Writing About “BDS”

Jonathan Cristol
The American Interest
15 August '10

For days I have been planning a series of posts on the subject of “BDS,” the anti-Israel boycott/divestment/sanctions “movement.” BDS’s aims include a cultural and academic boycott against Israel, which makes it relatively unique in the history of these types of movements. After figuring out what I wanted to say, and sitting down to start writing, I was struck with the fear that by drawing attention to BDS I would increase its notoriety and inadvertently draw additional followers to the cause. So instead of writing a long take-down of BDS, which I may well do another time, I decided to go meta- and write about writing about BDS, although this approach still increases the notoriety of BDS. Nuts.

BDS has been very slowly gaining traction in the media without gaining actual traction on the ground. Jacob Weisberg recently wrote an essay on the topic in Newsweek. The title provides a nice summary of the content, “Don’t Boycott Israel: The Very Idea is Repellent.” Like many articles opposing BDS he focuses on the uniqueness of the cultural and academic boycotts of Israel, and points out that this approach alienates the very people most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He does not discuss the impossibility of an effective BDS movement, which is a topic I plan to write about in the future (and touch on below).

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