BDS panic

[yankeedoodle]

BDS is clearly coming on strong despite all these efforts. At that event on December 5, Goldberg went on about the BDS panel that dare not speak its name, and related an anecdote from his daughter's college campus....She reports that the largest Jewish organization — 25 percent of this campus is Jewish — the largest Jewish organization is a group called Jewish Voice for Peace, which is an Orwellian name for a group that opposes Israeli's existence.

MR. HERZOG: We saw a huge write up it in Israel. It's a huge BDS group.

Goldberg then said that sentiment toward Israel in the American Jewish comunity was "radically shifting," and asked Lieberman if he cared. Lieberman said, "To speak frankly, I don't care." He called for better hasbara and Zionist education.

Later a woman in the audience, evidently Jewish, implored Lieberman to care.

you are also missing something if you think that any amount of education is going to change the fact that the millennials today do not relate to the narrative that you're expressing. And so my question for you is simple. Do you care if we lose the young Jews in the diaspora?

 

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/brookings-institution-counter?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=91cc66fc16-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-91cc66fc16-398535957

[Idaho Kid]

"Change the narrative"?  Not the facts of our behavior, just the fuckin' marketing.  Beautiful.

[rmstock]

[rmstock]

Why did Brookings Institution hold a secret panel countering BDS?
by Philip Weiss on December 17, 2015 3 Comments
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/brookings-institution-counter



Jeffrey Goldberg

  "Last June, Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson held a secret summit in Las
   Vegas to come up with ways of fighting the Boycott, Divestment and
   Sanctions campaign on college campuses. They raised a reported $50
   million to do so.
   
   Well now that secret process seems to have moved on to far more
   influential turf, to Washington, D.C., and a leading liberal thinktank:
   last week the Brookings Institution held a secret panel on BDS,
   sponsored by Haim Saban. By all appearances, the intent of the panel
   was to counter the BDS campaign.
   
   The panel took place during the weekend-long annual Saban Forum, which
   brings Israeli leaders and US leaders together to talk about "the
   future for Israelis and Palestinians"–without any Palestinians in
   attendance. The BDS panel was among many meetings December 4-6 not
   mentioned on the Saban Forum's public agenda.
   
   On Saturday night, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg said at a public panel:
   "This morning at the BDS panel–" But he was promptly hushed.
   
   "Which was off the record," a woman's voice says; and my guess is it's
   the same voice who just introduced Goldberg, Tamara Cofman Wittes, the
   leader of the conference.
   
   Goldberg jokingly called the BDS panel the "Dimona" of panels, a
   reference to Israel's secret nuclear program, and reported on its dire
   mood:
   
       "If the BDS panel took place, there would have been a feeling that
        the Israeli participant in the panel was the object of a lot of
        yearning and anxiety from some Americans who felt as if Israel was not
        paying sufficient attention to what's going on on campuses and beyond."
   
   Goldberg wasn't the only journalist at the panel. Chemi Shalev of
   Haaretz was there and referred elliptically to it in print when he
   described the mood of the Saban forum as being one of "anxiety and
   anguish" on the part of Americans.
   
   I asked Shalev why he had agreed to treat a newsworthy panel as off the
   record, and I said I found it unseemly that Brookings was performing an
   "AIPAC-like function" in fighting the BDS movement, and doing so in
   secret. He responded to me:
   
       "The Saban inviters lay down the ground rules for the entire forum
        and one can either choose to accept and attend or reject and not
        attend. I chose the former... I don't agree with characterization of what
        was going on at Saban, re 'AIPAC like function'; in fact, I would say
        the opposite: criticism of Israeli government and deep frustration with
        its policies overwhelmingly outstripped praise or support, as I myself
        have written."
   
   When I asked Shalev whether any supporter of BDS was on the panel, he
   declined to answer, but said my guess on that score was probably right.
   That means no one was advocating for BDS.
   
   I wrote to Wittes, director of the Brookings Center for Middle East
   Policy, and to a Brookings spokesperson to ask who was on the panel and
   what its title was, and if any advocates for BDS were on the panel.
   Neither responded to my questions.
   
   Brookings would surely defend the secret panel by saying it's part of a
   largely off-the-record conference among Israeli and American leaders.
   Shalev described the gathering in his article as a meeting of "[Haim]
   Saban's American contingent of Brookings scholars, former Democratic
   administration officials and members of Congress" and an "Israeli
   delegation of mainstream Israeli politicians, journalists and
   businessmen."
   
   Americans should be asking why such a conference is taking place behind
   closed doors at a leading liberal thinktank– and why it's tackling BDS,
   which Israeli leaders have termed an "existential" threat to Israel.
   
   The gathering is a reflection of the power of the Israel lobby in
   Washington. Saban is an ardent Zionist. Both Wittes and Goldberg
   referred affectionately to Israeli politicians Yitzhak Herzog and
   Avigdor Lieberman by their nicknames, "Boogie" and "Yvet."
   
   What were they talking about at the BDS panel? In the Saban Forum
   transcript of Goldberg's public comments on Saturday night (the audio

http://7515766d70db9af98b83-7a8dffca7ab41e0acde077bdb93c9343.r43.cf1.rackcdn.com/151205_Saban_HerzogandLieberman.mp3

   is a bit more inclusive), Goldberg brought up the BDS panel as evidence
   of the "pervasive unease on the part of many Americans" about Israel's
   conduct: "trying to warn their Israeli friends that a train is coming
   barreling down the tracks" and they're just standing there.
   
   Many of those Americans are Jewish Zionists. Shalev reported that the
   American group at the conference were reassured by Israeli Prime
   Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement to the conference that he still
   favored the "two-state solution." That might be hypocritical, Shalev
   observed, but it's how the game works:
   
       Armed with this facade, American Jews can lobby the administration
       to support Israel, protest against unwarranted bias in Europe and the
       United Nations, and, most importantly, look themselves in the mirror.
   
   Brookings might defend a secret panel on BDS by pointing out that
   countless US politicians are opposing BDS. Many Republicans have come
   out against  BDS. And in her speech to the Saban conference the day
   after the BDS panel, Hillary Clinton asserted — laughably– that BDS is
   hurting the American ability to counter terrorism in the Middle East,
   because it is hurting our closest ally in the fight against extremism.
   She was surely pandering to Haim Saban. Clinton wrote a letter to Saban
   last summer that she promptly published, promising to work with
   Republican politicians to oppose BDS.
   
   I find the whole matter unseemly. BDS is one of the chief threats to
   Israel, Netanyahu has said. So a leading liberal American thinktank is
   aligning itself with Israel on that battle? And if it is, why can't it
   do so openly? One can fairly ask if Saban's largesse is dictating the
   Brookings position, and that of the Democratic Party too.
   
   BDS is clearly coming on strong despite all these efforts. At that
   event on December 5, Goldberg went on about the BDS panel that dare not
   speak its name, and related an anecdote from his daughter's college
   campus.
   
      Goldberg: Our oldest daughter is a freshman at a liberal arts
       college in New England, a pretty well-known school. And she reports to
       us that J Street at that street
       represents the Zionist right–"
   
       [Haim Saban seems to break in on Goldberg from the audience.]
   
       "I wish it were funny, Haim. I wish it were funny. I mean, it's
       funny, but it's not funny. It could be both funny and not funny at the
       same time. Have you ever heard of a tragic comedy? You live in
       Hollywood. She reports that the largest Jewish organization — 25
       percent of this campus is Jewish — the largest Jewish organization is a
       group called Jewish Voice for Peace, which is an Orwellian name for a
       group that opposes Israeli's existence.
   
       MR. HERZOG: We saw a huge write up it in Israel. It's a huge BDS
       group.
   
   Goldberg then said that sentiment toward Israel in the American Jewish
   comunity was "radically shifting," and asked Lieberman if he cared.
   Lieberman said, "To speak frankly, I don't care." He called for better
   hasbara and Zionist education.
   
   Later a woman in the audience, evidently Jewish, implored Lieberman to
   care.
   
       you are also missing something if you think that any amount of
       education is going to change the fact that the millennials today do not
       relate to the narrative that you're expressing. And so my question for
       you is simple. Do you care if we lose the young Jews in the diaspora?
   
   Jewish Voice for Peace is surely the fastest-growing Jewish group in
   the country and the largest Jewish peace and justice organization in
   the US. It has 200,000 supporters. It has no place at Brookings– and it
   wasn't invited to the Haaretz New Israel Fund conference last weekend
   either."

[yankeedoodle]

At 1:30 into the video, this quote: 

Chaos and confrontation.  Everywhere we look around the world, there is mayhem.  And no one is better positioned to address these challenges, to speak with us about them tonight, than the Israeli Minister of Defense, Moshe  Ya'alon, also known to his friends as "Bogie"... 

NO FUCKING SHIT.  And, who is responsible?  Well, obviously, it is he who is best positioned to speak about this, this fucking Bogie. 

Fucking jews. 

[rmstock]

At 1:30 into the video, this quote: 

Chaos and confrontation.  Everywhere we look around the world, there is mayhem.  And no one is better positioned to address these challenges, to speak with us about them tonight, than the Israeli Minister of Defense, Moshe  Ya'alon, also known to his friends as "Bogie"... 

NO FUCKING SHIT.  And, who is responsible?  Well, obviously, it is he who is best positioned to speak about this, this fucking Bogie. 

Fucking jews.

Are we sure this quote about the BDS is not part of the Saturday Night Standup
Comedy Acts at the Saban Smummit hosted by  the Brookings Institute ? :

MR. GOLDBERG: Buji, status quo. Sustainable?
page 11 of the transcript
MR. HERZOG: First of all, good evening. It's great to be here again,
   and thank you Haim and Cheryl and the whole team of Saban.
   Let me just put the stage correctly. Me and Mr. Lieberman are in the
   Opposition. I lead the Opposition; he leads one of the parties in the
   Opposition. We are neighbors on the same floor, and how do I know he's
   in the Knesset? I smell his cigar in my room.
MR. LIEBERMAN: It's a secret. It's a secret.
MR. HERZOG: We won't discuss. But that's mostly where we share some
   information. The rest of it we beg to differ on some major issues,
   except we agree that we want to change the government. Right, Ivette?
MR. LIEBERMAN: No, we have some other things also.
MR. HERZOG: Okay, good. But it's a main aim of ours.
MR. LIEBERMAN: Maybe not government but
page 12 of the transcript
   prime minister, of course.
MR. HERZOG: Okay. Done. So here's already a consensus in the Saban.
MR. GOLDBERG: Since you brought up a subject.
MR. HERZOG: Barak, you can tweet.
MR. GOLDBERG: Buji, since you brought up a subject, can I just get this
   out of the way? What conditions do you need before you would go into
   this government? What policy adjustments do you need from the prime
   minister?

[rmstock]

MR. GOLDBERG: Isn't it naïve, though, for people to argue that if
   Israel would just stop building settlements or reverse their
   settlements, that the BDS movement will disappear --
MR. HERZOG: It's not to do with settlements.
MR. GOLDBERG: Or that you can mitigate this?
MR. HERZOG: Look, I don't say that. You never heard me say it. All I'm
   saying is that you can change the course of many things, and the
   growing rift starts from the top down. The growing rift starts from the
   White House to the office of the prime minister in Jerusalem all the
   way down, and it influences media and it influences what young people
   see. And it has an ongoing influence. I'm not saying it's over, it's
   hopeless, but when I met with Randi
page 35 of the transcript
   Weingarten, the leader of the Teacher's Union yesterday, and she runs a
   million and a half -- she is the leader of a million and a half
   teachers, and she's out there competing BDS from within, and the
   American historical society is coming forward with BDS proposals, it's
   going to move from the outer periphery of the organizational
   establishment towards the center. And that is a major risk. And
   therefore, part of it has to do with the way we present our case. Part
   of it has to do with the way we behave. And we have to take it into
   account because people look at us and say we expect from you something
   else. And therefore, it has to do with the way we advocate our
   democracy and the way we protect our Supreme Court, and what we
   legislate against NGOs and so forth. And finally, it has to do also
   with changing the course in the Middle East and creating a Palestinian
   state.
MR. GOLDBERG: Ivette, do you think Israel could survive without U.S.
   support?