De Republica

Boycotts against Israel are nothing new; they are probably as old as Jewish history itself. It is reasonable to assume that, when the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria rebelled against the Roman occupation, laws were enacted in Rome to boycott goods from that region. Perhaps Romans stood outside the market stalls with hand-painted signs bearing the words “Noli ab Iudaeo emere” to deter citizens from buying dates from the Middle East or wine from Mount Carmel. A special tax was levied, and when all that came to nothing, the Temple was summarily destroyed and most of the inhabitants expelled.

Flavius Josephus wrote nothing about the boycott in his Bellum Iudaicum, but who knows, perhaps it fell victim to the editorial process.

In any case, the boycott of Israel has been back in vogue in political circles for more than a decade now. Whether it concerns goods, culture or science – no stone is left unturned in the quest to bring this small Jewish country – surrounded by states that have been trying in vain since Israel’s founding to destroy the country and drive out its inhabitants – to its economic knees. When BDS was founded, hordes of ‘critics of Israel’, armed with stickers and magnifying glasses, poured out to track down every single item, however small, bearing the words ‘Made in Israel’ in supermarkets and warehouses. As soon as they descended into hysteria, they plastered the products with boycott stickers and gathered outside the shops to to revive the spirit of 1933: “Germans, defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!” – Deutsche wehrt Euch!! Kauft nicht bei Juden!!“

State-sanctioned idiots like Roger Waters exploited their borderline mental inadequacy to consistently and relentlessly demonise Israel and also to harass their fellow artists. Waters even popped out of Bob Dylan’s bedside drawer like a jack-in-the-box and screamed: “YOU MUST NOT PERFORM IN ISRAEL, YOU ZIONIST!!!” For days on end, they scoured the internet and snooped on companies and their founders right down to their underwear to prove any links to the Levant. The founder of Marks & Spencer was Jewish, they sell goods from Israel, so they send their troops out on the hunt.

I can still clearly remember trying to engage these people in conversation outside M&S in Cork in 2010, and realising they believe they are on a divine mission; they tried to ignore me when I asked if they couldn’t care less about Palestinian workers, but I got no answer because they didn’t have one.

And despite numerous instructional videos from Israel on how to boycott the country properly, these people are still swarming the internet in droves, spreading their mantra like a broken record. How I wished that these brave fighters for imaginary human rights would make good on their threats and finally hand in their computers, laptops, smartphones and other tech for recycling.

That would bring incredible peace and tranquillity; to be able to gather, they would have to send messengers to the remotest corners of a country. As they shun modern cars – a technology developed in Israel – they would have to travel on foot or by bicycle from the remotest corners of a country to its capital cities.

Our left-wingers in Ireland, who concern themselves exclusively with Palestine as if it were a new county, whilst thousands of Irish people live on the streets and Sinn Féin, Ireland’s richest party with the largest property portfolio, refuses to open its properties to the homeless, are trying to force the government to cancel a football match between Ireland and Israel, whilst viewing a friendly match between our team and Qatar as a sign of friendship between nations.

That human rights are being trampled underfoot in Qatar is a fact; the main thing is that you can sit in the stadium and protest loudly against Israel. On top of that, people get terribly upset when our Taoiseach asks the opposition in the Dáil whether, should the Irish government decide on a boycott, they would send people like Mary Lou McDonald – SF – Richard Boyd Barrett – PbP – and the other crackpots, and explain to the laid-off workers why their unemployment is now necessary and that they intend to look after the people in future; after all, Ireland is dependent on Israel. It is not just Intel with its massive manufacturing hub here; TEVA, with two sites, is one of the country’s largest employers.

I would therefore very much welcome it if the EU countries and and their aggressively ignorant citizens, who want to boycott Israel, would finally and once and for all consistently enforce this and do away with all their technology for good. At the very latest when the infrastructure has collapsed, they will realise that their idiotic boycott is a classic own goal.