Yes, Criminal

Ma'ariv's Ben-Dror Yemini contends that,

"Those who support criminal sanctions on mistaken – even abhorrent, even offensive – ideas, give weapons to their enemies. The struggle against those who support boycotts must be waged in the field of public discourse. This is not easy. The falsehood industry is working overtime. But we must be grateful that it is far from victory. The achievements of the boycotters are negligible. But part of the Israeli Right seems intent on strengthening them."

Ideas are one thing.

[See update below]

Not doing something like refusing to perform or purchase in an organized fashion so as to cause others to do the same and to cause thereby harm is an action which, now by law, indeed is now criminal.

Someone or something that is being harmed physically or financially, and not in the realm of ideas, can take defensive measures to protect itself.

That is what the new Knesset law is about.

______________________

Steve Plaut adds:

It does not make organizing boycotts something that would be adjudicated in Israeli criminal court. Rather it creates “legal standing” for those injured by such boycotts, so that they will have the right to go to court to sue the boycott organizers. This is far less problematic from a civil liberties point of view than criminalizing the boycotters. It means that
enterprises operating in the West Bank could sue those leftist groups
promoting boycotts for compensation for damages caused to them. As one example, the AHAVA cosmetics firm has been targeted by the boycott Hitlerjugend, who claim they take minerals from the West Bank, although I think they are counting the Dead Sea, much of it in pre-1967 Israel, as the West Bank. All in all, the bill is a major blow against Israel’s treasonous Left. The Israeli Left is chanting in unison the mantra that Israelis are allowed to boycott cottage cheese but not West Bank enterprises. Well, they are boycotting cottage cheese because they think its price too high, and they are welcome to boycott AHAVA cosmetics for the same reason. The problem is that they are seeking to demolish any Israeli business that so much as hires a single settler to do work for it, and their economic aggression is based on political radicalism, not consumerism.

But he still is not quite fully in favor.


And P.S.:

[MK] Mr. Elkin, the sponsor of the legislation, said that its principal importance was “the fact that the calls to boycott the State of Israel increasingly have come from within our own midst, and that makes it hard to wage a battle against a boycott in the world.”


“For years now there have been laws in the United States that come with fines and prison sentences for anyone who calls for a boycott of Israel, and yet the Israeli who persuades American companies to boycott us is completely exempt. That is ludicrous,” Mr. Elkin was quoted as saying in the popular Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

He was referring to a federal law in the United States that forbids Americans from complying with, furthering or supporting a boycott of a country that is friendly to the United States.

UPDATE

In defiance of the law, Peace Now launched a new campaign calling for the boycott of wine and olive oil produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank

More material.
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