Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign

[7redorbs]

Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat.

Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign - Haaretz - Israel News

The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London.

Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology - portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist.

Reut lists the network's major hubs - London, Brussels, Madrid, Toronto, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. The network's activists - "delegitimizers" the report dubs them - are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and radical political activists. Although they are not many, they raise their profile using public campaigns and media coverage, the report says.

The network's activists are not mostly Palestinian, Arab or Muslim. Many of them are European and North American left-wing activists. The Western left has changed its approach to Israel and now sees it as an occupation state, the report says. To those left-wing groups, if in the 1960s Israel was seen as a model for an egalitarian, socialist society, today it epitomizes Western evil.

The delegitimization network sees the fight against the former regime in South Africa as a success model. It believes that like the apartheid regime, the Zionist-Israeli model can be toppled and a one-state model can be established.

Israel's diplomats overseas, meanwhile, must counter the attempts to delegitimize the country. "The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential, English-language media and an international university center make London fertile ground for Israel's delegitimization," says Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador in London.

Prosor gives many interviews to the British media and lectures at university campuses throughout the country. Although he says he has encountered anti-Israel demonstrations on almost every campus, Prosor has told his people to increase their campus activity.

Reut recommends setting up a counter-network, in which Israel's embassies in centers of delegitimization activity would serve as "front positions."

The report says the intelligence service should monitor the organizations' activities and study their methods. The cabinet should also confront groups trying to delegitimize Israel but embrace those engaged in legitimate criticism.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149274.html

[Mr X]

And how much 'legitimate criticism' will now be labeled 'delegitimisation'?

[Mr X]

And still Israel flouts international law. This time by building on occupied territory in defiance of the international community:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/8558347.stm

[7redorbs]

And still Israel flouts international law. This time by building on occupied territory in defiance of the international community:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/8558347.stm

yup mr X, clearly Israel sends a message of clarity - we want peace as much, or less than the Palestinians; I honestly think Israeli military do not believe in peace - its true, palestine isn't much better.

It's the fact that Israel is supposed to know better and is constantly painted as the 'good guys' who 'aren't terrorists' - bullshit, they still act like terrorists.

Most countries do in their foreign policy. That's the madness here, I think.!


A