People often ask why even respond to BDS. Some say that since past BDS attempts to get colleges and universities to divest from Israel don't work and since they don't have many actual followers on campus, then why bother. Some would even say that Israel supporters give BDS conferences too much attention with any response at all. But as has been said many times, the appropriate response to BDS is a balancing act between making a strong statement and not shedding too much light on them. It is not about refusing to shine light on them at all. That would be a mistake. Here is why.
If we, as a community did nothing, a few things would still happen. BDS conferences would still succeed in coming on to the major college campuses around the country. They would still succeed in getting opinion pieces printed opposite real academics and statesman like James Woolsey, as just happened in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is the travesty of BDS and that "ship" so to speak, has sailed.
What some may not understand is that the problem with the BDS is not so much the "movement" itself, but the image of BDS as something more than it is and the false weight they are then given by the press and others in the community - whether the pro-Israel community responds or not.
It really comes down to this. "BDS" brings with it ALL the elements in any community that are amassed against Israel. When BDS comes to town, every reporter, every activist, every left leaning person who ever had a problem with Israel thinks "Oh, this is a group I can latch on to and say to the world - this is what I think of Israel." BDS is the cheese, and when they come to town the mice come running out of the woodwork. When BDS comes to town, any person with an Apartheid charge to make, or a claim that Israel is a genocidal state comes out of the woodwork to make their case.
THIS is what the Jewish community and supporters of Israel need to respond to when BDS comes to town, not just BDS itself. Yes, they don't accomplish anything tangible, but they do spread vile comments about Israel, the United States, and all those who support Israel. And they spread these ideas in all of the arenas where people are the least informed about the full picture of Israel and the full complexity of the conflict - on college campuses and in the local media.
Without a full understanding of either BDS or the Israeli Palestinian conflict, it is easy to believe that someone just wants to talk about non-violent resistance. And boycotts, divestment and sanctions certainly come across as non-violent. But BDS is not really about BDS. It is a loose amalgamation of speakers and writers who spread misinformation on a multitude of other topics. Just look at the program and listen to what the main speakers say. Their agenda and their words reveal the truth about the wider scope of the BDS ideology. They really are the sum of their parts and this is both the strength and the weakness of BDS. It is a strength because they can deny that any speaker is actually speaking on behalf of BDS. And it is a weakness because it allows critics to see the true nature of their rhetoric.
Let's take Remi Kanazi as a perfect example of how this sometimes works. Remi Kanazi is exactly the kind of speaker who we generally see at these conferences. That is why he was featured in their promotional video on YouTube. But after that video took some heat for some of Remi's more candid remarks, they are able to pull the video and distance themselves from those remarks. Nonetheless, he is typical of BDS speakers. BDS speakers often say they are not vilifying or demonizing anyone. Then someone like Remi Kanazi's "poetry" seems to say otherwise. And at that point some locals (who were somehow surprised by the remarks) decided to drop off the program.
It is puzzling how BDS supporters, even professors, never really research what speakers connected to these BDS conferences actually say. On the one hand it may be admirable for a professor to drop off the program when they hear Remi say that Israeli soldiers "snipe our children’s' shoulders, knees and stomachs." But on the other hand, who joins a group - in the context of this conflict especially - without seeing whether the attacks against them have any merit. And in this case they do.
Remi also says things like "Buying a 2 yr (Motorola) contract stacks up (collectively) to 63 years of ethnic cleansing." He claims that anyone who "supports Israel serves an agenda which rebrands colonialism as English Liberalism for pink washers."
Some would say 'this is only one person.' But don't be fooled by that argument. The whole point is that BDS is entirely made up of these 'one persons.' Ilan Pappe is the prototype for the shoddy academic. Ali Amunibah and Remi Kanazi are the prototypes for the people who aren't just talking about the complications in the West Bank, but who are talking about how the "settlements are just the branches of the Zionist agenda." They are talking about "Israel beyond Apartheid" or the Israel that becomes a single state with an Arab majority.
This is BDS. And BDS is all the people who come out to write Op Ed's to defend the speakers. The "BDS Phenomenon" is the editors who given them valuable media space and air time so that they appear to merit the same credibility that they also get from just using the halls of a school like the University of Pennsylvania.
They do not have standing yet they appear to have some because they can get into the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer alongside James Woolsey. Based on this "respect" one would never know that the actual organizers and speakers of BDS are a mishmash of relatively unknown characters and shoddy academics.
So to say that one, two, three, or four, or five or six speakers don't "represent" the BDS ideology is ludicrous. They ARE the BDS ideology. And once they are given the spotlight, and we know they always are, staying completely silent is impossible for our community. We must respond in some way - or their message - and their unwarranted appearance of credibility will have an impact on public opinion.
Jon Haber, a good friend to the cause and creator of the "Divest This" website often claims that as long as we let people know that BDS fails at getting organizations to divest, that is all we need to do. The problem with that argument is that "fail" is a relative term. As long as they "succeed" at convincing people that their ideology is credible and as long as they get into the Op Ed pages, they matter. The pro-Israel community, like it or not, did not put them there. Just like they didn't put delegitimization on the agenda of every meeting at the UN. They are here to stay - just like the delegitimzation of Israel is here to stay. It is the job of the Jewish and pro-Israel community to respond to the farce of BDS and call it what it is - a group of speakers and writers who lack integrity and who are academically dishonest. Alan Dershowitz said it best when he said "As soon as you stop lying about me, I'll stop telling the truth about you."
To do anything less would be irresponsible and to do anything more would be forgetting the goal - to have the superiority of our message win the day rather than the volume of our rancor.
Put plainly, BDS conferences assemble academics and activists whose sole purpose is to delegitimize Israel. It is true that the BDS campaign has had virtually no success in its calls for divestment from Israel but it is also true that the BDS calls for unilateral action against Israel go against decades of US and international support for a negotiated two state solution.
BDS conferences do not explore different approaches to the two state solution, but only provide a one sided polemic. BDS organizers claim that their conference is “inclusive” but there will never be panelists joining them to talk about the millions of Israeli Arabs who have voting rights and legal protections. The more accurate depiction of an Israel where an Arab can go to the Supreme Court - and win - hardly sounds like South African apartheid – a charge routinely made at BDS conferences. That false claim is as insulting to South African’s who lived through apartheid as it is to Israeli’s.
Despite the challenges that face any democratic society, Israel is a vibrant center of modernity, in sea of repressive Middle East regimes. No mention will be made of the abuses of Syria or Iran at a BDS conference, much less the actions of Hamas or Hezbollah.
The local response to its BDS conference has been civil, clear, and consistent. The student body let the world to know that the vast majority of students at Penn do not support the global BDS campaign. The University of Pennsylvania let their community to know that they fully reject calls for boycotting or divesting from Israel. And the local Jewish community has rightfully expressed serious concern about the distortions routinely made by BDS speakers.
The fact is that the shortsighted BDS campaign is counterproductive to the goals of peace. The only productive path toward peace and a two state solution is through bi-lateral, internationally supported negotiations. Listening to BDS speakers, you would never know that Israel stands ready, with outstretched hand, to get back to the negotiating table and resolve this conflict. Encouraging students to support that process, rather than condemning it, would be the best way for any activist to help achieve the ultimate goal we all should support, which is peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
(These views are my own and do not, in their entirety, represent the views of my employer.)
