URJ 10 Minutes of Torah

Friday's 10 Minutes of Torah is designed to present a diversity of editorial viewpoints from Jewish papers. The following editorial appears November 3, 2010 on The Washington Jewish Week website and is reprinted with permission.

We need to take action 
When organizers decided to focus last year's Toronto International Film Festival on Israeli filmmakers, more than 1,000 prominent actors and filmmakers signed a statement threatening to boycott the event.

The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles came up with a counter statement supporting the festival. Among its signers: Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Jason Alexander and Lenny Kravitz.

"It was a great lesson and set a template on how to respond because clearly, the other side is running a linked campaign with international funding and global strategy but local implementation," Ted Sokolsky, president of the Toronto federation, recently told JTA.

The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs want local communities to be able to spring into action in defense of Israel on a regular basis. That's why they are gearing up to launch a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel campaigns. Locally, the Jewish Community Relations Council also is planning to step up its efforts through an Israel Action Center.

These actions come not a moment too soon. The BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) movement is a sinister campaign designed to erode the very basis of Israel's legitimacy. With the exception of the seemingly unrelenting Iranian effort to build nuclear weapons, this push to undermine the idea that Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish state in the Middle East is its greatest existential threat.

Israel's supporters must quickly do what they can to stem the damage. Not simply by talking about all of Israel's terrific accomplishments or by bashing its enemies, but by confronting boycotters head on, as did the Toronto film festival's supporters.

And, as did the JCRC when it learned in July that a boycott was planned outside the Ulta store in Silver Spring, urging customers not to buy Ahava products, charging they "were illegally produced by settlers ... on stolen land." The JCRC sent out an e-mail alert late on a Friday afternoon, notifying those on its mailing list of the boycott and urging them to buy Ahava. By Monday morning, Ulta's Ahava shelves were bare.

Such efforts can't simply be ad hoc. JCRC, for example, urged its "buycott" just once, despite continued efforts to boycott Ahava. Fighting BDS must be part of a continuing effort to educate the public, both Jews and non-Jews -- particularly civic leaders -- about Israel's legitimacy and proper place in the world.

Whatever the source of action, the message should be clear: Though we may not always agree with all of Israel's policies, we all stand with our brothers and sisters in Israel in defense of the Jewish homeland and its right to exist.