The Thuggish BDS Campaign of the UN Human Rights Council

Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a database of corporations that do business “directly or indirectly” with Israeli settlements. High Commissioner of Human Rights Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein of Jordan recently demanded of some businesses that they supply information “confirming, clarifying, or contesting” their place in the database and threatening to release it publicly at the end of the year. So far, only one of the companies has been willing to make Zeid’s communication public, although some have leaked information to the press. Anne Bayefsky writes:

Recipients [of Zeid’s letters] reportedly include Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Priceline.com, TripAdvisor, and Airbnb, as well as Israeli businesses such as the pharmaceutical leader Teva, the country’s two largest banks (Hapoalim and Leumi), the bus company Egged, the national water company Mekorot, and other major Israeli businesses. . . . [These] companies face public censure—driven by the UN’s vast global network—unless they comply with the demands of Zeid and the Human Rights Council. . . .

The fact is that UN Human Rights Council resolutions have the legal status of toilet paper. But that isn’t stopping the high commissioner from huffing, puffing, and bluffing. And alarmingly, until now, nearly all the recipients of these letters appear to have been playing by the blackmailer’s rules [by not commenting publicly]. . . . Shareholders, employees, and communities that depend on the well-being of the blackmailed companies—along with the elected representatives responsible for serving these constituents—have been kept in the dark. . . .

[O]n the off-chance that the UN letterhead makes American CEOs nervous, they need to be reminded that they owe their allegiance to American law and public policy. It is [high time] for Congress and President Trump to step up and answer this UN assault on American businesses and our ally Israel.

Three simple, morally unambiguous steps will do it: the expeditious adoption of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act [currently before Congress], the immediate resignation of the United States from the . . . UNHRC, [and] refusal to send Prince Zeid another penny.

Read more at Fox News

More about: BDS, Israel & Zionism, UNHRC, United Nations

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society