When I looked up the word “sanctions”, I had to agree that it is time to sanction the Israeli economy. Two of the definitions imply bringing penalties in order to force a country to comply with a specific issue.

The Palestinian-based BDS movement campaigns for “calls for action against projects and initiatives which amount to recognition of or cooperation with Israel’s regime of apartheid…” This includes banks divesting from Israel, rock stars like Elvis Costello cancelling performances, and US basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar cancelling a scheduled public visit to Israel.

An outspoken supporter of BDS is the international charity Oxfam, which refuses to help Israeli children. Hollywood star Scarlett Johannson has campaigned actively on behalf of Oxfam. When she recently promoted at the Superbowl the Israeli firm, SodaStream, which is partially located in the West Bank, Oxfam was furious.

However, as social commentator Melanie Philips pointed out:

Ms Johansson stunned everyone by sacking Oxfam, on the grounds that she was a supporter of “economic co-operation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine”. Which, by implication, Oxfam was not.

As Phillips indicated, Johannson had in effect initiated her own sanctions. However, and more importantly, she had invoked the other definition of sanctions: “authoritative permission or approval”.

What Johansson was saying is that Israel’s economy deserves a huge ‘thumbs up’ from the rest of the world. Here are some examples why:

1) Even the Director of Policy for Oxfam had to admit on the BBC that Palestinians at the SodaStream factory are treated fairly.

2) Israel has taken major steps in recent years to ensure that minorities are a full part of the country’s successful high-tech bandwagon.

3) Israel does not keep its capabilities to itself, but shares them with the stricken and crippled. Classic case studies include the ongoing support in the Philippines and the treatment of Syrian refuges.

4) Without Israeli technology, millions around the world would be worse off – physically, financially, and socially.

BDS’s use of the word ‘sanction’ is at best hypocritical, as rappers have pointed out. When it involves academics insisting that Israeli research should be ignored, it invokes images of Kristallnacht in 1938.

Significantly, BDS is a secret movement. There are few records of senior staff, financial structure, donors, records of board members, etc. While demanding transparency and accountability from Israel, it refuses to play by the same rules.

The only person that we really know is running it is Omar Barghouti, who flouted his own standards and studied at Tel Aviv University. He does not accept Israel’s right to exist.

Last week, a court in Gaza sentenced a man to death; execution. Although condemned by the EU, the BDS team was silent on this gross abuse of human rights. Therefore, as is their cause, they sanctioned it.