Leaders
Miri Regev: inept and foolish
The Jewish Chronicle leader column, June 8 2018
June 8, 2018 11:03
1 min read
The Jewish Chronicle leader column, June 8 2018
June 8, 2018 11:03It is hardly an original or enlightening observation to note that Israel often has what might be called presentational difficulties in convincing others of its case.
Even when the threat is existential, as when Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, says that Israel is a “malignant cancerous tumour” that “has to be removed and eradicated”, such words are dismissed as somehow not meaning what they say.
And even when Israeli global trade is booming, still the notion abounds that the BDS campaign is, rather than spectacularly unsuccessful, somehow gaining ground.
Which is why it is all the more frustrating that Israel so often manages to snatch PR defeat from the jaws of victory. Take the now-cancelled football match with Argentina that was due to be played on Saturday night.
The Argentinians were ready to come. Israelis were thrilled at the prospect of seeing Messi play. And after the Giro d’Italia and Eurovision win, the game would have shown that BDS is an irrelevance.
But for no reason other than to prove a needless political point, Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev has scored an astonishingly stupid and damaging own goal. The match was due to be played in Haifa, as agreed by Argentina. Without the intervention of Ms Regev, it would still be happening.
Instead, the utterly inept Ms Regev has managed to give the BDS campaign an international PR victory, the fact and scale of which they could barely dream of just days ago.
The story of Argentina boycotting Israel was news across the planet.
If Ms Regev had set out to hand the BDS campaign a filip she could hardly have been more successful.