Israeli Government OKs $72 Million Anti-BDS Project
Image by Flickr via Creative Commons
(JTA) — Israel’s government has approved a plan setting aside $72 million to fighting the campaign to boycott it.
The plan, which would entail the largest monetary investment yet by Israel specifically toward combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, was announced last week to the cabinet ministers and approved as an executive order after none of them objected, the Ynet news site reported Friday.
It calls for setting up a not-for-profit organization whose board will be made up of government officials and donors from abroad, the report said. The board will over see the first major “civil-society infrastructure servicing the State of Israel and the pro-Israel community in the fight against the de-legitimization of Israel,” the notice sent to the ministers read.
The $75 million budget will come partly from the Israeli government and partly from Jewish donors and communities abroad, the report said. It did not say when the new organization would become operational or even established formally.
But the initial funding to the tune of $36 million will come from the budget of the Ministry of Public Security, Strategic Affairs and Minister of Information under Gilad Erdan. At least 10 Jewish philanthropists have pledge to at least match that sum, with some promising to give $2 and $3 to any dollar put in by the Israeli government beyond the initial funding, according to the report.
The organization envisaged by its creators would operate on a regular basis to counter pressure applied to artists, performers and commercial enterprises not to engage with Israel. But it would shift into high gear at sensitive periods such as fighting, waves of terrorist attacks and anti-Israel votes at international forums, the announcement stated.
The new organization’s avenues for action would include public campaigns, lobbying, arranging for solidarity visits to Israel by opinion shapers, establishing new and social media presence and interacting with pro-Israel organization worldwide for coordinated action with a focus on Europe.
While such activities today formally fall under the purview of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, privatizing it would allow for quicker and more flexible action unconstrained by government bureaucracy and legal limitations on third party services, that require tenders when carried out by the government, the announcement explained. But the new organization will be subject to review by the state.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
