Delegitimizing BDS is far from mission impossible - by Evelyn Gordon

Sometimes, fire must be fought with fire; only by making BDS a pariah can we keep it from turning Israel into one. Fortunately, this is an eminently achievable goal.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
21 June '18..

The BDS movement hasn’t had much luck targeting Israel’s economy or even its cultural life: Despite some high-profile cancelations, there were 140 performances by international artists last year, up from 22 in 2010.

Yet these failures are secondary to the movement’s main goal, which is to delegitimize Israel and turn it into a pariah state by insisting that Israel—alone of all the world’s countries—is uniquely deserving of boycotts, divestment and sanctions. And in that, BDS has been more successful, particularly on American college campuses.

The only way to fight this is to turn the tables—to make BDS itself a pariah with which no decent person would associate. That’s precisely why the numerous state laws against anti-Israel boycotts are so important.

Nevertheless, many Americans who oppose BDS object to trying to ostracize the movement, arguing that doing so essentially emulates and thereby legitimizes its tactics. As a free-speech advocate, I’m sympathetic to this argument. The problem with it, however, is that it effectively legitimizes the movement’s underlying message instead.

After all, even in America, some views are so unacceptable that no respectable organization would give them a platform. By not putting BDS in this category, we’re effectively saying its message—that Israel is fundamentally morally illegitimate—isn’t beyond the pale; it’s a legitimate position over which reasonable people can disagree. And that makes it easy for BDS to grow because it enables even groups that don’t care about this issue to feel comfortable embracing the movement for tactical reasons (i.e., to gain its support for their own pet causes).

Moreover, as several recent examples show, delegitimizing BDS is far from mission impossible.

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