The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday that the Dutch pension fund ABP has publicly rejected calls to disassociate from Israeli banks.

Dutch pension fund ABP, one of the largest pension funds in the world, announced on Wednesday that after looking into the matter it sees no reason to end its relationship with three Israeli banks. The fund’s announcement runs firmly against the grain of the increasing public perception that Israel is on the verge of wholesale boycotts by European financial institutions.

ABP had been pressed by anti-Israel activists to bend to the so-called Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and to cut its ties with three Israeli financial institutions. Even long-time detractors of Israel have criticized BDS advocates for dishonestly characterizing Israeli activities and for too openly seeking the elimination the Jewish state, and for its part ABP flatly asserted that the Israeli banks “do not act contrary to international law and regulations.” The pension fund’s decision is the latest in a string of setbacks for the BDS movement. Efforts to secure academic boycotts of Israel by U.S. institutions have triggered an intense backlash from literally hundreds of U.S. intuitions, and those efforts by now have become something of a punch line. Commercial boycott efforts – which seek to economically suffocate Israeli Jews, a strategy that the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has identified as soaked in anti-Semitism – have been covered heavily in recent weeks after an extended public campaign to urge Scarlett Johansson to drop her association with Israeli company SodaStream backfired badly. Johansson not only rejected those calls but also disassociated herself from Oxfam, where she had been a goodwill ambassador, over the group’s increasingly public ties to pro-BDS groups. The Israel Project (TIP) received broad coverage for a Super Bowl campaign mobilizing support for Johansson. The campaign, conducted largely on Facebook and Twitter, offered links to a “Thank Scarlett” page where activists and others could send letters of support to the American actress, model, and singer. The TIP campaign continued into this week, and the page is here.

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