Chevron’s purchase is another nail in the BDS movement’s coffin

For many decades, one of the givens in the discussion about the Arab world’s war on Israel was the role that the American and international oil industry played as a supporter of the Arab war on Zionism. One of the most important factors in sustaining the hostility of the foreign-policy establishment to Israel was the enormous influence of the huge oil companies that viewed the U.S. relationship with Israel as a threat to their ability to do business in the Middle East. The notion of any of those corporations doing business in Israel was unthinkable since they were among the primary enablers of the Arab boycott of the Jewish state.

That’s why last week’s completion of the purchase of Noble Energy, the company which operates and holds the rights to most of the natural-gas reserves off of Israel’s coastline by the Chevron Corporation, should be regarded as a milestone in the country’s economic history. The fact that even many news sites treated it as just an interesting, if not particularly earth-shaking, piece of Middle East business news isn’t so much curious as it is a sign of just how absurd the BDS movement’s efforts to economically isolate the Jewish state have become.

If the economic muscle behind the Arab world’s long campaign to treat Israel as a pariah state has not only given up that fight, but is making a massive investment in that country’s future, then where does that leave a movement that still imagines that its anti-Semitic propaganda will erase the Zionist experiment?