Manipulation and Deception: The Anti-Israel “BDS” Campaign
(Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions)
Alan Baker and Adam Shay
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One of the weapons presently being used in the campaign to delegitimize Israel in the international community is the so-called “BDS movement,” targeting and manipulating social society and the general public at the grass-roots level to act against Israel in academic, commercial, social, and cultural fields.
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This movement, inspired and generated by the infamous 2001 Durban UN Conference against Racism, bases itself on a number of very basic, general, and widely used political slogans, deliberately couched in terminology reminiscent of South Africa’s apartheid regime and oft-repeated anti-Israel slogans prevalent in resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the Durban NGO Plan of Action. Such slogans include accusations that Israel is an “apartheid and colonizing state,” a “discriminatory occupation regime,” a violator of international law, a “repressive occupier,” and the like.
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The nature of the campaign is such as to appeal to the genuine humanitarian sentiments of the grass-roots groups to whom they direct their efforts – whether these are students on campuses, members of the general public frequenting stores and supermarkets, attendees at cultural events, performers, or commercial entities trading with Israel. The aim is to manipulate these people, who are generally unfamiliar with the intricate details and history of the issues in the Middle East, by instilling into their minds an inherent bias against, and hostility towards, Israel. This targeted audience can easily and sincerely identify themselves with and support any movement that ostensibly opposes apartheid, discrimination, inequality, and colonialism.
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This movement is composed of a relatively small number of full-time, well-financed, anti-Israel activists, who are inspired and encouraged by senior figures in the Palestinian public, including Omar Barghouti, Mustafa Barghouti, Nabil Sha’att, and others. They organize events mostly throughout Europe and in North America, raise funds, and arrange seminars, conferences, and demonstrations in support of isolating and boycotting Israel in every way possible. They claim to enjoy the support of hundreds of Arab, Palestinian, and other non-governmental organizations signatory to their basic documentation. However, upon examination, many of these NGOs appear to be either fictional, non-existent, and even, in some cases, front-organizations for Hamas and other terror groups.
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Their mode of operation includes stalking members of the general public on the streets and arranging seminars intended to “brainwash” activists with factually inaccurate, misleading, and false information and accusations regarding Israel. It also includes threats of action against companies, suppliers, stores, academic institutions, as well as performers, unless they disassociate themselves from any Israel-related connection. In many cases this constitutes blatant harassment of the general public, and arbitrary denial of basic rights to freedom of choice, freedom to use public areas in shopping malls and streets, freedom to enter stores, freedom to purchase, freedom to conduct commercial relations, and freedom to choose cultural and artistic events. The BDS campaign thereby abuses democratic rights and freedoms in the social, cultural, commercial, and educational spheres of those countries in which it is conducted.
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From the substantive point of view, the BDS campaign feeds on and demonstrates a blatant and deliberate ignorance and denial of the basic issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The oft-repeated use of such slogans as “apartheid” and “colonialism” and the like with respect to Israel demonstrates total ignorance of the significance of the terms used, and an acute lack of familiarity with the democratic character of Israel and the actual situation in the area.
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I don’t buy it, Laura. Since when did “raw Jew hatred” motivate college students? What does it get anyone? Besides, much of this supposed “Jew hatred” comes from Jews. I say, it’s a weird religious trip.
In a region marked by the islamic persecution and slaughter of Christians, the oppression and brutality against women, regimes massacring their own citizens; these colleges and universities, churches, unions, NGO’s in the west have chosen to target the Jewish state as the one too beyond the pale to engage in commercial interaction with. This can only be explained by raw Jew-hatred on the part of the BDS movement.
I’m being moderated again. I mentioned the word “e v i l”. That must have done it. What a joke.
As I read this stuff, I feel like a visitor from another planet. My first impression was, “Why would students in the US, people pursuing careers supposedly in chemistry, engineering, nursing and other useful pursuits, be interested in furthering the ambition of a few scumbags like Barghouti who are financed by international terrorists? What does any of this have to do with careers, with chemistry, with LIFE? Will this help boy to meet girl, to marry, have a family and live happily ever after? Will it bring more beer to the toga party? make Spring Break more fun? What is this? Some chic new way to be “in” and “with it” in college?
Who the hell cares about supposed sins such as “colonialism” and “apartheid”? Since when is it a bad thing for a country with a lot of good things going for it, to want to start a colony somewhere? Isn’t this the stuff of every science fiction movie? Doesn’t our intellectual “in” crowd imgine colonizing the galaxies? How did this become a bad word? And what about “apartheid”? Since when was it a bad thing for a people “A” to live apart from a people “B” that doesn’t like them, and for each to mind his own business? I thought this was the standard way of resolving conflicts between people. As icing on the cake, how is “democracy” somehow the fix-all-cure-all for these supposed maladies? The world seems to have gotten by for thousands of years with very little democracy. How has this suddenly become the key to good governance?
Whatever it is that these folks are drumming up, and for whatever reason some nitwits would want to jump onto something like this, what does any of this have to do with life in the USA today? Will young Americans do better on their exams, if they expend at least a cursory effort for some “cause” like “fighting apartheid”, real or imaginary?
Something tells me there’s more involved here — it’s all just too absurd. Frankly, I think it has to do with sin and guilt. People no longer consider adultery a sin. Homosexuality is no longer a sin. Cheating isn’t a sin. Lying? It’s a sin if you’re a Republican, I guess. Keeping the sabbath? Eschewing idols? Honoring who? your parents? Give me a break! Real sins aren’t treated as sins, so we have to substitute other sins: the sin of apartheid; the sin of colonialism; the sin of cutting down trees. If you feel guilt (say, for having gotten a girl pregnant and telling her to get an abortion; or for telling off your parents; or for blaspheming God), you can get rid of the bad feeling by boycotting Israel and fighting colonialism. The world isn’t right; SOMEONE must be to blame, and it CAN’T be me!
Sin is real. Guilt is real. Eternal judgment is real. But apartheid? colonialism? Those are only things that OTHER people do; semi-mythical people in the great Far-Away.
This isn’t just a dangerous world; it’s not even just a nutty world. It’s simply evil. I know a book that deals with the matter, if anyone’s interested.