Calling BS on the mainstreaming of BDS

You know what’s keeping people from being blown to bits by terrorists at Sochi? An Israeli-made security system.

An Israeli company called NICE Systems (yes, really) has deployed a network of platforms that provide the Sochi Olympic Games with what they need most: a real-time “integration system platform” that “takes points of data — video images, radio communications, phone calls, access control alarms — and blends it all into a single operating system that interacts with all of that,” according to Bill Besse, a security specialist and Andrews International vice president, when interviewed by risk-management publication CSO Online.

NICE Systems is not usually mentioned in conjunction with bathroom spying, but in Sochi, as of 2012, one of the elements it installed was Net 2.5 IP Video Surveillance, which includes over 1,400 separate channels. What are those channels looking at, exactly? In its press release, contractors for the company said “the unique surveillance system … will provide 24-hour monitoring of the city’s main roads, buildings, and popular resort locations.”

In other words, any unconventional behavior will be noticed.

But the author finds it necessary to snipe at Israel, especially things like this:

And yes, in case you were wondering: NICE was founded by seven Israeli ex-army friends.

In Israel, a nation with mandatory army service, everyone is ex-army (except for the many religious who do not serve). This just shows the author’s ignorance. I’m betting he doesn’t know that Israel has the highest number of PhD’s in the world. That attitude abounds in the anti-Israel camp, and also from the average journalist, who does minimal or slovenly research where Israel is concerned. It took me no time at all to find the NICE Systems website. This author obviously couldn’t be bothered (although a quick look around makes me think this “news” site is rather sketchy).

Journalists like Christine Amanpour are now pushing the “mainstreaming” meme.

The campaign to divest from Israel and boycott its goods – not unlike the campaign to pull out of Apartheid South Africa more than two decades ago – has been gaining increasingly mainstream traction.

The ambassador denied that divestment was going “mainstream,” citing tech giants like Google and Microsoft “straining at the leash” to work in Israel.

They’re using the Scarlett Johansson Oxfam incident as proof of mainstream. Explain to me how her refusal to go along with BDS makes it mainstreaming?

It’s hit The Economist as well. The usual anti-Israel voices have decided that if they declare the BDS movement mainstream, it will be mainstream. What The Economist is not doing in this article is being accurate.

An American academic association is boycotting Israeli lecturers.

What The Economist fails to note is the tremendous pushback against the ASA’s Israel boycott. It is failing so hard that the BDS movement is begging for help for their pet academic society. There’s even a bill in the NY legislature aimed at removing state funds from campus organizations that boycott Israel. Boycotting Israel, by the way, is against U.S. law.

Of course, all of the usual anti-Israel suspects are trying to weigh in on the “ZOMG! BDS IS BECOMING MAINSTREAM!” narrative. The despicable Karl Vick (rhymes with “dick”) even manages to use the “greedy Jews” slam when reporting on BDS.

Anxious to hold on to their markets, Israel’s businessmen are increasingly backing the peace camp. The names on a recent advertising campaign in its favour included such luminaries as the head of Google in Israel. Hitherto they had usually preferred to stay out of politics.

Got that? Those money-grubbing Jews didn’t care about politics until it started affecting their profits. Leave it to Time magazine to keep using anti-Semitic stereotypes in place of reporting. The year I dropped my subscription was 1977, when they gave us this gem:

His first name means “comforter.”

Menachem Begin (rhymes with Fagin) has been anything but that to his numerous antagonists.

I digress, but it is with a purpose. The anti-Israel media has now decided to see if they can push the meme that the anti-Israel “Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions” movement is going mainstream. While it is definitely getting more play in Europe, and it needs to be countered, it is not going mainstream. Asia is not going to participate in an Israeli boycott. If Europeans want to stop using tech like the NICE Company is using to keep European athletes safe from terrorists–well, that’s their choice. But of course, they’ll never boycott the important things.