My daughter asked me the other day why the Presbyterian Church voted to divest from Israel. The question was pertinent when you think just who is coming to Israel at the moment.

• On 19th June, the Hebrew paper “Calcalist” reported that Coca Cola will invest a further US$0.5 m in Israeli start ups. That will make about 10 young companies in total.
• A few days later, the German specialty chemicals group Altana announced that it will take a minority stake in Landa Digital Printing to the value of US$135m.
• Final, a rather anonymous company from Herzylia that ‘dabbles’ in algo-trading, is rumoured to be considering a buy out offer, valued at US$4 billion, give or take a dollar.
• In the past six months, six Israeli companies have raised a combined US$500 million  in share offerings in America. Next to join the list will be Cyber-Ark looking to bring in US$75million.

In other words, at a commercial level, 99% of global commercial leaders are ignoring the calls of Presbyterians and their fellow thinkers.

In other walks of life, the pattern is similar. I mentioned earlier this month how Palestinian leaders take advantage of Israel’s medical services. To that commentary, I could add the story about the Palestinian child, treated in Tel Aviv, at the very time when Hamas had cruelly kidnapped three Israeli teenagers.

In the field of music, no BDS fuss blocked the brilliant appearance this month of the Rolling Stones in Tel Aviv. Hip-hop artist Epicc has just spent a week in the Holy Land and released a special clip to celebrate. Ceelo. Green, Neil Young, and Kylie Minogue are a few of the artists booked to feature over the summer months.

I did mention to my daughter that the Presbyterian Church had been hijacked by a powerful anti-semitic minority. We discussed the stupidity of the boycott; for example, HP has been targeted, because its hardware prints the permit entries for Palestinians coming into Israel. We noted that while Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East, the Church had been deafeningly silent in its condemnation of abuses against Christians in the region.

However you cut it, once you remove the spin of the BDS movement, two items remain. First, its basic traits and demands and targets have disturbingly similarities with Nazi laws of the 1930s. Second, Israel’s drive towards globilisation remains unhalted, thus ironically ensuring that those who hate the country end up benefitting from its capabilities.