After a spring of failed attempts to win a real BDS victory, the forces of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions seem to have fallen back on older bad habits of using pretend victory as a substitute for any actual successes. An exerpt from the latest Divest This posting on Deutche Bank's alleged divestment from the Israeli firm Elbit:

...The second story is a blast from the past regarding a financial institution's alleged divestment in an Israeli electronics firm. The contours of this story follow similar stories in 2009 where BDS advocates sent out press releases hailing a financial firm (such as TIAA-CREF or Blackrock) for their alleged anti-Israel divestment stance. It was only later that the public discovered that no such divestment had taken place and that the divestniks were projecting their own political opinions onto the generic buying and selling decisions of third parties.

Now I'm ready to believe that Deutche Bank sold shares in the Israeli firm Elbit (although, apparently, even this fact has yet to be confirmed). And I even accept the fact that various anti-Israel groups in Germany had lobbied the bank to sell these shares. But where is the causal link between the two (other than the post-hoc fallacy that says if A proceeds B, than A must have caused B)? The story on this sale also mentioned that Elbit shares has fallen 30% this year. From what little I know of the world of high finance, I would suspect that this fact influences bank investment policy more than complaints by Pax Christi.

Now those pushing the Deutche Bank/Elbit story as being about BDS (vs. a general sale of stock which is losing value) can clarify the issue for us quickly by providing us a statement by Deutche Bank the unequivocally states that they have made this decision to sell Elbit shares for political vs. financial reasons. This is not such a big thing to ask if divestment has actually taken place. In fact, unless such information can be provided, then it's safe to say that divestment has NOT taken place since divestment (vs. the generic buying and selling of stock) is a political act, and thus it makes no sense whatsoever to divest in secret.

Given the number of BDS hoaxes we were subjected to last year that fit this pattern, the onus is really on those who insist that Deutche Bank has made a political divestment decision to provide us the evidence that this is the case (in the form of a statement by the bank explaining clearly that they sold their Elbit shares for political vs. financial reasons).

If such evidence can be provided, I would be happy to acknowledge that BDS has scored a victory. But absent such evidence, I think we'll have to assume that the BDSers are simply up to their old tricks of trying to create fake victories by projecting their own wishful thinking onto the financial decisions of others.