BDS fails of the Week

 In BDS fail news of the week:

According to the International monetary fund, the Israeli economy is expected to grow by 3.8 percent in 2013 and 3.3% in 2014. Israel's economy may very well outpace other Western economies.  IMF economists indicate that Israel's economy was strong, stable and diverse. 

Thats after 12 years of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions. 

And in other recent BDS fails:

Since March, anti-Israel activists have been collecting signatures on a petition to ban Sabra hummus from the George Mason University Dining Services. In 7 months, this crusade against healthy eating has reached the milestone of 445 supporters, the vast majority of who are not GMU students, and have no affiliation with GMU.

Glancing at the petition, some signators may not be real human beings, either.

BDS fail, GMU.


This week also brought us two sold out Tel Aviv appearances by Tom Jones.   Check out his version of My Yiddishe Mama.


Paula Adbdul is loving Israel, and is letting the 2 million who follow her twitter feed know all about it.

Cultural boycott, fail.

Rather makes me think that organizers of last weekends Students for Justice in Palestine conference should have brought in grief counselors as they collectively mourned their 12 years of abject failure.

This weeks BDS Fail news

Foreign investment in Israel has surged in the second quarter of 2013.  Net foreign investment has grown to $5.1 billion - its highest level in more than two years, and 4% up compared with the first quarter. Israel’s exports goods rose  0.7% from the first quarter to $23.8 billion in the second.

What were you saying about the unstoppable BDS movement, again?

And there is another chapter in the ongoing saga  "If the Palestinians don't Boycott Israel, why should the Presbyterians/American Universities/  Performing artists"?

Israel and  the Palestinian Authority have agreed to establish a regional center for economic and agricultural cooperation.

From Arutz Sheva

The initiative aims to improve food quality for the PA population, and to assist both Israel and the PA in fighting crop disease and infestation, both of which can easily cross man-made borders.

 The return to pre-2000 status will mean the reestablishment of several committees, including committees for marketing, for the protection of plant life, and for veterinary care. The Israeli Agricultural Ministry will also resume providing workshops and other guidance for interested PA resident farmers, on topics including food production, veterinary oversight of slaughterhouses, and vegetable export.
“Residents of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority territories benefited from the upgrade in economic cooperation,” he said. “There is no doubt that agricultural cooperation will help reduce regional tensions, by creating an economic mechanism that is good for both sides.”

Peace through economic cooperation. What a novel idea. So much for the "civil society" that the BDS movement purports to represent.  Try mentioning it to a BDS'er, though. Watch the smoke come out of their ears while they attempt to process it,  before resorting to their banal platitude "No normalization with the oppressor".

Israel: Best Economy in the West

The attempts of the BDS'ers to economically isolate the world's only Jewish state approached epic failure this year, with the Israeli economy recently pronounced "The Best in the West"

In spite of a world-wide recession, and the BDS'er's best efforts, Israel's Gross national product grew by 4.5% in 2010, compared with only 2.7% in the other 33 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Israel became an OECD member state this past September.

Since Israel's independence, exports have increased 11,250 times, according to a report by the Israel Export and Cooperation Institute. Exports totaled $6 million in 1948, and grew to $67.5 billion in 2009. The current export value has more than doubled since 1998, and is $6.5 billion less than the expected figure for 2010.

Yep, BDS= epic fail.

And on a related note, candy sweet Sharon persimmons are back at the Berkeley Bowl. Enjoy them while you can- the season is way too short. They are great eaten like an apple- but try them sliced thinly in a spinach salad, with sliced red onions, and a fruit or nut based vinaigrette. You can eat well, torment the BDS'ers, and help Israel's economy grow grow grow, in a single step.

Life is good.

Yawn: Marking 5 years of Failure: BDS Media Day fizzles

A call from the usual suspects to turn July 9th into BDS Media day has taken on water and sunk like a brick. Locally, the Meserele verdict and ensuing “Will loot for justice” riots took precedence over the non story of BDS "success".

Anti-Israeli activists were urged by their handlers to “celebrate their achievements” on July 9th by

- Publishing BDS articles in the local and national press;

- Briefing journalists on BDS activities, establish enduring relationships and make a case with them on why they should cover BDS;

- Staging public actions with focus on media, such as direct action and launching of high profile campaigns, publicize legal actions, expose violators and promote public debates;

- Use alternative media to mark the anniversary;

The day instead was marked by neither sound nor fury, nor press coverage.

I visited the Berkeley Bowl, a local independent grocer on July 9th, to see what was happening in the campaign to bully the Bowl into compliance by the local enforcers of "political correctness". The store was quiet, though I couldn’t help but notice they’ve added a new line of Israeli olive oils to their stock.

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement has a long history of failure. The single best documentation of the divestment movement can be found here

"During the very period when BDS was supposedly on the march, the size of Israel’s economy (as measured by GDP) nearly doubled from $110B to $190B. Now given that the BDS project is based on their activity having economic consequence for the Jewish state, the takeaway from this chart seems to be that such consequence has been an explosion of growth in the Israeli economy."

A recent article in Bloomberg News called the Israeli economy one of the world's "happy stories"

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described Israel was one of the small number of countries, such as Canada and Australia, that were able to weather the current crisis well. Israel’s rebound from the global financial crisis has been powered by exports, which make up almost 50 percent of gross domestic product.

Israel’s economy expanded an annualized 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010, led by exports.

Omar, what were you saying about "momentum" in the BDS movement again?