Dutch Jews Organize Counter Boycott in Defense of Israel

Young activist Jews are taking matters into their own hands in defense of Israel and Jewish life in the Netherlands with a counter boycott against funds that divest from Israel.

“Dutch Jews are making it clear they don’t intend to take the economic assault on Israel quietly,” Israel National News reports. “A group of young Jewish activists in the country have started a counter boycott movement to make local firms feel the pinch for their discrimination against the Jewish state.”

PGGM, the second-largest Dutch pension fund, last month announced its divestment from Israel’s five largest banks, citing their financing of “Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.”  These communities, in fact,are located in the region of Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish nation.

Dutch mega-pension fund ABP, one of the world’s largest, announced this week that it will not join the boycott.

A group of young Dutch Jewish professionals, responding to PGGM’s anti-Israel activity, has responded with a boycott of their own, the INN story says.

The group, which goes under the name “Tradition is Our Future,” is determined to defend Jewish life in the Netherlands.

“We are afraid that this is just the beginning, and therefore we need to take counter measurements. We call upon you to help us to boycott those who boycott Israel,” a TOF spokesperson declared, as quoted by INN.

Also, according to INN, the TOF counter boycott being proposed targets PGGM’s CEO Else Bos, who holds an advisory position on the board of Emory University in Atlanta.

“We kindly ask for your co-operation and efforts to demand the resignation of Bos from her position in the board,” says the group statement. Doing so, TOF believes, would send a message to PGGM and other Dutch firms that an anti-Israel boycott is “internationally unacceptable.”

“The Dutch Jewish group highlights the hypocrisy of PGGM in limiting ‘their moral crusade to only include Israel,’ INN continues. PGGM has invested in the Bank of China, although, TOF asserts, “China occupies Tibet,” and despite the bank’s alleged funding of terrorism, as well as Turkey, which “has been occupying Northern Cyprus since 1974.”

TOF notes that PGGM seems to believe that “Israel and the Jews should be treated differently from other countries and other people.”

Date: Feb. 6, 2014