Reactions to the Boycott Law

Some interesting reactions to the boycott ban:

Liel Leibovitz of Tablet Magazine:

I am a citizen of Israel. I also wholeheartedly support a ban on the settlements, which I believe to be illegal, morally reprehensible, theologically misguided, and politically ruinous. So sue me.
No, really: Now you can.

Marc Tracy, also of Tablet, writes:

In striking against the international BDS movement and its undeniable, and undeniably unfair, campaign of delegitimization with such an absurd, draconian gesture, isn’t the Israeli government compelling all honest observers to pay more attention to the motives and arguments of the BDS movement? It seems to me that MK Zeev Elkin, of Likud, the bill’s main sponsor, is the BDS movement’s most useful of idiots. He ought to get a cut of the donations that are about to pour in.

David Schraub picks up on the theme of useful idiots:

But the true stunner is that it looks like this law is even too much for ZOA's Mort Klein, who said "Nobody was more appalled by the boycott of Ariel theater than me, but to make it illegal? I don't think so."

I mean, seriously? How badly do you have to fuck up for Mort Klein to attack you from the left? Mort Klein criticizing Israel for being too harsh on its critics is like hearing Pat Robertson condemn a "family values" org for being too homophobic. It's a sign that you didn't just go off the deep end, but cracked your head open on the side of the pool mid-leap.

Gush Shalom, which already in the 1990s began a campaign to boycott goods produced at the settlements (I remember reading their list of things produced at the settlements at that time), has filed a petition to overturn the boycott law:

The appeal states that the new law violates basic democratic principles: “The parliamentary majority seeks, through the Boycott Law as by other pieces of legislation, to silence any criticism of government policy in general and of government policy in the Occupied Territories in particular, and to prevent an open and productive political dialogue, which constitutes the basis for a functioning democratic regime” (art. 7).