In North America, many public and private universities have large financial holdings. Campus BDS activists have therefore organized campaigns asking universities to divest from companies complicit in the occupation. Often, these campaigns revolve around attempts to pass divestment resolutions in the school's student government. While no university has heeded the call to divest, activists believe that the resolutions are symbolically important.[1]
In 2009, Hampshire College became the first U.S. college to divest from companies profiting from Israel's occupation as its board of trustees voted to sell its shares in Caterpillar, Terex, Motorola, ITT, General Electric, and United Technologies. Hampshire's president acknowledged that it was SJP's campaigning that brought about the decision, while members of the board of trustees denied this.
In 2010, the UC Berkeley Student Senate passed a resolution calling for the university to divest from companies that conduct business with Israel. The resolution was vetoed by the Student Body president who said it was "a symbolic attack on a specific community."[2] In 2013, another divestment bill was passed but the university stated that it would not divest.[3]
In 2019, Brown University became the first Ivy league university to pass a divestment resolution with 69% of the students in favor and 31% against.[4]
Countering BDS is a top priority for Israel and the Israel lobby, which believes that BDS is an "existential threat" to the state.[5] They have therefore organized efforts to oppose BDS, relying on strategies of defamation, intimidation, and lawfare.[5]
One tactic used by the counter-campaign to silence activists in academia is blacklisting. The tactics can cause students and untenured faculty, who worry about reprisals and negative publicity, to refrain from activism.[6]
The most famous blacklist is the anonymous website Canary Mission that publishes photos and personal information about students and faculty that promotes BDS. The website has threatened to send names of students to prospective employees.[7] According to the Intercept, the website has made it harder for activists to organize activities because people worry that they will end up on the site. Activists listed on the site have reported receiving death threats.[8] Another blacklist was the now defunct website outlawbds.com, operated by the Israeli private intelligence agency Psy-Group. It sent threatening emails to BDS activists in New York, warning them that they had been identified as "BDS promoter[s]."[9]
Many activists have attempted to defuse the chilling effects of blacklisting by treating inclusion on blacklists as a badge of honor or by attempting to get themselves blacklisted.[10]
In Israel, the counter-BDS campaign is led by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.[11][12] In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Ministry would receive over 100 million shekels as well as ten employees to fight BDS.[13] Some of the funds have been used to buy space in the Israeli press to promote its anti-BDS message.[11]
Leading BDS activists have been threatened and harassed by the Israeli government. In March 2016, Israeli Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Yisrael Katz argued that Israel should employ "targeted civil eliminations" against BDS leaders. The expression puns on the Hebrew word for targeted assassinations.[14] Amnesty International in response issued a statement expressing its concern about the safety and liberty of Palestinian human rights defender Barghouti and other BDS activists.[15] On 31 July 2020, Israeli soldiers arrested Mahmoud Nawajaa, General Coordinator of BNC, in his home near Ramallah and detained him for 19 days.[16][17][18]
According to some liberal Zionists, BDS and right-wing Zionists both risk destroying Israel, defined as turning Israel into a Palestinian majority state.[19] BDS wants to destroy Israel by allowing equal citizenship for Arab-Palestinians and by letting the Palestinian refugees return.[20] But right-wing Zionists, insisting on building more and more settlements, could also destroy Israel by making a two-state solution impossible. With the two-state solution off the table, Israel would either have to grant citizenship to the Palestinians living under occupation, thus destroying Israel, or would become an apartheid state.[21] Liberal Zionists find apartheid repugnant and would oppose apartheid in Israel.
Therefore, they propose a boycott limited to Israeli West Bank settlements to put pressure on the Israeli government to not build more settlements.[22] One proponent of this strategy is Peter Beinart who proposes a "Zionist BDS" which would advocate for divestment from Israeli West Bank settlements but oppose divestment from Israeli companies. This, Beinart argues, would legitimize Israel and delegitimize the occupation, thus challenging both the vision of BDS and that of the Israeli government.[23]
Barghouti finds this idea of distinguishing between Israel and Israel's conduct preposterous: "as if one could have opposed South African apartheid without being 'against South Africa,' or as if one could join a campaign against Saudi Arabian oppression of women, say, without being against Saudi Arabia!"[24] Steven Salaita argues that no distinction can be made between the racial discrimination that befalls the Palestinians living in the West Bank and those living in Israel: "There is no such thing as real democracy in legal systems that create hierarchies of access and belonging based on nothing more than biology."[25]
Some critics also contend that by opposing BDS, liberal Zionists have joined forces with the Zionist right.[26] That they are more concerned with preserving Israel as a Jewish state than with Palestinian rights.[27][24]
BDS enjoys overwhelming support among Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories. In a poll from 2015, 86% supported the boycott campaign, 64% believed that boycotting would help end the occupation, and 88% said they had stopped buying Israeli products.[28]
BDS is supported by a large number of Palestinian civil society organizations. In addition to the over 170 original signatories of the 2005 BDS Call, many more have since added their name to it. Some of the Palestinian NGOs supporting BDS are umbrella organizations, such as the Palestinian NGOs Network which, as of 2020, has 135 members.[29] According to Melanie Meinzer, many Palestinian NGOs refrain from endorsing BDS because their dependence on donors constrain their politics.[30] According to Finkelstein, BDS is exaggerating its level of support and many Palestinian NGOs endorsing it are small, one-person NGOs.[31]
Palestinian trade unions have been very supportive of BDS; the 290,000-member Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions was one of the original signatories of the BDS Call. In 2011, the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS was created with the objective of promoting BDS among trade unions internally.[32]
Leading voices in the Palestinian diaspora, such as Ali Abunimah,[33] Joseph Massad, [34]and Linda Sarsour[35] have thrown their weight behind BDS, as have several Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament, including Haneen Zoabi,[36] Basel Ghattas,[37] and Jamal Zahalka.[38]
The Palestinian leadership's position on BDS is ambivalent. President Mahmoud Abbas does not support a general boycott against Israel and has said that the Palestinians don't either. Barghouti has disputed Abbas's statement, saying that "[t]here is no Palestinian political party, trade union, NGO network or mass organization that does not strongly support BDS.[39] Abbas does, however, support a boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements, and the Palestinian Authority has at times used boycotts to gain leverage on Israel. For example, in 2015, it imposed a boycott on five major Israeli food manufacturers to retaliate against Israel withholding Palestinian tax funds.[40][41] The second highest authority of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian Central Council, on the other hand has announced its intention to:[42][43]
Adopt the BDS movement and call on states around the world to impose sanctions on Israel to put an end to its flagrant violations of international law, its continued aggression against the Palestinian people, and to the apartheid regime [Israel has] imposed on them.
A handful of Palestinian scholars have come out against an academic boycott of Israel. Examples include Sari Nusseibeh, former president of the Palestinian Al-Quds University, who acknowledges that his view is the minority viewpoint among his colleagues.[44] His collaboration with the Israeli Hebrew University has been criticized by some Palestinian academics who see it as a form of normalization.[45] Matthew Kalman speculated in The New York Times that dissent with boycott is more widespread among academics but that they are afraid to speak out.[46][44]
Palestinian-Israeli video blogger Nas Daily has expressed opposition to boycotts of Israel.[47] BDS has, in turn, denounced him for engaging in normalization.[48]
Jewish activists have often played central roles in BDS campaigns. Maia Hallward attributes this to two factors; the long history of social justice activism among Jews and the desire among activists to defuse anti-Semitism allegations which pushes Jewish activists to the forefront.[49] Sina Arnold calls it a "form of strategic essentialism," where Jewish activists make themselves visible, or are made visible by others.[50] Barghouti views the growing Jewish support for BDS as a refutation of the anti-Semitism accusation.[51]
Mendes argues that BDS exploits "unrepresentative token Jews" as an alibi. He notes that Jews too can make anti-Semitic claims and "play an important, if unwitting, part in preparing the ground for the future emergence of anti-Semitic movement."[52] The Anti-Defamation League has written that JVP "uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide a greater degree of credibility to the anti-Israel movement".[53]
JVP on the other hand states that their activism is grounded in Jewish values and traditions. Butler sees her activism as "affirming a different Jewishness than the one in whose name the Israeli state claims to speak."[50]
Many Jewish BDS activists have had their Jewish credentials questioned by parts of the Jewish community, with some reporting having been called "self-hating Jews", "Nazis," or "traitors."[54][55][56] The influential rabbi David Wolpe have stated that Jewish BDS supporters should be shunned:[57]
Those Jews who support BDS, or deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel, have no place at the table. They should not be invited to speak at synagogues and churches, universities and other institutions that respect rational discourse. They should have the same intellectual status as Klansmen: purveyors of hate.
Arnold believes that the polarization is a sign of a changing Jewish identity among young progressive Jewish Americans who don't identify with Israel as strongly as older generations.[50]
BDS considers the Israeli government's designation of the movement as a "strategic threat" proof that it is successful.[58][59]
Barghouti believes that the only effect Israel's heavy-handed measures will have is to speed up the ending of the occupation and the state's apartheid policies, and that its attempt to crush BDS will fail. He argues that BDS has dragged Israel into a "battlefield" over human rights, where its massive arsenal of intimidation, smears, threats, and bullying is rendered just as ineffective as its arsenal of nuclear weapons. Israel's extremism and its willingness to sacrifice its lasts masks of "democracy" will only help BDS grow, he argues.[60][61]
Hitchcock speculates that many counter-measures might backfire, especially if they are seen as infringing on the right to free speech. As an example, she gives Trump's 2019 order to federal agencies to use an expanded definition of anti-Semitism which includes speech critical of Israel when investigating certain types of discrimination complaints. Critics contended that the intent was to crack down on pro-BDS activism on campuses and their critique found its way into mainstream newspapers like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times.[62]
Peace agreements were signed between PLO and Israel in the mid-1990s. The Palestinian leadership recognized Israel and relinquished their claim to most of historical Palestine and in exchange a Palestinian state would be formed consisting of the West Bank and Gaza. But negotiations stalled, Israel constructed more settlements, and the agreements came to be seen as a disappointment among Palestinians. Frustrations over the occupation and the failure of the negotiations at Camp David resulted in the Second Intifada in September 2000.[63] Israel's brutal policies in dealing with the intifada reached new heights as the West Bank and Gaza became war zones.[64] In this context, Palestinians began developing new nonviolent methods, focused on international solidarity to pressure Israel.[64]
At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in South Africa (Durban I), Palestinians met with anti-apartheid veterans who identified parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa and who recommended campaigns similar to those they had used to defeat apartheid.[65] Many trace the origins of BDS to this conference.[66]
In April 2002, Steven and Hilary Rose, professors at the Open University and the University of Bradford, initiated a call for a moratorium on academic collaboration with Israeli institutions.[67] It quickly racked up over 700 signatures,[67] among them Colin Blakemore and Richard Dawkins, who said they could no longer "in good conscience continue to cooperate with official Israeli institutions, including universities."[68] Similar initiatives followed in the summer.[69] In August, Palestinian organizations in the occupied territories called for a comprehensive boycott of Israel.[69] In October 2003, a group of Palestinian intellectuals called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.[69] In 2004, an attempt to coordinate the boycotts gained momentum as the international community failed to stop the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier.[64]
Colin Shindler argues that the peace process's failure created a political void that allowed what had been a marginal rejectionist attitude to Israel to enter the European far-left mainstream in the form of proposals for a boycott.[70] Rafeef Ziadah also attributes BDS to the peace process's failure. She argues that BDS represents a rejection of the peace process paradigm of equalizing both sides in favor of explaining the situation as a colonial conflict between a native population and a settler-colonial state supported by Western powers.[71]
Others argue that BDS should be understood in terms of its purported roots in the Arab League's boycott of Zionist goods from Mandatory Palestine.[72][73][74] According to the archaeologist and ancient historian Alex Joffe, BDS is merely the spearhead of a larger anti-Western juggernaut in which the dialectic between communism and Islam remains unresolved, and has antecedents in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Muslim Brotherhood.[75] Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar believe that BDS should be viewed in a historical context of other boycotts of Israel.[72]
BDS is critical of liberal Zionists, who oppose the occupation, but also the right of return for the Palestinian refugees. In their view, both right-wing Zionists and BDS risk destroying Israel, defined as turning Israel into a Palestinian majority state.[76] BDS by demanding equal citizenship for Arab-Palestinians and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees,[20] and right-wing Zionists by insisting on building more and more settlements, eventually making the two-state solution impossible. With the two-state solution off the table, Israel would either have to grant citizenship to the Palestinians living under occupation, thus destroying Israel, or become an apartheid state.[77] Liberal Zionists find apartheid repugnant and oppose apartheid in Israel, so they propose a boycott limited to Israeli West Bank settlements to put pressure on the Israeli government to stop building settlements.[78] Peter Beinart in 2012 proposed a "Zionist BDS" that would advocate for divestment from Israeli West Bank settlements but oppose divestment from Israeli companies.[79][23] This, Beinart argued, would legitimize Israel and delegitimize the occupation, thus challenging both the vision of BDS and that of the Israeli government.[23]
BDS supporters contend that liberal Zionists reveal themselves to be more concerned with preserving Israel as a "Jewish state" than with human rights.[26][27][80] Barghouti states that by denying the Palestinian refugees right of return simply because they are non-Jewish, liberal Zionists adhere to the same Zionist racist principles that treat the Palestinians as a "demographic threat" to be dealt with in order to maintain Israel's character as a colonial, ethnocentric, apartheid state.[81]
Many authors trace the origins of BDS to the NGO Forum at the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa (Durban I) held in September 2001.[66] At the forum, Palestinian activists met with anti-apartheid veterans who identified parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa and recommended campaigns like those they had used to defeat apartheid.[65] The forum adopted a document that contained many ideas that would later reappear in the 2005 BDS Call; Israel was proclaimed an apartheid state that engaged in human rights violations through the denial of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel. The declaration recommended comprehensive sanctions and embargoes against Israel as the remedy.[82]
In March 2002, while the Israeli army reoccupied all major Palestinian cities and towns and imposed curfews, a group of prominent Palestinian scholars published a letter calling for help from the "global civil society." The letter asked activists to demand that their governments suspend economic relations with Israel in order to stop its campaign of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing.[83] In April 2002, Steven and Hilary Rose, professors at the Open University and the University of Bradford, initiated a call for a moratorium on academic collaboration with Israeli institutions.[67] It quickly racked up over 700 signatories,[67][84] among them Colin Blakemore and Richard Dawkins, who said they could no longer "in good conscience continue to cooperate with official Israeli institutions, including universities."[68] Similar initiatives followed in the summer.[69]
In August, Palestinian organizations in the occupied territories issued a call for a comprehensive boycott of Israel.[69] The majority of the statements recalled the declarations made at NGO Forum the year before.[85] In October 2003, a group of Palestinian intellectuals called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.[69] Attempts to coordinate the boycotts with a more structured approach led to the formation of the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in April 2004.[64][85]
BDS is based on the assessment that all forms of international intervention and peace-making to date have failed to get Israel to comply with international law. It therefore appeals to "people of conscience" to pressure their states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel.
Several groups have been created specifically to combat BDS. The Israel Action Network was set up in 2010 by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs with a pledge of $6 million.[86] In 2015, billionaire and pro-Israel philanthropist Sheldon Adelson held a meeting with representatives of 50 Jewish organizations, raising $50 million to fight BDS on U.S. campuses.[87] The same year, he and billionaire Haim Saban[citation needed] set up the Maccabee Task Force, led by David Brog, with the mission "to ensure that those who seek to delegitimize Israel and demonize the Jewish people are confronted, combatted and defeated".[88]
Sriram Ananth writes that the BDS Call asks people to uncompromisingly stand against oppression. In his view, liberal Zionists have failed to do so by not endorsing the BDS Call.[89]
BDS South Africa undertook a boycott campaign against the South African retail chain Woolworths in 2014 over its trade relations with Israel.[90] It was the first comprehensive consumer boycott of a South African retailer since 1994.[90] The campaign used the Twitter hashtag #BoycottWoolworths which rapidly became one of the top trending hashtags on South African Twitter.[90] The campaign attracted international media attention and was covered by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Al-Jazeera.[90] The activists organized flash mobs, die-ins, and placed "Boycott Israeli Apartheid"-stickers on Woolworths' Israeli merchandise, all of which they published on social media.[90] Consumers were encouraged to write to the company's store managers questioning the stocking of Israeli goods.[91]
The campaign ended in mid-2016 when Woolworth informed its annual general meeting that it would no longer purchase Israeli products from the occupied territories.[92]
Peace agreements were signed between Israel and the PLO in the mid-1990s. The Palestinian leadership recognized Israel and relinquished its claim to most of historical Palestine in exchange for a Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank and Gaza. But negotiations stalled, Israel constructed more settlements, and Palestinians came to see the agreements as a disappointment. Frustration over the occupation and the failure of the negotiations at Camp David resulted in the Second Intifada in September 2000.[63] Israel's brutal response to the intifada reached new heights as the West Bank and Gaza became war zones.[64] In this context, Palestinians began developing new nonviolent methods, focused on international solidarity to pressure Israel.[64]
In 1993, Israel and the Palestinians entered into negotiations, known as the "peace process," to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and afford the Palestinians a state. But the negotiations stalled, the number of settlers doubled,[93][94], the Palestinians' situation did not improve,[95] and they began to see the peace process as a failure, a "sham."[96][97] The discontent led to an uprising against Israel,[96] that was brutally repressed.[64] In this context, Palestinians began developing new nonviolent methods, focused on international solidarity to pressure Israel.[64]
Many authors trace BDS's origins to the NGO Forum at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in South Africa (Durban I).[66] At the forum, Palestinian activists met with anti-apartheid veterans who identified parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa and recommended campaigns like those they had used to defeat apartheid.[65] The forum adopted a document that contained many ideas that would later reappear in the 2005 BDS Call; Israel was proclaimed an apartheid state that engaged in human rights violations through the denial of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel. The declaration recommended comprehensive sanctions and embargoes against Israel as the remedy.[82]
Israel has a terrible reputation[98] due to its long-running conflict with the Palestinians which, in combination with BDS activities, has led to the state increasingly being associated with apartheid and war crimes.[99] The Israeli government therefore initiated "Brand Israel", a campaign to improve Israel's image by showing its "prettier face", downplaying religion, and avoiding discussing the conflict with the Palestinians.[100]
Brand Israel promotes Israeli culture abroad and also seeks to influence "opinion-formers" by inviting them on free trips to Israel.[101] BDS attempts to counter the campaign by urging people not to participate in its activities. For example, in 2016 the Israeli government offered 26 Oscars-nominated celebrities 10-day free trips to Israel worth at least $15,000 to $18,000 per person.[102] BDS activists took out an ad reading『#SkipTheTrip. Don’t endorse Israeli apartheid』and urged the celebrities not to go.[103] According to Catherine Rottenberg, they were successful and not a single celebrity went on the free trip.[104]
bds2020jul30 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Israeli supporters of settlements and opponents of a Jewish state (including some in the global B.D.S. movement) despise the idea of boycotting settlements. Their zero-sum aspirations – either for a Greater Israel or Palestine-from-the-river-to-the-sea – are grounded in the insistence that Israel and the occupied territories are indivisible.
Most important, settlements threaten the two-state solution, without which Israel's future as a democracy and a Jewish state are in peril.
A policy of boycotting settlements – adopted by nations and people who care about Israel – can push Israeli leaders to finally choose: Do they stand with settlements or do they stand with an Israel that truly seeks peace with its neighbors?
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Israeli supporters of settlements and opponents of a Jewish state (including some in the global B.D.S. movement) despise the idea of boycotting settlements. Their zero-sum aspirations – either for a Greater Israel or Palestine-from-the-river-to-the-sea – are grounded in the insistence that Israel and the occupied territories are indivisible.
Most important, settlements threaten the two-state solution, without which Israel's future as a democracy and a Jewish state are in peril.
A policy of boycotting settlements – adopted by nations and people who care about Israel – can push Israeli leaders to finally choose: Do they stand with settlements or do they stand with an Israel that truly seeks peace with its neighbors?