In an article in The Independent, Ben White accuses the UK government of “misrepresenting the BDS movement as anti-Semitic,” due to the government’s new legislation banning local councils and public institutions from boycotting Israel. White uses the fact that there are Jews who support boycotts to suggest that this means BDS (and Jews) can’t be anti-Semitic. He does not elaborate on this logic, or explain how it is not anti-Semitic for a movement to target only Jews with boycotts; and the Jewish organizations he mentions are fringe groups that in no way represent mainstream Jewish opinion.
He claims BDS is to challenge “Israeli settler colonialism and occupation,” the Israeli government’s “apartheid regime” and its supposed indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza, all of whom are innocent according to White, because in his mind, or at least in this piece, there is no Hamas, and so no reason that Israel would ever have to act in self-defense. But he leaves out that the goals of the BDS movement are to delegitimize Israel and end it as the Jewish state, for example through demanding the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees from 1948 and ’67, as well as their descendants.
Join the Fighting BDS Facebook page and follow @FightingBDS on Twitter and stand up against the delegitimization of Israel.
While there are of course many Palestinian groups that advocate boycotting Israel, the fact is that instead of affecting Israel, more often the boycotts are harmful to the average Palestinian who is just trying to live a normal life. For example when SodaStream, where thousands of Israelis and Palestinians worked together, was pressured to move out of the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinian employees lost their jobs.
White argues that the BDS movement is not singling out Israel, by pointing to the fact that there are sanctions and arms embargoes against groups and countries such as Al Qaeda, North Korea, Syria, and Iran. His absurd defense of BDS is to employ an immoral equivalence by comparing Israel with terror groups and undemocratic human rights abusers. His mistaken assumption seems to be that anti-BDS campaigners share his views on Israel but protest: “Israel isn’t the only terrorist/apartheid country/dictatorship, why just us!”
Where he gets it right though, is quoting BDS National Committee spokesperson Rafeef Ziadah saying the new measures are unlikely to succeed in “thwarting the growing public support for the Palestinian struggle.” Of course it was inevitable that BDS-supporters would protest against the new legislation as an attack on democracy. Unfortunately in that respect the law is counterproductive, giving the boycotters even more cause to play the victim card than they already do (‘now it’s not just a fight against Israel, it’s a fight for freedom of expression everywhere!’) – and giving activists like Ben White more cause to spew his anti-Israel slurs in The Independent.
The legislation is certainly not a PR victory for Israel, and time will tell if it is beneficial to Israel economically or in other ways. In any case, this should not detract from the real dangers of the BDS movement in other areas. White observes that the BDS movement will make more of a difference than government actions taken against BDS and in support of Israel.
This is because they can delegitimize Israel by perpetuating their false accusations against Israel through the media. These false accusations in turn lead to poisonous atmospheres where Jews around the world feel threatened on university campuses and are held responsible and physically attacked in retaliation for the Israeli government and army’s actions taken against Palestinians in self-defense. Just yesterday, the co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club resigned from his position over his concerns about anti-Semitism and its support of Israel Apartheid Week.
Ben White’s article addresses the question of whether BDS is anti-Semitic and fuels anti-Semitism. The answer’s in the article, but it’s not the one he was going for.
Featured image CC BY-ND claudia gabriela marques viera;
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