Natalie Portman can give one reason or another for her act of boycott, she can make the subtlest of distinctions that will differentiate her from the rest of the entities that operate against Israel, but in the end, her decision to boycott the Genesis Prize ceremony is seen here as part of the cloud of hostility that hangs over the country – and since when, actually? These past 70 years? Ms. Neta-Li Hershlag, who Anglicized her name to Natalie Portman thanks to a name from her mother's side, won't escape that cloud.
We shouldn't delude ourselves. Portman is a personality under direction. As a major Hollywood star, she is surrounded by agents and managers. She also has her own independent, original thoughts, which she computes as part of her management software.
The Natalie Portman firm concluded that her participation in a public ceremony in Israel, and being photographed at said ceremony with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would hurt the Portman brand more than a nonappearance, along with political messages against the government of Israel, would. Omar Barghouti has already co-opted Portman's statements for the BDS movement. He's right. He is managing to poison the Israel brand in many circles.
Portman is not some minor personality. She represents the broad spectrum of liberal American Jewry. Every Jewish personality identified with liberal American finds some way to express their opposition to Israel, without of course denying Israel's right to exist.
This was more or less the message from World Jewish Congress Chairman Ron Lauder in his most recent New York Times opinion piece, in which he accused Israel of hurting itself by not making peace with the Palestinians.
This pathetic, hurtful phenomenon among liberal American Jews perpetuates and even intensifies the policy that was traditional in the American administration for years. In effect, this tradition ended only when President Donald Trump took office.
There is no point in getting into a one-on-one historical debate with Portman; her conscience is partisan so there's no point. But the interesting point is the tendency of American Jewry to condition its closeness to or distance from Israel on how the peace process "progresses" toward a Palestinian state.
This was the attitude of previous administrations. The closer Israel got to the two-state solution, the closer the U.S. drew to Israel. Ironically, this is American Jews' message to Israel, making them tools of blackmail in the hands of the terrorist organization known as the Palestinian Authority.
Portman might explain her boycott by referring to the issue of African "refugees," but she means the same much-discussed gap in values between Israel and "progressive" American Jewry. It could be the Palestinian issue, the Western Wall, the question of "who is a Jew?" or, most recently, migrants who entered Israel illegally. Any issue can be thrown on the pile of growing alienation of American Jews.
What makes Portman's political approach suspicious is the fact that she has both her feet in a moral disaster area – and this refers to Hollywood; America that commits acts of mass slaughter; California, whose open southern border has become an entry point for human trafficking, particularly the trafficking of women.
Out of the ruins of the totalitarian republic that replaced the strains of "Hava Nagila" with Harvey Weinstein and Barack Obama, Portman is in no position to preach to Israeli society, which is heroically defending its life and protecting its democracy. It would be best to accept the fact that even people like Portman are part of this same group.
