Analysis Punishing the World for UN Vote Will Be Worse for Israel Than BDS

After the settlements censure, Israel's consul general in New York suggested linking Israeli know-how to diplomatic support. But that would be like cutting off our nose to spite our export markets.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, October, 2016. Tomer Appelbaum

I think that Monday morning, when I read the tweet by Israel’s consul general in New York, Dani Dayan, I understood the right wing’s pain over the UN Security Council resolution against the settlements.

Dayan, the former chairman of the Yesha Council of settlements, is a decent and straight-talking guy, even if you don’t agree with him. But Monday morning he let loose with a really strange tweet in Hebrew: “The era is over in which countries benefit from Israeli know-how in high-tech, in security and so on, and from the prestige of a visit to Israel and involvement in the Middle East without providing diplomatic repayment.

We could dismiss this tweet as delusional if Dayan wasn’t a person who usually talks sensibly. So we can only interpret it as an expression of pain and disappointment. Or at least we can hope so.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether a visit to Israel and involvement in the Middle East is prestigious. Let’s go to the heart of the matter.

Countries don’t “benefit from Israeli know-how” for no reason. Instead, they buy it with real money. Israeli exports totaled $92 billion in 2015, and almost half came from the high-tech and defense industries.

Israel's counsel general in New York, Danny Dayan.Olivier Fitoussi

Even other export industries, such as agriculture, are based on “Israeli know-how.” If we punish the world and stop selling it Israeli know-how, the Israeli economy will collapse. No one is doing us a favor by buying our products, however good they are.

This looks like a deal to cut off our nose to spite our export markets. In any case, we don’t see Check Point, Amdocs or Intel Israel consulting before they sell something to a customer overseas.

Also, let’s remember where our export markets are located: the European Union 29%; Asia, 25%; the United States, 24%. These aren’t Senegal or Venezuela that sponsored the UN resolution.

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Source : haaretz