(Reviewer: David Saks, Vol 78, #2, Winter 2023)
David Saks
As its title indicates, Challenging the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement: 20 Years of Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns examines how world Jewry and its supporters have responded to the international campaign of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions campaign against Israel since the early years of the present century. Co-edited by the husband and wife team of Ronnie and Lola Fraser, who themselves have been at the forefront of opposing academic boycotts against Israel in their native United Kingdom (Ronnie is Director of the Academic Friends of Israel, which he and Lola founded in 2003), it comprises a collection of essays by a range of experts examining specific facets of the BDS campaign to weaken, isolate, delegitimise and ultimately (though this is denied by some of its proponents) eradicate the Jewish state. While its stated purpose is to focus on “efforts to oppose antisemitism, the academic boycott, and the BDS movement”, the essays in the book also document in thorough and sobering detail how very deeply radical anti-Israel movements and ideologies have imbedded themselves in Western democratic societies the world over, particularly within such ostensibly non-aligned institutions as universities and human rights NGOs. The growing ascendancy of the international BDS movement has inevitably also been a major factor in the consistent rise of global antisemitism since the collapse – or more accurately jettisoning by the Palestinian side of the Oslo peace process in September 2000.
Both in terms of tactics and long-term aims, BDS is not a new phenomenon but just the latest weapon against Israel that has been waged since its very establishment 75 years ago. Certainly, boycott campaigns against Israel are nothing new, and indeed predate the existence of the state. Back then, the Arab League called for a total boycott of “Palestinian goods”, which at that time meant Jewish goods. To better understand how BDS as a distinct strategy came into being and how it has since emerged as one of the primary causes of anti-Jewish sentiment and activity on the international stage, some background is necessary.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union commencing in the late 1980s marked the decisive victory of the Western democracies in the so-called “Cold War”. Among other things, the resultant sense of euphoria led, to the eminent political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously declaring the arrival of “the end of history”. What Fukuyama meant was that that with the triumph of and market capitalism, humanity’s political and socio-cultural evolution had attained its final, ideal form of human government. Another, and related, “end of” belief that held sway around that time was that the age-old scourge of antisemitism was at long last in its death throes. One reason was that the fall of the Soviet Union not only removed a dangerous and implacable enemy of the Jewish state from the world stage, but also freed millions of Jews in the FSU from the jackboot of repression and discrimination to which they had long been subjected and allowed large numbers of them to immigrate to the Jewish state and elsewhere. By the end of the century, the vast majority of Jews around the world were living in democratic societies that accorded them full equality and protection. Even those that did not, moreover, were with rare exceptions not subjected to overt anti-Jewish discrimination. Not since the exile and indeed for some time even before that catastrophe had the Jewish people found themselves so secure and comfortably positioned.
A second reason why antisemitism seemed to be on its way out was the unfolding of the Oslo peace process, which promised as its endgame a resolution of the fraught conflict that had raged between Jews and their Arab neighbours even before Israel came into being. In terms of the US-brokered Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, then the unchallenged globally recognised representative voice of the Palestinians, would recognise Israel’s legitimacy and commit to living in peace alongside it in their own state based on a “land for peace” formula. It was hoped that a final status agreement would remove what had arguably been the primary source of antisemitism post-World War II. Israel’s creation and the enduring Palestinian refugee problem that were among its unintended consequences resulted in a new and virulent culture of Judeopathy (a term coined by Alan Dershowitz that I likewise believe is preferable to the always problematic term ‘antisemitism’, with or without the hyphen) taking root in the Islamic world. In the short term, this led to the mass emptying out of millennia-old Jewish communities in countries like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Since then, rabidly Judeophobic sentiment in Muslim-majority countries and communities around the world only intensified. The unresolved status of the Palestinians was also, at least ostensibly, at the heart of the growing antagonism towards Israel within what is broadly referred to as “the Left”, which was naturally driven to a great extent from Moscow. It was thus believed, not without reason, that the resolution of the long-standing conflict based on a negotiated two-state solution would settle the vexed problems of Palestinian statelessness and Israel’s continued perceived illegitimacy among those opposing to its existence.
Almost from the outset, events in the new century put paid to the optimistic prognostications both of Fukuyama and his ilk and those Jewish leaders and thinkers who believed that antisemitism would henceforth pose no more than a marginal threat to Jewish well-being. Two events perhaps more than any other, remarkably taking place within a few days of each other, respectively came to be seen as emblematic of the harsher realities facing the world and the Jewish people. One was the infamous series of terrorist attacks against the United States t on 11 September 2001 and the other the likewise notorious United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa, that had concluded just a few days before.
The WCAR is generally considered to mark the launch of a newform of global onslaught against the nation state of the Jewish people, and therefore by extension against the great majority of Jews around the world who both identified and were identified with it. Initially referred to simply as “the new antisemitism” it has since most commonly been identified by the acronym BDS, standing for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. The fact that the WCAR took place in South Africa had added significance in that the BDS movement is inspired and overtly modelled on the global campaign of boycotts and sanctions that played a significant part in the downfall of that country’s white minority Apartheid regime. The BDS movement has therefore explicitly sought to portray Israel as an apartheid state that like its white South African counterpart has no legitimacy and should not be allowed to continue to exist by the international community.
Given the centrality that the example of South Africa plays in the approach BDS has adopted, it is understandable that the essays in the book include contributions by two South African Jewish leaders, Marc Pozniak and Benji Shulman. Both are former national chairpersons of the SA Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS) who were at the coalface of confronting radical anti-Zionism on local university campuses before going on to hold senior leadership positions in other important Jewish communal organisations. In Pozniak’s case, it was as a long-serving lay leader and former National Vice-chair of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) while Shulman’s involvement has largely been in a professional capacity with the SA Zionist Federation.
Pozniak was present at the infamous Durban conference, and his chapter records the traumatic impact of that event on himself and his fellow Jewish representatives on the ground. He observes how difficult it has always been for him to adequately convey to those who were not there what it was like to be a Jew in such an environment, remarking that for the average, rational person, “the imagination struggles to stretch to a place where the unfiltered hatred of another can exist as openly and as unashamedly in as illustrious a setting as a United Nations conference”. To put the shock felt not just by those actually there but by SA Jewry in general to events in Durban, it must be remembered out how in the years following the transition from white minority rule to multiracial democracy in April 1994, South Africa had been regarded as a standard-bearer for non-racism, acceptance of diversity and peace-making through dialogue. That blatant antisemitism had been openly peddled on its streets with little push-back from either government, civil society or the mainstream media came as a profound shock.
A detailed analysis and description of how a conference whose formal aim was the fight against racism quickly mutated into an all-out attack on the Jewish people and their state is provided by Dr Dina Porat, a member of the Israeli Foreign Ministry delegation to Durban. In a chapter entitled, ‘A Different Attack on Israel and the Jewish People and Its Consequences’, she identifies and considers several key factors that she believes dictated the conference, among them the ‘increasing Islamisation of UN institutions’, “The threat of sweeping post-colonial demands’ and “The combination of Globalisation and Radical Islam”. Among the many compelling points she makes is that the descent of Durban into an anti-Israel hate fest was not only due to the efforts of the Arab and Muslim delegations, but the result of the willingness of the European participants to go along with it. As she writes, “It was convenient for the Europeans to focus discussions on the Middle East: in the regional preparatory conferences, countries previously under colonial rule had already threatened to demand apologies for their past sufferings, recognition, and especially compensation for their right to improve their rule prison conditions in the upcoming conference-a direct result of that colonial rule. Such calls could easily lead to a sweeping demand for reparations”. Porat goes on to show how Durban led, by way of response, to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. In his chapter entitled ‘The Circumstances and Reasons Surrounding the Adoption and Recognition of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism’, Ronnie Fraser traces the genesis and impact of the IHRA definition, which has become a central plank of the global Jewish response to BDS and “the New Antisemitism” in general.
Using the UK as a case study, he illustrates how the definition has played a key role in the international fight back against BDS. IHRA has accordingly come under persistent attack by BDS proponents on account of its labeling of certain forms of anti-Israel rhetoric as being antisemitic, among them drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, denying the Jewish people their right to serve self-determination and applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation. Fraser stresses that in all of this, the conditional phrase “depending on the context” was included as well as a categorical statement that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country could not be regarded as antisemitic. The inclusion of these qualifications was necessary to offset BDS attempts to label IHRA as an attempt to shut down free speech and discussion of Israel.
By far the most damaging aspect of the WCAR was not the main government conference but the NGO forum that preceded it. It was during this event that antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation was most virulent, while the final declaration adopted by the forum, which called or Israel’s total isolation of Israel and the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes against it subsequently became the basis of the manifesto of the international BDS campaign launched in 2005. In his chapter entitled ‘The Central Role of the NGO Network in Promoting the BDS Movement’, NGO Watch director Gerald Steinberg outlines the central role that the global NGO network, “under the labels of human rights and international law, and through the application of soft power” plays and the core resources it provides in promoting academic, economic, and other forms of boycotts against the Jewish state. One of the perennial difficulties in exposing and thereby discrediting these bodies is due, in Steinberg’s analysis, to the so-called “Halo effect”. As he explains, “Civil society groups proclaiming social justice agendas are seen as unsullied by the corruption and moral compromises that are inherent in political processes and institutions”. Through “appropriating the rhetoric of universal human rights in pursuing narrow political and ideological goals”, NGOs have thus largely avoided analysis and accountability for their actions.
The second South African contributor, Benjie Shulman, examines how BDS has manifested on local universities (‘The South African Variant: Anti-BDS Politics on Campuses of the Beloved Country’).Taking as his starting point a vote back in 2010 by the Senate of the University of Johannesburg to cease research cooperation at an institutional level with Ben-Gurion University, he goes on to examine what has transpired in the decade following that decision in light of various subsequent attempts to continue the campaign at other South African campuses. Shulman points out that the UJ incident was unique in the annals of the academic boycott campaign because it remains “the only instance globally where institutional ties have been breached through BDS action”. His essay explores why the “apartheid analogy” has such resonance on South African campuses, the modus operandi of BDS in the annual ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ campaigns it runs and how, with notable success, Jewish students and their supporters have been able to push back against them in recent years. Shulman also discusses the Bongani Masuku incident, when the afore-named International Relations Secretary of the Congress of SA Trade Unions made various threatening statements against supporters of Israel during an address on Wits University campus. As chairperson of SAUJS at the time, Shulman was centrally involved in what transpired and later gave formal testimony in court at a hearing that ultimately led to Masuku’s being founds guilty of antisemitic hate speech by the Constitutional Court and ordered to apologise to the Jewish community. That the world’s leading universities, which one would reasonably be expected to provide a safeguard against unscholarly and blatantly politicised ideologies gaining credibility has not only failed in that regard when it comes to the demonisation and delegitimization of the Jewish state but been greatly instrumental in furthering that ignoble cause is ultimately a staggering indictment against the academic profession.
How BDS is impacting at universities in the US is examined by Miriam Elman (‘The Anti-Israel Movement on the US Campus’). Her essay highlights how BDS pressure aimed at preventing those who disagree with its narrative of Israel being “an illegitimate colonial-settler enterprise and a racist project” primarily responsible for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has undermined “the traditions of open inquiry, intellectual exchange, free expression, and academic freedom”. Elman further notes how BDS activists are increasingly ostracising Jewish-Zionist students from participation in campus life, “particularly in progressive coalitions and causes” and how this has “created a toxic climate” on many US universities and colleges. In a related chapter (‘BDS: How a Crusade against Israel Became a Pre-Occupation of the Academy’) Donna Robinson Divine examines the “linguistic alchemy” and “lexical transformation” through which the BDS narrative has gained such massive traction for students, faculty, and administrators at American colleges and universities. This is despite how easily its tropes can be shown to be “devoid of intellectual credibility”. Divine goes on to consider how such a view of Israel must be seen in light of the impact of demography and scholarly trends on higher education”, an intersection that she concludes has “turned an intellectual subject of study into an instrument for political action”.
According to David Newman (‘The Mutual Weaponisation of BDS: A Perspective from Israel’), attempts to boycott the Israeli academic and scientific community have had minimal impact upon the relations with Israel’s universities, despite the amount of publicity they have engendered. The fact that foreign governments and major university institutions have to date refused to accede to BDS demands, in many cases in the name of academic freedom, has been a major factor in the failure of the academic boycott, as well as being a testimony to “the high level or scientific excellence displayed by the Israeli academic community”.
In a chapter entitled ‘Convergences and Divergences Between Secular and Religious Anti-Zionism in the United States”, Cary Nelson examine religious and secular overlaps and divergences with regard to the influence of BDS both in secular institutions like universities and in various mainstream Protestant churches. It is acknowledged that when anti-Zionism “is deeply embedded in what amounts to either secular or religious zealotry, dislodging it may be virtually impossible”, with the only realistic option being “gradual exposure to qualifying and complicating facts and arguments”, as well as actual exposure to Israeli society of those less indoctrinated. Just as combating antisemitism cannot be a short term project, Nelson argues, so is its more recent anti-Zionist variant likewise resistant to challenges. However, he believes that while religious anti-Zionism has “infuse[d] theology with contemporary political passions”, in view of careful study, in-depth analysis, and an acceptance of complication being embedded in many theological traditions, these can with careful effort be disentangled.
Andre Oboler (“Online BDS and Antisemitic Hate”) points out how the BDS movement coincided with the rise of Web 2.0 and then social media, providing it with an online presence connects local groups with a central Palestinian movement while reflecting a culture inspired by “an older and deeply problematic history”. Applying the IHRA working definition of “antisemitism,” he explores antisemitic imagery and language on BDS online platforms and examines when anti-Zionism takes forms that amount to antisemitism. At its core, he characterises the BDS movement as not being about Palestinian rights, nor as a tool for peace. Rather, it is “war by other means, and its online presence is cyber warfare based on disinformation and the leveraging of antisemitism”. Oboler concludes that the social media, which has thrived on promoting hate and division, has helped to give the BDS movement “more attention and energy than it deserves”.
After so much sobering analysis of the reach, ubiquity and sheer scale of the BDS war being waged against Israel, it is heartening to see Eran Shayson’s more optimistic view in his chapter entitled “Why BDS Is Destined to Fail” that concludes the book. He identifies three basic conditions that until now have allowed the BDS movement to make headway but which have undergone significant changes of late. One is how the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states have undermined “the pretension that Israel is a foreign colonial plant in the region”. A second is how legal measures that pro-Israel groups have been promoting are proving effective in obstructing BDS initiatives. Shayson also argues that the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic, by shifting the focus from a borderless globalised world to national, local, and communal challenges, have compromised attempts “to garner international support for BDS based on an imagined global solidarity”. Since to achieve its aim of BDS is heavily reliant on publicity if its efforts to brand Israel as an “apartheid state” and thereby undermine its legitimacy to exist are to succeed, its “likely increasing difficulty to gain traction” in light of the above trends may well, in Shayson’s view herald, its demise in the long term.
Challenging the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement provides a wide-reaching overview of how the demonisation of the Jewish state through its distorted use of human rights language has emerged, under the broad banner of BDS, as the latest mutation of antisemitism in the modern era. Providing a range of expert perspectives on the various areas in which the BDS movement is impacting, it is a timeous and comprehensive resource, particularly for those involved in responding to this pernicious phenomenon.
Fraser, R, Fraser, L, (eds), Challenging the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement: 20 Years of Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns, Routledge (London & New York), 252pp, index, bibliography, 2023.
David Saks is Associate Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and editor of Jewish Affairs.
