Israel Apartheid Accusations in Portland

Israel Apartheid Accusations in Portland

Earlier today my business partner and I were scheduled to deliver a seminar at a downtown Portland, Oregon hotel on the topic of doing business in Israel and the Middle East. Portland was stop number two on a four city tour which began yesterday in Denver and will move next week to Jackson, Mississippi and then New Orleans.

We had discussed before we left Israel that it was entirely possible that some people, seeing the topic, would decide to use the occasion to demonstrate against Israel by parading outside the seminar venue. So it was no surprise when at 7:30 AM the manager of the hotel came to the site of the seminar to tell us that there were a handful of demonstrators outside the hotel voicing their opposition to Israel knowing that an event related to Israel was scheduled to be held inside the building.

The manager offered that when we left the building if we wanted to use a side entrance he would escort us in that direction. I countered by saying that we were actually guests in the hotel so we had no reason to be concerned about leaving as, after the seminar, our intent was to go back to our rooms. He looked a bit puzzled but simply said he was ready to assist if need be. And that, we thought, was the end of it.

The seminar, sponsored by the Oregon Business Development Department, went well, with an opening presentation by the Mayor of Portland’s Director of International Affairs. After our presentation the floor was thrown open for questions and that’s when the shock began.

In this audience of business people who were presumably there to learn how to enter new export markets in order to increase their sales volume in these difficult economic times, the first questioner wanted to know why a department of the state government was sponsoring an event related to increasing business with an “apartheid” country, a country that was guilty of a host of human rights violations and continued to sieze territory against the laws of the Geneva convention. Not realizing there would be more questions of this type, our response was basically that we do not engage in political discussions during business meetings.

However, the second questioner continued in kind wanting to know why the state was not warning its companies of the danger of doing business with Israeli firms. After all, he continue, the strength of the boycott campaign against Israel continues to grow and local companies may find themselves boycotted in America if they continue to do business with Israel. The representative of Oregon in the room responded by saying that there were dangers in doing business in a lot of places in the world and the Department did its best to apprise local companies of the dangers but did not dissuade them from entering such markets.

But all of this is, of course, not the problem. The problem is that most of us living in Israel, while we hear of incidents like this, tend not to internalize them and that is probably natural. But the official government line, of late, has taken the same tack, saying that while the government is aware of the problem, it is nothing new and, therefore, does not warrant a response. This was the official line a couple of weeks ago after Ambassador to the US Michael Oren was disrespected at a presentation at the University of California/Irvine as were other diplomats in the UK as well.

This mistaken approach that nothing is serious enough to warrant a response, is the same kind of thinking that ultimately results in calamity for the Jewish people. For those who have not seen anti Israel and/or anti Jewish behavior face to face, perhaps it is possible to think this is not serious. But when you see it up close as we did this morning, the clear and present danger makes itself quite obvious.

George Santayana put it best when he opined “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Let’s hope he was wrong.


Sherwin Pomerantz
Portland, Oregon
11 March 2010