
not wage a different kind of war? This will
be a war that Israel can’t win. Words will
be our weapon. We’ll bring Israel to its
knees through the power of negative publicity, condemn and demonise the Zionists to the point where they become a pariah people. We’ll unite the nations of the
world in a common hatred.
This was an intoxicating vision, and
many entities and people bristling with
pent-up scores to settle, were intoxicated
by it. What could be simpler than picking
on the worst international crimes in the
book and laying them at Israel’s door!
Apartheid came to mind first; who
wouldn’t hate a country that implemented
apartheid! Ethnic cleansing, war crimes
and occupation came a close second, third
and fourth. The prospect was enough to
make the plotters salivate. With some
imaginative marketing and PR, and with
deep pockets to grease campaign wheels, it
didn’t take long for the plan to take effect.
Before Israel knew it, the court of public
opinion was onto its case. From there on,
it was all downhill. Setting an impossibly
high legal and moral bar to clear, Israel
was coerced into fighting terrorism with
kid gloves. And another ‘plus’ for the mischief-makers: it cost Jewish lives. “Be not
over righteous, nor too clever,” Ecclesiastes 7:16 warns the nation. And Shimon b
Lakish adds: “Whoever shows mercy to
the cruel will ultimately be cruel to those
deserving of mercy.” And so it proved. Innocent Jews by the thousands have been
murdered and maimed.
Name-calling is a curse. The name ‘Zionist’, especially when linked to ‘Nazi’, is
enough to make Jews young and old duck
and dive like criminals. The name-callers are
photographS: ILAN OSSENDRYVER
feature