When I read this report on the Electronic Intifada website claiming that the largest pension fund in The Netherlands had divested from the Israeli companies in its portfolio, it struck me that the campaign to subject Israel to a regime of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions - BDS for short - had hit a milestone. No longer, I said to myself, is this a matter of campus gesture politics. The long-awaited South Africa effect is finally manifesting.
Then it occurred to me that the story might not be true. I contacted the fund's managers, the Dutch company PGGM, and they confirmed my suspicions.
Back in May, Israel's economic vibrancy secured its admission into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD,) which gathers together the world's developed countries. As a result, funds focused upon emerging markets were obliged to withdraw their investments from Israeli companies, who'd moved to the different benchmark for developed markets. Bottom line: this had absolutely nothing to do with politically-motivated divestment.
If you read the Electronic Intifada piece closely, you'll notice the giveaway line "...divested from almost all the Israeli companies in its portfolio," begging the question of why, if you've embraced the BDS gospel, would you not divest from every single one? Again, the answer is that the Dutch fund didn't divest in the first place. That is why, in its portfolios that deal with developed markets, you will find two Israeli companies - the software developer Checkpoint (now there's a line for all you budding comedians) and the supermarket chain SuperSol.
This isn't the first time that BDS advocates have clumsily spun purely financial decisions as divestment. As Jon Haber, a particularly tenacious critic of the BDS movement, has observed, a pattern of hoaxes is clearly visible. In February 2009, Hampshire College officially denied the claim of a pro-Palestinian student group that it had divested from Israel. Up next was Blackrock, the UK investment firm, whose Vice President informed pro-BDS activists that its decisions regarding investments in Israel had nothing to do with political considerations. Then it was the turn of academic retirement fund TIAA-CREF to depress the mood at the BDS party by denying that it, too, had divested.
We're not done yet. There was the Motorola hoax. And perhaps most famously, Harvard University, which found itself thrust into the public eye as the latest champion of BDS this past summer. "The University has not divested from Israel," a spokesman calmly explained. "Israel was moved from the MSCI, our benchmark in emerging markets, to the EAFE index in May due to its successful growth. Our emerging markets holdings were rebalanced accordingly."
Harvard worked with the same set of considerations which informed the Dutch pension fund's decision - maybe, when the BDS campaigners failed to co-opt the jewel in the Ivy League's crown, they resolved to try their luck in Holland.
To anyone encountering the BDS issue for the first time, it must seem odd that a campaign that touts its moral integrity resorts to willful dishonesty as a strategy. If anything, the BDS movement's reliance on lying is a reflection of its manifest failure. Over a year ago, Jon Haber reached a conclusion which is just as insightful now:
Having failed to get a single college or university to divest in the Jewish state, having lost their few attempts to win a divestment victory with municipalities and unions, and now having lost the support of the Mainline Protestant community (once the flagship for the BDS enterprise), "Team Divestment" has been reduced to manufacturing pretend victories where none exist. The strategy seems to be to anticipate likely financial decisions (such as companies trying to get rid of their Israel-Africa shares as fast as possible, given the company's huge losses and exposure in the real estate markets), send out press releases claiming that these normal business transactions actually represent political choices on the part of large institutions, and hope someone in the media takes the bait.
But no one is taking the bait. In part, that's because the lies are so downright amateurish. Yet a no less important factor is the widespread understanding that BDS is not merely a tactical choice, but a tangible expression of an ideology which holds that Israel must be quarantined until it ceases to exist. And as anyone with the slightest shred of moral intelligence understands, such a ghastly outcome will be arrived at not through a peace process, but through a genocidal war.
Expect, therefore, more spectacular BDS failures in the coming months.
Follow Ben S. Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BenCohenOpinion
More high school drama from the AJC. Does this mean Europe's largest SWF is hoping Israel will "cease to exist" ? :))
Norway's state pension fund, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, has excluded two Israeli companies for "unethical activity" linked to settlement building in the Palestinian territories, the Norwegian government said Monday.
According to the finance ministry, the so-called oil fund, which contains nearly all state revenues from the country's booming oil and gas industry, has sold its holdings in Africa Israel Investments, which is the largest shareholder of Danya Cebus, which the fund says is involved "in developing settlements in occupied Palestinian territory."
"Several United Nations Security Council resolutions and an International Court of Justice advisory opinion have concluded that the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is prohibited under (the Geneva) Convention," Finance Minister Sigbjørn Johnsen said in a statement.
"I have therefore accepted the recommendation of the Council on Ethics and am excluding Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus from the fund's investment portfolio," he said.
Insofar as people looking to invest their retirements, well, maybe that's a financial practice that's coming due to be abolished in and of itself, separate of anything to do with Israel. But, as long as people do that kind of thing, and do the reading necessary to invest intelligently, companies and countries that deal in things like arms will always have to be leery of their reputations.
"Several minutes later, Israeli activist Matan Cohen stood up on his chair to unfurl yet another banner while shouting, “The siege on Gaza delegitimizes Israel!" Matan is the founder of Anarchists Against the Wall in Israel and has been a prominent organizer at Hampshire College. Cohen explained his reasoning for demonstrating: “Right now, the choice for those of us who care about the future of Israel and Palestine is between the status quo--which includes continued settlement expansion, the siege of Gaza, and the racist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman--or Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions. Given that choice, Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions will win every time.”"
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/jewish-values-vs-israeli-policies-why-five-young-jews-disrupted-pm-netanyahu-in-new-orleans.html
This is what I was to see in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Marin County, Portland and Seattle. It's not that they're getting involved in significant numbers in the divestment movement. It's that American Jews are divesting emotionally. They are quietly – but in terms of impact, dramatically – withdrawing altogether.
Not just Jews. Americans. And the younger they are, that is, the more crucial they are to Israel's future, the more likely they are to divest.]
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/bibi-tom-friedman-and-u-s-jews-divesting-from-israel-1.323586
The more they divest the more strongly American Jews and Americans support Israel. This is based on factual statistical pools not the bogus wishful thinking
May 14, 2009
The Council on Ethics Norwegian Government Pension Fund Government of Norway
Dear Members of the Council on Ethics,
We, Israeli organizations, comprised of Jewish and Palestinian women and men and dedicated to building a just peace and to promoting human rights and equal civil rights in Israel/Palestine, Call upon the Norwegian people to join us in our efforts and to stop investing in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
It has come to our attention that the Norwegian governmental Pension Fund, as of December 31st 2008, is heavily invested in corporations whose activities continuously support and maintain the Israeli occupation, in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law. These companies, both Israeli and international, build illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory or provide vital services to them; provide specifically designed equipment for the surveillance and repression of Palestinian population through restrictions of movement and collective punishments; or take part in the illegal exploitation of Palestinian nonrenewable natural resources for the needs of the Israeli market.
Join these brave Israeli and Palestinian women of conscience and BOYCTT, DIVEST and call on your government to impose SANCTIONS.
Norway's state pension fund, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, has excluded two Israeli companies for "unethical activity" linked to settlement building in the Palestinian territories, the Norwegian government said Monday.
According to the finance ministry, the so-called oil fund, which contains nearly all state revenues from the country's booming oil and gas industry, has sold its holdings in Africa Israel Investments, which is the largest shareholder of Danya Cebus, which the fund says is involved "in developing settlements in occupied Palestinian territory."
"Several United Nations Security Council resolutions and an International Court of Justice advisory opinion have concluded that the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is prohibited under (the Geneva) Convention," Finance Minister Sigbjørn Johnsen said in a statement.
http://www.swedishwire.com/nordic/5882-norway-fund-kicks-out-more-israeli-companies-