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What is a Boycott? |
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A boycott is 'an agreement not to do business with'. Thus,
one cannot boycott alone. Two people must agree in order for a boycott to
exist. |
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What is divestment? |
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Divestment is an agreement between two or more people to
withdraw investment in a particular asset (such as selling stocks in a company
or bonds in a state or national government), normally in protest of that
institution's political, social or environmental activities. Divestment is a
form of boycott in which investments are specifically targeted. |
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What is Boycott Watch? |
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Boycott Watch is a non-profit organization that looks at
boycott calls, asks both sides their story and posts it at
www.boycottwatch.org
so people can decide for themselves what the truth is. |
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What is Divestment Watch? |
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DivestmentWatch was created by the developers of
BoycottWatch, a consumer advocacy site that is designed to provide citizens
with accurate information regarding boycott activities around the country and
across the globe. Because the boycott is such a powerful weapon, it is
important that people know all of the facts before making a decision to declare
or take part in a boycott. BoycottWatch, committed to sorting out accurate vs.
inaccurate information regarding various boycotts, helps individuals make
decisions regarding boycotts with a full understanding of the facts.
DivestmentWatch was created to highlight issues regarding a
particularly unfair and egregious politico-economic campaign: the call for
institutions to divest from the State of Israel. |
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How did Boycott Watch get
started? |
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Boycott Watch was started after a large number of false
boycott calls were sent via email and finding a definitive source of the truth
was not available. Boycott Watch was formed to fill the void by creating a
non-partisan fair reporting source dedicated to boycott
information.
Today, Boycott Watch has stopped numerous
false boycott calls and is the most prominent source of debunking false
boycotts and giving consumers both sides of the story in one place. |
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Why have you created a Web site to cover
just one divestment / boycott activity? |
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Unlike other boycott activities, boycott and divestment
campaigns targeting the state of Israel have been around for over seven decades
and are part of a multi-pronged attack on one state with the goal of isolating
it economically and politically. As such, it is different than other boycott
activities in being part of a multi-pronged militant strategy (that also
involves terrorism and open warfare), acting as the economic and propaganda arm
of hostilities directed towards a democracy and ally of the United States.
BoycottWatch makes no judgment about the morality of boycotts per se.
Rather, we are dedicated to ensuring that boycotts are used responsibly and are
based on accurate information. However, we do make an exception in passing
judgment on boycotts that may be illegal (such as the Divest-from-Israel
campaign) or ones that target the United States.
It should also be
noted that irresponsible use of the boycott weapon as a weapon of war taints
legitimate boycott activities, allowing the object of boycotts to point out
unfair, illegal activity such as the Divest-from-Israel movement as proof that
boycott activities targeted at them are equally irresponsible or illegal. In
order to maintain the integrity of the boycott tool, activities such as
divestment from Israel need to be battled in every community. |
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If I choose to stop investing in a
company, am I engaging in divestment activity? |
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Divestment, like a boycott is an agreement between people,
so technically one cannot engage in either activity alone. Your personal
decisions on how to invest, whether motivated by politics or purely by
economics, are your own choices and do not constitute "
The divestment
projects covered by DivestmentWatch are highly organized efforts by national
and international groups to target the state of Israel for divestment activity.
As such, they are of a different scale than other boycott-related activities
and certainly of a different type than "social investing" of various sorts.
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Are Divest-from-Israel campaigns legal?
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20 congressmen have asked the Department of Commerce if
Divestment falls under 1977 legislation forbidding US companies and other
institutions from taking part in boycott activities directed against Israel.
Over the last twenty-five years, companies have been fined millions of dollars
for refusing to do business with the Jewish state in order to accommodate the
Arab boycott which engages in so-called secondary boycott activity (refusing to
do business with companies doing business with Israel) or tertiary boycotts
(refusing to do business with suppliers to companies doing business with Israel
in order to put pressure on those working in Israel to comply with the
secondary boycott).
The Department of Commerce is investigating the
deliberately murky world of anti-Israel boycott and divestment activities to
determine where "grassroots activity" ends and organized illegal activity
begins. See here for more information on the legal issues surrounding
divestiture. |
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Are Divest-from-Israel campaigns
anti-Semitic? |
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DivestmentWatch does not claim to be able to look into the
hearts of those involved with Divest-from-Israel campaigns, although we also do
not turn our eyes away from clear-cut anti-Semitic activity from many countries
most vociferous about punishing Israel economically (such as the hate education
that is part of many school curricula of the Middle East).
Certainly,
many Divest-from-Israel activists are eager to claim that any legitimate
criticism of their activities and tactics represent unfair accusations of
anti-Semitism. Given how exposing these activities and tactics is often enough
to stop a divestment push in its tracks, DivestmentWatch focuses on objective
criteria for evaluating this movement, although we do include a discussion of
anti-Semitism here if you are interested. |
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Have Divest-from-Israel campaigns been
successful? |
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Thankfully, not yet. Outside of the Presbyterian Church,
which passed a divestment resolution in 2004 (the fallout of which has caused
other churches to hesitate taking similar measures - see here) divestment has
failed in every university where it has been tried. And the movement's major
foray into municipalities, in the city of Somerville Massachusetts, was a
particularly notably failure for anti-Israel campaigners.
In general,
these movements have only been successful when they can restrict the agenda to
only talk about Israeli human rights abuses, completely divorced from the
context of a four-year militant assault against the Jewish state that has left
thousands dead and wounded. Once the Middle East dispute is put into context
and once divestment activists are exposed as being just the latest form of
anti-Israel activism on campuses and elsewhere, informed, civic-minded leaders
and citizens have rejected them again and again. |
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How can I battle a Divest-from-Israel
campaign in my community? |
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As noted above, Divest-from-Israel campaigns can only be
successful if they manage to find decision makers who are willing to take
stands on human rights issues, but who do not know enough about the Middle East
conflict to see that they are being recruited to take sides in that propaganda
arm of that conflict, rather than make a simple human-rights statement.
It is everyone's responsibility (yours and ours) to see that
information gets out to those that need it most to make sure that leaders and
citizens will not fall prey to a movement committed to using any tactic,
including censoring any information that gets the way of their one-sided
attacks on Israel, to further their agenda.
This site is committed to
you, activists dedicated to ensuring that Divest-from-Israel campaigns meet
with defeat wherever they are tried. Only by convincing those opposed to the
destruction of the Jewish state that their propaganda campaign is as
ineffective as war and terrorism will peace at last be achieved in the Middle
East. |
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Is Boycott Watch or Divestment Watch
politically aligned to any party? |
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Boycott Watch and Divestment Watch are in no way
politically aligned, nor do we take stances on issues. If you read our reports,
you will discover that Boycott Watch verifies boycott calls and Divestment
Watch stands in support of US laws. The only time we take a side is if
something is blatantly anti-American or is in violation of US laws, which is
why we created Divestment Watch. |
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Does Divestment Watch give legal
advice? |
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No. We publish information regarding boycotts and do not
give legal advice. We are not attorneys nor do we claim to be. |
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Are you really just a pro-Israel advocacy
site? |
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No. We are standing up for US laws - we are a pro-USA site.
Antiboycott laws are designed to keep foreign countries from imposing their
foreign policy on the US and we feel strongly that upholding such laws is in
the best interests of the United States. |
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Can you advise me where to purchase
non-boycotted products? |
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Divestment Watch cannot and will not recommend any place to
purchase any items related to any boycott or divestment campaign. Our role is
to stand up for US laws. |
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If you do not recommend places to purchase,
how can you place ads on your site? |
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Ads placed on out site are from an agency and are done so
we can pay our bills, including web hosting. We have to pay the bills too. |
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