There is a growing recognition that the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is just a new form of the oldest hate, antisemitism.
We have documented here many times how BDS has a direct connection to the anti-Jewish boycotts in the 1920s and 1930s in the then British Mandate for Palestine, the anti-Jewish boycott of the Arab League (which was put in place three years prior to Israeli’s independence), and the gross antisemitic activism at the 2001 Tehran and Durban conferences which launched boycotts in the current form.
The claim that BDS was a response to a 2005 call from Palestinian civil society is a demonstrable lie. That was the cover story to repackage an anti-Jewish boycott in the language of ‘social justice’, as documented in my lecture, The REAL history of the BDS movement:
The BDS movement on campuses, not surprisingly, stokes anti-Jewish sentiment under the guise of anti-Zionism, New study: BDS activists hostile toward Jewish students, not just Israel.
In the U.S., the BDS movement has made inroads mostly on campuses, fed by street intimidation from groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, academic thuggery from faculty who take over academic associations, and libelous antisemitic conspiracy theories by groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace. But with the exception of a handful of Democrats representatives, BDS has not spread widely in the U.S.
In Britain, both BDS and antisemitism have spread through a major political party, the Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
The toxic mix of anti-Zionism and antisemitism on British campuses and in British Society is much worse than in the U.S. A new report documents the connection.
The Jewish Chronicle in Britain reports, Report finds clear link between antisemitism and hostility to Israel:
A new report has established a clear link between antisemitism and hostility towards Israel, finding that the strongest holders of antisemitic views tend to support boycotts of Israel or consider it an apartheid state.Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the report’s co-author, said that people who hold “traditional antisemitic views” about divided Jewish loyalties or the nefarious use of power are more likely to back ideas of boycott or apartheid than those who do not hold them.“That does not mean that everyone endorsing these ideas [apartheid and boycotting] is necessarily an antisemite,” Dr Boyd added.“Indeed the data also indicate that some people who hold these views about Israel exhibit no particular hostility towards Jews at all.“But it does indicate that Jewish people, the majority of whom are broadly supportive of Israel, are right to be cautious here.” The paper — jointly published this week by JPR with the Community Security Trust — was based on a survey of 4,000 people in Britain carried out by Ipsos Mori between late 2016 and early 2017.Among people who strongly agreed or tended to agree with five antisemitic ideas presented to them, 58 per cent viewed Israel as an apartheid state: while of those who identified with six or more antisemitic ideas, 52 per cent were in favour of a boycott.
While acknowledging the link between BDS and Jew-hate, the survey also found low levels of support for BDS among the population at large, as The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports
The British branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel possesses a weapon matched by few other affiliates: star power.More than any of its international counterparts, BDS UK enjoys the support of renowned musicians like Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Richard Ashcroft and Jarvis Cocker, whom boycott activists like to parade in various petitions. Also on board are eminent filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, and even the celebrated actress Julie Christie has signed on.(On Tuesday, several of those stars signed yet another petition, urging the BBC to push for the 2019 Eurovision song contest to be moved out of Israel, which they accuse of employing “apartheid” policies.)The pro-Israel camp has its own British celebrity advocates, including singers Morrissey, the Australia-born (but U.K.-based) singer Nick Cave and the band Radiohead.What effect are these celebrities having in the fight for British hearts and minds?Some insight can be found in the largest-ever poll on the popularity of the BDS campaign in Britain, the results of which were published Wednesday.It doesn’t look too good for BDS.In the poll of 4,005 British respondents, only 10 percent agreed that Israel should be boycotted, compared to 46 percent who disagreed, according to the Ipsos MORI polling company. It conducted the survey in 2016 and 2017 for the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the Community Security Trust.Significantly, another 42 percent said they either had no opinion or did not know, with the remaining 2 percent saying they would rather not express an opinion.
So the good news is that a relatively small percentage of the population supports BDS despite the high-profile celebrities and all the noise, but those who do are likely to express that support as antisemitism.
You can read the full report here.
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