Why Israel?

Written by Jason Kunin, he extensively goes through the boycott campaign of Israel.

"To be sure, there are may terrible things going on in the world, and much suffering being inflicted upon people by despotic governments. Yet what makes Israel a target for boycott is that boycott has the potential to be an effective, peaceful tool by which ordinary people can bring about change, and many Jewish people – including me – support it for precisely the reasons I have listed above. As George Bisharat wrote just as I was completing this article, “‘the worst first’ has never been the rule for whom to boycott. Had it been, the Pol Pot regime, not apartheid South Africa, would have been targeted in the past. It was not - Cambodia's ties to the West were insufficient to make any embargo effective. Boycotting North Korea today would be similarly futile.”13 Israelis have deep ties to the West and generally like to see themselves within its liberal traditions. Like people anywhere, they are no less prone to wanting to be liked and thinking well of themselves. They are no more lacking in personal decency than people anywhere else. And like people in many places – most places, perhaps – they have been ruled by bad leaders and indoctrinated since birth into accepting an unjust status quo. As in apartheid South Africa, a boycott campaign has the potential to reach ordinary Israelis – to appeal to their sense of decency and invite them into the family of “ordinary” nations they so long to join. All they have to do is end their apartheid now."