BOYCOTT SCOUT

If you've never received an email message calling for a boycott or a petition to sign, you're probably the only one who hasn't. The latest that came to me said that Germany had decided "to stop all arms sales to Israel," followed by similar bans by other European countries, and asked for a retaliatory boycott of travel to and products from these countries, to show support for Israel.

The Europeans and their Muslim allies should understand that boycotts works both ways. When we said NEVER AGAIN, we meant it. Europe is stuck in the mentality of 1933 and conditioned to thinking of Jews as defenseless entities. The reality is very different. As long as Europe adheres to and supports its primitive Middle Ages death cult, European products must be off limits.

The rest of the message, as given verbatim by boycottwatch.org, a self-described "consumer advocacy organization" that does not do product comparisons or evaluations but tries instead "to make sure consumers are not tricked into believing lies," goes like this:

We continue to call for a complete boycott of travel and products from the following countries France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and China, due to their support, sponsorship, and/or participation in global Islamic terror. The voting record of the above countries at the UN openly endorses Muslim terror.

Remember, every time you buy a bottle of Evian, a Carlsberg product, a Spanish melon, a Godiva chocolate, a Dior lipstick, a Gucci bag, or a German kitchen appliance, you are financing the next Muslim mass murderer.

The European Union gives over $10 million per month to the Palestinian Authority, knowing full well that the money is funneled to buy, import, and train Muslim terrorists and their weapons of mass murder.

We strongly encourage everyone to buy Canadian, American, Australia, Britain and Israeli products instead. Buy Estee Lauder or Ahava instead of Chanel, Dior, and YSL. Tell the salespeople why. Educate the public when you shop.

Europe is underwriting the Arab war to exterminate the Jewish state. We cannot sit idly by while this happens. Make your voice heard and let them feel the sting in their pocketbooks. Let the Europeans know that supporting terror does not pay.

Please send this to at least 10 like-minded people.

Boycottwatch.org summarizes the message as "a non-verifiable email" and discredits it for various reasons, among them: "Nobody taking responsibility for the boycott call. ... No original contact source for the boycott call. ... No way to verify if the email has been altered."

We asked William Osborne what he thinks of the email. He's not only the smartest, best-informed, most-principled person we know -- pace all our smart, well-informed, principled friends -- but he's an American expatriate activist who has lived in Europe for the past 27 years and has followed the politics of Europe and the Middle East with deep interest and strong historical views about anti-Semitism.

Here's his take:

I hadn't heard about the German embargo on military exports to Israel. The Green Party has a long history of opposition to Israel, but this has little to do with 1933 and much more to do with their leftist and pacifist politics. The Greens tried to block even the export of anti-missile defense systems to Israel during the last Gulf War when Iraq was actually shooting missiles at Israel. The 1933 part comes from their absolutism -- a bane of the German mentality.

In re: Remember, every time you buy a bottle of Evian, a Carlsberg product, a Spanish melon, a Godiva chocolate, a Dior lipstick, a Gucci bag, or a German kitchen appliance, you are financing the next Muslim mass murderer.

These kinds of crudely anti-European arguments are ridiculous and do little to aid the cause. Instead, one pictures fanatics on that side of the dispute. To tell the truth, there is far more hatred of Arabs and Moslems in the U.S. and even in Europe, than anti-Semitism. The Turks in Germany face constant abuse (though in fairness, I must say that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government is evolving far more enlightened policies). Chauvinism is the source and could easily carry over to persecution of other groups, like Jewish people. Chauvinism is wrong on both sides.

As for me, one would naturally suspect that my views are European, but that isn't really true. I of course sense the anti-Semitism that informs a lot of the European perspective. It puts me off, and as you know, I have been rather vociferous about that, sometimes to good effect, I think.

[A university student at the University of Vienna has been inspired by Osborne's article "Artist-Prophets" -- published in Leonardo Music Journal (Vol. 9, 1999) M.I.T. Press -- to do her Master's thesis on the Vienna Philharmonic's collaboration with the Third Reich.]

Actually, my view on the Israeli/Palestnian war is far, far more Berkeley than European. Watch Democracy Now! for a couple weeks and you will see where I am more or less aligned [Hey, it's our favorite news site], though even they sometimes go too far for me. They simply do not give enough credence to the difficulties of dealing with the Muslim mindset.

On the other hand, I will never subscribe to shooting to death rock-throwing children, bulldozing houses, building walls euphemistically called fences, or respecting politicians of hatred like Benjamin Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon. As you know, the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin is much more my type. The current morass shows how hatred breeds hatred and can even wear down a country and people with the noble and humanistic ideals upon which Israel was founded.

I know I will sound like a crackpot, and maybe I am, but I think the United States is mostly responsible. The Israelis are extremely independent-minded people. They have a desire for self-reliance that only the Holocaust and two millennia of being pariahs could produce. If they had any chance at all, they would very rightly keep an independent distance from the U.S. In reality, the populace of Israel is mostly from Europe and its view of government and culture is far more European than American. The U.S. knows this and keeps the Palestinian conflict alive in order to keep Israel totally dependent upon the U.S. I do not think I am being cynical or overly suspicious. Our country is sinister. It has a huge incentive for keeping its hands on the Middle East, and Israel is its fortress in that area.

Well, anyway, there you have it.

Here are some other calls for boycotts against insurance companies, dairy products, hotel resorts, Broadway shows, newspapers, record companies and almost anything else in the market for customers. As Brando once said in "The Wild One" in another context (he was asked what he was rebelling against): "Whaddya got?" I don't know if these other boycott calls are justified. But at a glance most of them seem so.