Tehran Helps Keep BDS in Business

The worldwide anti-Israel movement—and especially the drive to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish state (BDS)—portrays itself as a grassroots effort inspired by or cooperating with Palestinian activists. But for many of its European offshoots, Tehran is a primary source of funds and direction. Asaf Romirowsky and Benjamin Weinthal write:

[A]nnual al-Quds Day rallies [named after the Arabic term for Jerusalem], which were inaugurated in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s theocracy, urge individuals to support the BDS movement and the destruction of Israel. Al-Quds Day rallies blanket European cities such as Berlin, London, and Vienna. Iranian-backed Islamists have no qualms about marching together with an amalgam of neo-Nazis, German leftists, and supporters of the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist entity the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Iranian regime-owned Islamic Center of Hamburg charters buses with Iranian regime and Hizballah supporters to travel to Berlin to march in the al-Quds Day rally. Since 1996, there have been 21 al-Quds Day marches in the German capital. . . .

Iran’s grassroots campaign to shape European and American opinion is not limited to demonstrations. In 2016, the Bavarian city of Bayreuth awarded 10,000 euros to a U.S.-based activist group—Code Pink—that supports a boycott of the Jewish state and has participated in a conference in Iran with Holocaust deniers. The women’s organization Code Pink has gone to great lengths to defend Iran’s regime. In January, the Israeli government banned representatives of Code Pink and an additional nineteen BDS organizations from entering the country because of their campaign to dismantle Israel. . . .

Moreover, . . . the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has played a role in promoting the nuclear deal with Iran. . . . RBF at large has [also] been a staunch supporter of the BDS movement with its support of the organizations Jewish Voice for Peace and Breaking the Silence. . . .

Read more at National Interest

More about: BDS, Breaking the Silence, Europe, Iran, Israel & Zionism, Jewish Voice for Peace

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF