Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

While Israel is under threat from actors seeking to undermine its political legitimacy and cause it economic damage through Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, several recent articles suggest that Israel’s economic resilience makes a successful boycott against it impossible.

In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Start Up Nation Dan Senor argued that international companies would never pull out of Israel – “what one person after another told us is that the one place in the world that would devastating for them to have shut down would be Israel, because they put so much of their mission-critical work  and R&D in Israel.”

Hussein Ibish meanwhile says that anyone who thinks a boycott of Israel in the US is plausible in the foreseeable future doesn’t understand the nature of the American relationship with Israel which includes strong corporate, governmental, intelligence, military, industrial and scientific ties.

In addition, the Financial Times quotes several businessmen who claim that the boycott movement is hardly affecting the Israeli economy.

One component that keeps on coming up is that international companies (such as google and intel) won’t pull out of Israel due to the qualitative edge that the country provides (in R&D etc).

In this context, perhaps promoting Israel’s unique economic advantage could be one component in fighting the BDS movement.

Related Posts

The Strategy of the ‘One Staters’

Bethlehem Seminar: A Sign of Intellectual Evolution in the Boycott Network

The BDS Movement vs. Israel Picking up Steam