The Importance of Terminology: A Look at the Background to BDS and Boycotts in General (Column 167)

With God's help

A few days ago the toothbrush company Oral B began circulating an oral-hygiene advertisement featuring a same-sex couple with a daughter, whose parents (implicitly) make sure she brushes her teeth. Online it was reported that one outraged viewer had called for a boycott of the company because it was smuggling subversive and controversial messages into an innocent commercial, thereby destroying education and the family structure. One of our neighbors circulated that call in the hope that more families would join the boycott (which, for the moment, does not really seem to be taking off. Well, not everyone is Daphne Leef), and this opened a small discussion about that call.

As I wrote there, in my opinion this is both a stupid and an unjustified step, but it stirred in me a need to examine the question of boycotts in general. These are, on the whole, simple matters, but as Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto writes in his introduction to Mesilat Yesharim, sometimes even simple matters need to be sharpened and clarified. Here I want to comment briefly on several aspects of boycotting, and afterward to look at some of them from a slightly different angle. In effect, to comment once again on the way good people do bad things.

"The Boycott Question": On Boycotts and How We Relate to Them

Different groups call for boycotts of other groups because of their worldview and actions. Artists refuse to perform in the "occupied territories," Haredim and religious Jews boycott businesses that are open on the Sabbath, Zionists call for boycotting Palestinian products and vice versa, people on the left boycott people on the right and vice versa, various groups boycott newspapers and journalists, the world boycotts products made in the settlements or in racist Israel generally (and not the other way around, of course. Go boycott the world…). BDS, which never leaves the headlines, will not be absent here either, and so on.

The subject of boycotts arouses all kinds of reactions, most of them automatic. Some argue: why not boycott? It is a legitimate and nonviolent weapon. Others say that it is in fact a violent and illegitimate weapon (you can hit, curse, kill, but boycott?! The wallet, friends, is absolutely off-limits). There are, of course, also consequential and factual arguments about the effectiveness and usefulness of boycotts (do they help or not). In addition, people raise the question of reciprocity and the expected harm of such a policy (if you boycott them, they will boycott you, and where will that lead us?!), and more. In most cases no distinction is made between the arguments, and usually the necessary distinctions are not made either (arguments such as: this is justified but ineffective, or vice versa). Pragmatic arguments are presented as moral ones or get mixed up with them. Beyond that, there is also a typical confusion between discussion of the weapon of boycott as such and the specific discussion of whether in this or that case it is being used justly. Someone who thinks Israel is right and that BDS is unjustified uses rhetoric according to which boycott is, by definition, an immoral weapon. Others, of course, argue the opposite, and so on.

We also do not distinguish between people who act according to the best of their conscience, even if we disagree with them, and people who knowingly act immorally for the sake of interest or simply out of cruelty, racism, and the like. Another important question, related to the previous one, is whether the purpose of the boycott is purist punishment (I do not do business with wicked people), or whether its purpose is to achieve some result (prevent those acts). If it is a matter of punishment, it is unreasonable to impose a boycott on someone who acts according to the best of his conscience, even if I disagree with him. By contrast, if it is about prevention, then there is room for that too. Thus, one often hears the claim that boycotts of factories located in Judea and Samaria harm the Palestinians who work in them no less, and perhaps more, than the Israelis. Does that necessarily mean the boycott is unjustified? Certainly not. It depends on its purpose. If I am unwilling to benefit from the injustices of others even though others will suffer because of that, then the other factory from which I buy the product also supports decent people, and there at least no injustice is involved.

All these and other considerations are important when discussing any particular boycott, or boycotts in general. I now want to focus on a somewhat different aspect that concerns only some boycotts.

On BDS

In my personal opinion, as in the opinion of many others, BDS is a distinctly antisemitic phenomenon. The intensity of the boycott and of the boycott movement relative to the degree of problematicness involved (even if one grants that there is something problematic in Israeli policy) indicates that this is not an innocent pursuit of justice. In other places in the world where genuine atrocities are committed, the reactions are far milder.

And yet, it is important to understand that not everyone who participates in this boycott is antisemitic. Quite the contrary: I assume most of them act innocently and from good motives. In our global world, information flows freely, including, of course, distorted information (fake news). People therefore live with the feeling that the truth is known and clear to them, and that they possess the full picture. Precisely for that reason, the better among them feel a real need to act in such a situation. When the media are biased and channels of information are shaped by ideological and self-interested influence, entire population groups are fed partial and tendentious information, and that creates a picture that demands action. Thus good people can innocently act in an immoral and unjustified way. An ordinary person living somewhere in Europe, constantly fed information about apartheid in Israel, baby-killing, and so forth, without any proportion and without any connection to the real situation and to other, far graver cases around the world, is driven to action. Someone who does not act is thereby an indifferent person in the face of injustice, and so in many cases it is precisely the best of people who will take part in anti-Israel actions.

The Bias of the Discourse and the Information

Biased discourse shapes public opinion and public reaction on two different planes.

First, the facts are presented in a biased and selective way. The negative side is inflated, the positive side is minimized, and certainly this is so when the treatment of other similar cases is different. This is well known and straightforward.

But beyond that there is also use of misleading and slanted terminology. The very same facts can be described in a tone and register that include judgment, or in a neutral way. There are also value assumptions conveyed through terminology, and the problem is that in this way we do not place them up for discussion at all. Is apartheid, whatever its purpose and background, necessarily negative? And what about transfer? And racism? All these are terms that are sometimes presented as factual descriptions (there is apartheid, racism, transfer, and the like in such-and-such a place), but in fact they contain strong components of judgment and evaluation. If it is only a fact, then we also need to discuss our judgment of it; and if it is a judgment, we need to ask whether the factual description really yields that judgment.

Thus, for example, we are told in an academic, calm, learned tone that Israel is an apartheid state, as though this were a pure factual determination. Just compare it to South Africa, open a dictionary, examine the facts on the ground, and you will immediately see that it is so. Many people (both those saying these things and those hearing them) do not notice that what is involved here is a judgment and not merely a fact. The matter is similar to presenting an act of killing as murder (cf. the "murder" in Duma)[1] or vice versa. Seemingly, the statement Reuven murdered Shimon is a factual description: Reuven took Shimon's life. But in fact it is, of course, loaded with a judgment about Reuven. "Reuven killed" is not the same as "Reuven murdered."

The same is true when we are told that Jewish "terrorism" should be treated the same as Arab terrorism. The "terrorism" of the Hilltop Youth is presented as a neutral factual description, even when it concerns acts that are very far from activity worthy of the label terrorism (there are such cases too, but in my impression they are few). And let us not forget the "bereaved families on both sides," and so forth. "Terrorism" is not just any act of violence, and "bereaved families" is not a neutral expression that merely describes families who have lost a relative. But someone who hears about Jewish terrorism, apartheid, and Palestinian bereaved families will naturally, if he is a decent person, cry out for action.

Implications for Other Cases

After what I see regarding the picture drawn of Israel in the media and in public opinion around the world, I am not at all sure, in my own attitude toward South Africa (in the past), Syria, and other places that have been accused, and are still being accused, of apartheid, racism, and similar charges. The information about what is happening there reaches me through the same channels of information that carry information about Israel throughout the world. I too, of course, am exposed to misleading terminology and to a biased and disproportionate presentation. Who knows what is true and what is not in everything one hears? What in it is fact, and what is agenda and judgment?

I only recently wrote here on the site about discrimination against homosexuals in the surrogacy law. It was argued against me that this is not discrimination, since the decision was made on substantive grounds (preventing the exploitation of surrogates; see the conclusions of the Mor-Yosef Committee). I personally, even after reading the conclusions, think there is discrimination here, as I explained there. But it is true that the mere fact that surrogacy is not permitted for homosexuals does not necessarily mean discrimination. "Discrimination" is a loaded concept, and at its root lies (bad) intention. A situation in which there is a difference between populations does not always deserve to be called discrimination. The mass protest over LGBT surrogacy is, in my view, a product of that same terminology. A considerable number of people are not at all aware of the considerations that lay behind the law, but if you tell them that there is discrimination and deprivation here, it becomes obvious to them that they must wage jihad against it.[2]

The Significance of This Picture

In the picture I have described, there are situations in which boycotts are imposed on the basis of a media picture (a boycott is usually a mass phenomenon. If it involves a large group, it is unlikely that all the people know the situation as it truly is from firsthand acquaintance). That media picture is in many cases distorted and biased. This picture has implications in two directions:

On the one hand, it is difficult to judge when it is justified and called for to impose a boycott on a group, institution, or state, and when it is not. The description does not always fit the facts. Loaded and judgmental terminology sometimes pushes people into action without justification.[3]

On the other hand, for that very same reason, those who impose the boycott, even if they are not right in this specific case, can certainly be innocent and good people (and I believe that usually they are indeed such people). It is difficult and wrong to judge them for their mistakes. They act according to the best of their understanding and in light of the information they have. Moreover, even if they wanted to examine matters in depth, sometimes it is very difficult, or even impossible, to do so. People have to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

One must understand that the alternative is not to act at all, in which case every injustice in the world will remain as it is, without anyone fighting it. Let us admit the truth: in many cases the claim that the information in my possession is incomplete and unverified, or that I suspect its reliability, is an excuse used to justify laziness and inaction. On the other hand, is it right to act on the basis of partial and unverified information? This is not a simple dilemma. In any case, it is clear that one ought to clarify matters as much as possible before taking steps.

One of the indications regarding the motivations of those who boycott is whether the same person or group takes the same approach toward injustices in his or their own surroundings. Here a person generally knows the situation directly (not through the media), and he is also not driven by political agendas, so he can act in a more justified way. And therefore this is precisely the place to examine whether he is indeed a person who rises up against injustice, or whether he is driven by other motivations. It is well known that there are pursuers of justice and morality who are very unpleasant people to live around. Those lovers of humanity love the human being as such, but mainly the idea of the human being, and not really concrete flesh-and-blood human beings (my late grandfather used to say of a well-known rebbe that he loved the Jewish people with fierce love, but had a rather serious problem with the individuals).

Example: BDS in the Arts

As is well known, quite a few BDS activists are good Jews (or less good ones). Thus, for example, we are told that Justine Sachs, a Jew from New Zealand who founded an anti-Israel organization there called Dayenu, wrote, together with her Palestinian colleague Nadia Abu-Shanab, a letter that caused the New Zealand singer Lorde to cancel her planned performance in Israel. In that article, Yochai Ben Nun interviews her following the event, and it seems to me that one can learn quite a bit from the course of this interview about all the aspects discussed here.

First, this interview demonstrates quite a few of the points I raised at the beginning of the post regarding the mixing of considerations and unjustified assumptions, both on Sachs's part and on the part of the interviewer. In fact, almost everything she says is factually correct. Given those facts, I see no real problem with imposing an artistic and economic boycott. Therefore all the questions she was asked were, in my eyes, irrelevant, except for one type of question, which for some reason she was not asked at all. The interviewer did not try to argue about the degree of justification for the boycott. He dealt only with clarifying the attitude toward boycotts as such, their utility, and their justification. He did not distinguish between different cases and situations, and the impression one gets is that he too agrees that we deserve the boycott and that we are an apartheid state, and therefore he tries to defend us through arguments about the illegitimacy and ineffectiveness of boycotts in general. The most important question he could have asked was not asked: is she right? Is Israel indeed an apartheid state or not? Focusing on technique and general principles covers over a vacuum of content and substance regarding the specific issue.

On Facts and Judgments

I now want to focus mainly on the background to these matters, that is, on the type of discourse that gives rise to mass boycotts (as noted, the broader and more dispersed they are around the world, the more media-dependent they are) in the style of BDS. We saw above that among those who are not acting out of self-interest (and are not antisemites), what we have here are mainly two phenomena: partial and tendentious information, and the use of misleading terminology (facts that cover over judgments).

At first glance, my thought about Sachs was one of two possibilities: either she does not have the faintest clue what is happening here, or she is a consummate fool (or both answers are correct). The same applies to the other innocents who are partners in BDS (apart from those who do it for self-interested reasons). But here in the Holy Land too I know some good Jews and Israelis who make the same claims, and they are neither fools nor ignorant of reality; they know it just as well as I do. I truly do not know how to explain this fascinating phenomenon.[4] It seems to me to be something like a combination of auto-antisemitism with surrender to the brainwashing (by means of misleading terminology and a partial and tendentious presentation of information) described above.

Sachs presents herself as a progressive Jew who works for equality and peace, for dialogue with the Palestinians, and in order to end the occupation and Israel's violation of human rights. She speaks in terms of justice, peace, and equality, opposition to apartheid and the rest of it, and explains to all of us that anyone who does not understand this simply lacks information. It is very evident that behind these claims lies the assumption that these are facts and not judgments, and therefore anyone who does not understand this simply lacks information. After all, there is discrimination/apartheid in Israel (those two are, of course, the same thing) against Arabs, and there are far more Arabs who are killed/murdered (those two are of course the same thing as well) than Jews, and the Arabs do not have a state whereas the Jews do. The Arabs also do not have significant military power with which to fight, whereas the Jews are a regional power. From all this it "clearly follows" that there is here a systematic policy of discrimination, denial of rights, murder, and apartheid. These are facts, many of them correct, but their description is not factual but judgmental. Killing (usually justified) is called murder, and discrimination (sometimes justified and sometimes not, and which of course has no expression in law but at most on the ground) is called apartheid (although in my opinion apartheid is defined as institutionalized discrimination); unwillingness to grant a state is called a violation of rights, and now who can argue with facts?!

There is hardly a fact in this interview that is not correct. She even gives numbers of Arabs killed, arrested, and wounded in Jerusalem since the American embassy was moved there. Does that not prove that there is a cruel occupation and systematic murder here? Those are facts. The use of numbers in such contexts is disastrous. It arouses a sense of certainty and absolute justice. One cannot argue with numbers. Thus, for example, the world condemned us after Operation Protective Edge when it compared the number of Palestinians killed to the number of Israelis. Go explain to people that this measure is irrelevant, at least if one knows the background. After all, this is the "murder" of thousands versus the "regrettable but necessary death" of a few. How can one argue with numbers?!

So far I have described the pseudo-factual concepts used to describe judgments. But beyond that, of course, there is also partial and tendentious information. Beyond the correct facts she mentioned, there are several other relevant facts. For example, what those killed and arrested did, and what the circumstances were. The ongoing Palestinian terror and refusal of any compromise (is there another way to deal with it?). The background to the conflict, which is entirely the Palestinians' fault (quite apart from the riots they occasionally carried out for their own amusement, they were also unwilling to accept the partition proposal and wanted, and still want, to throw all of us into the sea). The state of human rights in the Palestinian Authority and in the rest of the Arab states, and the excellent condition of Arab citizens of Israel in comparison with their brethren in Arab states. Sachs will not read all this in Haaretz, and it is very likely that this (through additional journalistic intermediaries) is her main source of information about Israel (I am fairly convinced that she does not subscribe to Makor Rishon or Israel Hayom). No wonder all this leads her to boycott Israel and condemn it, but for some reason it does not lead her to think about boycotting performances in Iran, China, Russia, or the various Arab states (including, of course, the Palestinian Authority). For where else in the world are there human-rights violations and catastrophic loss of life such as in Israel?

Conclusions

None of this is meant to defend Israel or to accuse BDS, nor to point to the limited intelligence of journalists and peace activists. These things are known and trite. My purpose here is to illustrate the points I described above and to examine their significance for us.

A combination of antisemitism with partial information and the use of terminology that is supposedly factual can generate highly influential movements that lead masses of innocent and decent people and institutions to act outrageously. The conclusions are mainly for us. When we formulate a position regarding any issue (including my own accusations against BDS), and certainly before joining any boycott movement, it is worth taking into account the whole set of considerations presented above at the beginning of the column, and also remembering the media picture described afterward.

Apparently we too are not free of these syndromes. In order to correct this, it is worthwhile to read newspapers and websites that do not fit our agenda, even if that may be irritating. They may contain genuine points and different perspectives that are also worth taking into account. It is worth thinking through the various considerations and forming a position as to whether, under these circumstances, the boycott is justified. In addition, it is very important to pay attention to the media aspects I described. We must distinguish between the factual component of a report and the judgmental component, and in particular be alert to the influence of terminology.

Back to the Boycott of Oral B

This is not true only of BDS. Some of all this exists in other boycotts as well. When one hears about an advertisement that promotes homosexuality, the association of family destruction immediately arises. Have we thought and weighed whether this really is destruction? Will it cause people with normal inclinations to change them? Perhaps, but it seems to me only at the margins. Usually, there are people with such an inclination and there are people who do not have it, and this advertisement merely refers to reality (after all, as a matter of fact such couples exist. So what did we expect, that no one would refer to them? Will ignoring the facts make them disappear from the world?) So what is the outcry about? Many of us, when we hear a term like "the destruction of the family," blow a fuse and do not stop to examine whether these really are the expected results of the advertisement, and whether the situation without the advertisement is not already like that anyway (this is a universal process with many and varied dimensions, and fighting against this tiny fragment of it looks downright ridiculous in the broader context). Moreover, it is worth thinking whether there are not other similar cases in which we showed restraint (what about surrogacy for people who violate the Sabbath, or who eat non-kosher food? What about a tooth-brushing advertisement with secular families?). And if so, then why boycott here but not there? Did we consider whether the boycott would help? Is this wickedness or an innocent step? Did we examine and weigh what the boycott is meant to achieve? Is the description presented to us ("the destruction of the family") factual or judgmental? In my view, here too these considerations are not really being treated substantively. We have been swept along a bit by gut feelings and by misleading, slanted terminology.

Critical Reading

For a change, I will add a practical recommendation. Training in the analysis of op-ed articles and current events, and critical analysis of positions that arise in public discussion, can certainly contribute to this matter. It accustoms us to making these distinctions when we consume media of every kind, including WhatsApp messages and outraged posts.

A few years ago I taught a course in critical reading at Ono Academic College. After various introductions in logic and rhetoric (fallacies and the like), we began to read op-ed articles on different subjects in a critical way. I tried to accustom the students to stopping before forming a position, and to suspending judgment. First, I got them used to presenting the argument in the article (premises, logic, and conclusion), and preferably even formalizing it. After that, to defining the concepts the writer uses, and only then to formulate a systematic critique: to examine whether the premises are reasonable, necessary, or plainly illogical, to check the definition of the concepts and their consistency, to examine the logic of the inference (does the conclusion indeed follow from the premises?), and only then to ask what our attitude to the conclusion is.

The process was illuminating. In some years this was a Haredi group. At first we read articles, some of them anti-religious and anti-Haredi, that immediately aroused a major uproar. I calmed them down and tried to teach them to swallow hard and proceed through the steps we had learned in order. After we did this, they came to see that there were points they had not thought about, and that there was something true in the claims made in the article, and in fact there were points of dispute worth clarifying. They learned not to think from the gut but from the head. In the end they understood better where the point of disagreement lay, and in exactly what respect they did not agree with what had been said.

I think that training in critical reading and the analysis of arguments is a remedy for many of the ailments I have described here.

On Good People Who Do Bad Things

Richard Dawkins writes that in every society and group there are good people who do good deeds and bad people who do bad deeds, but only religious belief can bring about a situation in which good people do bad deeds.

Well, no.[5] Any worldview can lead to that. Whether it is religious belief, communism, fascism, antisemitism, auto-antisemitism, anarchism, or even liberalism. Dawkins assumes that atheism is an empty cart, and then of course what he says is a tautology (a person who has nothing in him except the good in him will not act according to other values. Someone devoid of an agenda does not act by an agenda). But only someone who lives in the sacred vacuum chamber (an atheist devoid of worldviews; in the terms of Column 165, someone riding in a thin, empty liberal cart) can preserve pure objectivity and be a good person who does only good deeds.[6] None of us is such a person ("to live without anything worth dying for"), and that is a good thing. On the other hand, as we have seen here, the agendas with which we are charged can also mislead, and thus lead good people to do bad and foolish things. It is worth being careful about that.

[1] It outraged me too, of course, but I do not think it is right to relate to it as murder. At least from what was published, it does not appear that there was originally an intention there to murder.

[2] As noted, there were those who argued that the law was not motivated at all by a desire to discriminate against homosexuals, but rather to prevent the exploitation of surrogates. That recommendation came from the professional committee and not from the Agudat Yisrael party. In my view there is also an intention to discriminate in the background, but it is difficult to prove such a thing. On the merits, if they want to prevent exploitation, they should abolish surrogacy altogether. If they abolish it only for homosexuals, that is discrimination. And if that happens, it is unlikely that it happened by chance. Still, it is clear that reading the committee's conclusions certainly invites renewed discussion of the question of discrimination. The fact that there is a difference does not necessarily mean intentional discrimination.

[3] Of course, my own judgment regarding the boycott movements is also usually nourished by similar media sources of information. So who said that I act on a more solid basis than they do? See further below.

[4] Some of them probably underwent traumas themselves during their military service, as in the case of "Breaking the Silence." In Column 38 I suggested an explanation for these phenomena in terms of our tendency to see the picture we encountered as a representative sample, and to broaden and intensify what we experienced. Thus a local injustice and wrong that we encountered (and that left a traumatic mark on us) becomes a picture of a systematic policy of apartheid and cold-blooded murder by the army and the state in general. But this is, of course, not relevant to distant people who did not experience these things firsthand.

[5] See my book God Plays Dice, chapter six.

[6] Good, but not moral, of course. See part 3 of the fourth notebook.