Non­ethe­less, through promoting a boycott of the festival, anti-Israel activists in this country will have again gotten their column inches and online chatter devoted to the bloodlust and greed of Israelis and the quiet dignity of the Palestini­an res­ist­ance. The stabbing of an Israeli mother walking with her kids in Jerusalem earlier this month generated no such verbiage. The image of a Hamas operative toting a sub-machine after slaying a young Israeli tour guide on the cobble­stones of the Old City, a mere tri­vi­al­ity compared with the question of who sponsors an inter­pret­at­ive dance routine. And while the lead­er­ship of the Sydney Festival has politely (perhaps too politely) notified the activists that the festival program will proceed as planned, they will already be looking to other literary, artistic and film festivals hoping their organ­isers will have seen what they can do and will simply say, “I don’t need the aggrav­a­tion” of threats and boycott calls and will quietly, politely, decline to work with Israelis.

Herein we see the strategy of anti-Israel activism. It is to take the stage, co-opt every movement, every forum of prestige and saturate it with stories of Israeli evil to the extent that the hand of Israel is placed on every gun in every police shooting in the United States and pro­test­ers in London claim that Palestine is a climate issue. Incred­ibly, Palestine activists still maintain they are being silenced by all-powerful, shadowy lobbyists.

Abu Iyad, the Palestine Lib­er­a­tion Organisation’s head of security in the 1970s, artic­u­lated the aim of this strategy as follows: “If one could succeed in changing public opinion in the Western world, then the overthrow of Israel would be just a matter of time.” It’s not about peace or shrinking the conflict to improve lives, it is about winning the world over to the view that Israel is the central cause of all suffering and mis­for­tune, and that the mere presence of an inde­pend­ent Jewish state a third the size of Tasmania on the same land where the Jews had a com­mon­wealth 3,000 years ago, is some cosmic injustice that must be undone.

The Palestini­an unionist Majdi Shella admitted the folly of anti-Israel boycotts. “We have a long tradition of boy­cot­ting everything. Sometimes boy­cot­ting is the easier road. If you want to do nothing, boycott.”

This was a cour­ageous admission but not entirely accurate. Boycotts do achieve something. They poison every forum where they are allowed to manifest. They divert insti­tu­tions from their true purpose. They force people doing chal­len­ging, virtuous work who probably profess no par­tic­u­lar expertise or insight into an ethno-nation­al­ist conflict playing out on the edge of the Medi­ter­ranean Sea, to either submit to the irra­tion­al demands of the boy­cot­ters or face their wrath. When Mar­rick­ville Council briefly dabbled with boy­cot­ting Israel in 2011 it only succeeded in turning the local authority into a laugh­ing­stock and incited an out­pour­ing of contempt and loathing that turned resident against resident.

Like all campaigns based on bullying and threats, anti-Israel boycott calls should be met with fortitude and integrity. Sub­mit­ting to such demands or treating them as legit­im­ate only invites more.