Commentary Magazine..
01 June '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/fighting-bds-requires/
Yesterday, Israel’s Mission to the United Nations hosted an important conference at the world body’s New York headquarters about the need to address the threat from the BDS — boycott, divest, sanction — movement that seeks to isolate the Jewish state. The daylong event, which was dubbed “Building Bridges, Not Boycotts,” brought together a number of important Jewish groups as well as students and filled the General Assembly Hall. It was an important step for a pro-Israel community, which has at times seemed to lag behind in its responses to the efforts by anti-Zionists to establish a beachhead in this country at universities and Christian denominations after their successes in Europe. But while the effort seems to have been successful, the problems for pro-Israel activists are formidable and go beyond the necessity of arming students and others with the facts about the Middle East conflict and what BDS actually means. The battle is not only with outside forces or about the ability of organizations to work together on behalf of this cause. But perhaps the most question is whether individuals are prepared to summon the will to stand up and have the guts to label BDS for what it actually is: anti-Semitism.
To his credit, that was exactly the theme sounded by Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon, who was the driving force behind the conference. He correctly spoke of BDS as “modern-day anti-Semitism” and that it was necessary for people of good will to work to “reveal its true face and put an end to its ideology of hatred and lies.” Others echoed that theme. The World Jewish Congress’s Ron Lauder said that what BDS was about was an attempt to “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination” that hid behind a false label of human rights activism. Others spoke of the need to use legal action that takes advantage of non-discrimination laws and university policies that forbid bias to brush back the Israel haters.
All this is highly useful and, if it helps prompt both Israel and Jewish groups to mobilize their resources to put information and materials in the hands of those in a position to directly confront the BDS movement, it will be an important step forward. But I think as laudable as the effort to get more of the organized community behind this effort the real question is about whether Jewish students are ready to confront BDS head on and have the sort of difficult conversations that are inevitable in such a fight.
As much as the organizations present at the UN conference seemed to accept Danon’s point about anti-Semitism, the truth is, labeling an ideology that is generally regarded as a fashionable variant of human rights activism as a form of hate isn’t the sort of behavior that can make college a fun experience for students. That’s doubly so because many of those who serve as fellow travelers of the BDS movement, if not its advocates, are left-wing Jews who have been reared on the notion that the essence of Judaism is sympathy for the downtrodden. That’s what animates the efforts of many who join groups like the misnamed Jewish Voices for Peace or even the more radical Students for Justice for Palestine, which is funded by a group led by people that previously did fundraising for Hamas.
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