Israel is treading water in the fight against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, over stalled budgets and cumbersome bureaucracy, Israel Hayom has learned.
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Created in 2006, the Strategic Affairs Ministry's main mission was heading Israel's public diplomacy efforts on the global stage, and in 2015 it was tasked with leading the campaign against the BDS movement.
The ministry's efforts to counter the BDS movement's efforts to delegitimize the existence of the Jewish state saw it invest tens of millions of shekels in setting up intelligence, research, and information systems to combat the phenomenon. These efforts, for example, allowed Israel to expose links between various charities and terrorist organizations.
The latter led to last year's decision by the government to designate six groups affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as terrorist organizations and to a subsequent decision by several European nations to suspend their donations to these groups.
The ministry was shuttered in 2021 and merged into the Foreign Ministry as part of the 36th government's downsizing efforts. Only 30 staff members were brought on to the corresponding department in the Foreign Ministry, its budget was dramatically slashed, and many of the Strategic Affairs Ministry's running initiatives have been suspended – all while Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has warned that "2022 will likely see Israel designated an apartheid state."
Ambassador Gilad Erdan, who prior to his mission as Israel's envoy to the United Nations served as the strategic affairs minister, believes the initiatives his ministry led remain vital, but Lapid seems to disagree. The foreign minister has argued over the years that the Strategic Affairs Ministry was redundant and that its existence sought only to serve internal political interests. Lapid named his deputy, Idan Roll to head the merger, as well as Israel's efforts to counter the BDS movement.
However, Israel Hayom has learned that the process of combining the ministries has been dragging out all while the fight against BDS has been treading water: research activity has slowed considerably, no new reports are slated for publication in the foreseeable future, and many of the employees that made the move to the department set up in the Foreign Ministry are disgruntled.
Budgetary issues are also unclear. The budget afforded to the Strategic Affairs Department last year was 120 million shekels ($38 million), with the potential to raise a similar amount through civilian NGO, but now the government is poised to appropriate only NIS 25 million ($8 million).
The budget earmarked for fighting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement specifically has been slashed as well, from NIS 35 million ($11 million) to NIS 8 million ($2.5 million). Moreover, pro-Israel groups seeking to promote public diplomacy moves with the Strategic Affairs Department are being told there is no money to do so.
"As a result, we no longer track how funds from 'human rights groups' make their way to terrorist groups. There's no oversight on European donations, and no review of what's going on in academia," a source familiar with the issue told Israel Hayom.
According to other sources, top Foreign Ministry officials are interested in advancing the merger, and it is the functionaries who are holding it back, as three months ago, their workers' union instructed them "not to pursue any move that would integrate the Strategic Affairs Ministry" in the Foreign Ministry.
"The [computer] systems of the ministries have not been linked. The employees of the Strategic Affairs Ministry are not connected to the Foreign Ministry mainframe, so they have no way of knowing what's happening with respect to issues that for years they were in charge of," said one source.
Another official said that the former employees of the [Strategic Affairs] Ministry have not received Foreign Ministry key cards and they're not allowed to arrive [there] without them."
The fact that the team set up to fight the delegitimization efforts against Israel has been dissolved prior to a replacement body being set up is also a cause for concern, he said.
The Foreign Ministry rejected the claim that the merger has been dragged out, while admitting that the workers union was impeding some of the steps, such as the employees' onboarding process.
"The labor dispute is being resolved and so will these issues," a senior Foreign Ministry official said, adding that other claims brought against the move "are false and misleading. The employees of the Strategic Affairs Ministry have been integrated into the Foreign Ministry's in full as part of its Public Diplomacy Division."
The merger, he stressed, "significantly increased the resources Israel appropriated to the fight against the delegitimization efforts against it and it has fostered synergy and efficiency with respect to the complex challenges Israel faces.
"To be clear, not only have the budgets for the fight against delegitimization increased, the staff's purview has expanded with their integration into the ranks of the Foreign Ministry," he continued.
"The allegations that the employees cannot come to the offices are false. Employees routinely arrive at the Foreign Ministry [building] in Jerusalem, and the directors of the Public Diplomacy Division arrive at the Tel Aviv offices on a regular basis."
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