The shocking discrimination of the global company Ben & Jerry's, which sought to prevent the sale of its ice cream in Judea and Samaria and was rejected twice - first by Unilever, its parent company, and now by the American court - is expected to have consequences that go far beyond our ability, as Israeli consumers, to enjoy From ice cream all over the country.
The Israeli victory over the attempted boycott proves that in this campaign, as in all other systems, the insistence on our rights and the uncompromising adherence to the principles pay off.
For years we were used to accepting the delegitimization against us.
In the beginning it was the Arab boycott, which expanded to countries and companies that supposedly had to stand by Israel, because they had nothing and nothing to do with the Arab striving to suffocate the young Jewish state.
The secondary boycott on their part was particularly cynical: these countries and companies simply surrendered to the forceful violence of those who seek our harm and sold their principles at the cost of lentils.
It is not for nothing that the boycott of Israel was never satisfied with the effort to inflict economic damages on it.
Along with preventing business with Israel, the haters of Israel from the Arab world and other circles who were happy to join them sought to isolate the Jewish state and deprive it of its legitimacy through its complete boycott in every arena, from international organizations to culture and sports.
Even when the stranglehold of the Arab boycott was broken in the 1990s, the weapon of boycotts continued to be used by our enemies, although the initiative in its use passed from Arab hands to the left in the Western countries, which was enthusiastic about its integration into the anti-Zionist front and embraced the vision of Israel's isolation with a fervor that would not have shamed the Nazi campaigns of the 1930s for the isolation of the Jews in Germany.
From the point of view of that left, the outline was clear: to create the anti-Israel drift in every sphere of life, to categorize the Jewish state as always ostracized and to prepare the ground for the expansion of sanctions against it to the level of governments and international bodies.
Accordingly, the blows placed on Israel came from all sides, and as Israel did nothing - they only intensified.
The peak of the wave was recorded at the beginning of the millennium, and not by chance.
The Oslo Accords and the withdrawal policies of the Barak and Olmert governments have given rise to a redoubled wind in the sails of the boycott movement.
One more effort, its activists believed, and lo and behold Israel will be broken.
And they did spare no effort - Israeli scientists were boycotted from international conferences and projects, multinational companies withdrew their hands from Israeli tenders, and talk of confiscating corporations and banks that dared to invest in Israel became common knowledge.
The trend began to reverse when Israel and its friends in the world, first and foremost in Jewish communities, stopped turning the other cheek, and instead of watching the enemy's moves with defeatist indifference, they went on the attack.
We are beginning to see the fruits today in the Ben & Jerry's affair, and it would not have been achieved without the ideological revolution designed to spread widely the simple truth: the boycott of Israel is anti-Semitism in its embodiment, and as such is intolerable and unacceptable.
In the boycott fighting path we learned to take advantage of the new arsenal of tools, without which the wars of consciousness are not won.
We have promoted legislation against the boycott of Israel in dozens of US states and have learned to attack the enemy in the courtrooms as well, and not only on the traditional battlefields. As a result, the initiators of the boycott of Israel know that their conduct may expose them, and not the Jewish state, to legal and economic risks. More importantly - the discourse of delegitimization has lost its legitimacy even in arenas that until recently were considered lost. Want an example? Just a week ago a Spanish band was expelled from an international music festival after its members painted insulting inscriptions on the Israeli flag. If this had happened two decades ago, they would have won with words of encouragement.
The fight is not over.
There will still be battles against the boycott movement, but the ice cream precedent is sweeter than ever.
Dare wins, even in the war of the mind.
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