What BDS is
BDS, short for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, is an umbrella term for several non-violent tactics used by opponents of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. BDS is also a movement originated by Palestinians who wanted to replicate the success of a similar campaign in South Africa. Just as farm worker boycotts in the United States were joined by Anglos who refused to buy Gallo wine, product boycotts and institutional divestments from Occupation-related companies have been embraced by individuals, schools, religious organizations, investment advisors, and trade unions. On many college campuses a large proportion of BDS supporters are Jewish. The basic purpose of BDS is simply to apply economic pressure on Israel to end the Occupation.
Israel’s foreign revenue
In 2008 Israel’s GDP was $207 billion. For purposes of comparison, Israel’s population and area is roughly equivalent to New Jersey, which has a GDP of $475 billion. Israel’s exports are about $45 billion, with about a third to the United States, and roughly the same amount to Europe. Israel’s major domestic product is weapons systems, and it is the 4th largest defense exporter in the world, right behind the US, Russia, and France, and slightly ahead of Britain. Many of its defense industries are government owned, such as IMI and Rafael Systems which was recently given $205 billion by the United States for the Iron Dome missile system.
In 2009 Israel’s major exports to the US were gems ($6 billion), medical ($4b), computer ($3b), military ($2b), and electronics ($2b). While some of these products are benign, many of Israel’s industrial and agricultural zones, such as Mishor Adumim, Barkan, Katzerin, Tulkarem, Hinnanit, Ariel, Maale Efrayim, Ataroy, Qiryat Arba, and the Jordan Valley, are built in or around settlements. This makes selective boycotts of particular products almost impossible because the Occupation is so deeply integrated into Israel’s entire economy. While products from these industrial zones could be forced to be correctly identified or banned, as Britain has begun to do, this is a tedious task which requires massive categorization and publication efforts from the BDS movement. Consequently, blanket boycotts of Israeli products have been proposed.
Besides military subsidies, Israel also enjoys period gifts from the US, such as this month’s $205 million Iron Dome project, various loans, joint military and energy development projects, and a free trade agreement dating from 1985 – a decade before similar agreements with our Canadian neighbors.
BDS and Israel advocates
Israel advocates have been predictably hostile to BDS. In Israel the Reut Institute published a 92-page document delivered at the 10th Herzliya conference last March, “Building a Political Firewall Against Israel’s Delegitimization,” which attacked BDS as a “delegitimization” tool of anti-Semites. A similar document, “Delegitimization of Israel: Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions” by Mitchell Bard and Gil Troy, also conflates BDS with anti-Semitism. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs recently issued a “Resolution on Campaign to Delegitimize Israel through Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement,” painting BDS as “reminiscent of the ancient blood libel.”
Acknowledging that the Occupation is morally indefensible, Bard and Troy describe their counterattack: “Israel advocates are always going to lose a fight over ‘settlements’ and ‘occupation,’ or at best get mired in stalemate. BDS shifts the terrain, making the battle one over Israel’s right to exist, over the legitimacy of Zionism, over the anti-Semitic tropes shaping the anti-Israel movement, and the rank anti-Semitism behind the disproportionate, obsessive focus on Israel.”
In its “Firewall” paper, the Reut Institute writes that BDS is a “primary assault on Israel’s existence today [which] is directed at its political and economic model; [and] it may become existential…” It goes on, “Ending ‘occupation’ and resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is very important to combating delegitimization; yet Israel’s delegitimization is fundamentally ideological, and stems from a core rejection of Zionism’s and Israel’s political model. Therefore, it is likely to continue even following a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Reut’s other prescriptions are varied, from PR efforts like softening discrimination in Israel toward Arabs, to cultivating more effective hasbara networks. Another of their strategies is to attack specific BDS supporters by “establishing a ‘price-tag’ for attacking Israel by ‘naming and shaming’ delegitimizers.” Yet accusations of anti-Semitism are rarely made with much discrimination.
But Reut’s most troubling recommendation is that “Israel [my italics] must identify delegitimization hubs, usually metropolitan areas hosting strong anti-Israel sentiments and containing a concentration of international NGOs, media, corporations, and academia. Within these hubs – such as London, the San Francisco Bay Area, Madrid, Paris, Toronto, and Brussels – Israel must significantly increase its diplomatic and public diplomacy activities. Contending with each hub requires a tailor-made approach based on unique constellations of hundreds of relationships with local elites in political, business, media, and security spheres.”
In other words, Israel is to develop a hit list of mainly academics, NGO’s, and progressives and then unleash local American Jewish organizations on them. These “delegitimization hubs” must be obliterated like terrorist hideouts by drones. This new Jewish McCarthyism has already brought back the pogrom and led to censorship and blacklisting of progressive Jewish groups by more “mainstream” Jewish organizations. In the Bay Area, for example – one of the Reut Institute’s targets – the Jewish Federation actually created a blacklist of Jewish peace groups who work with BDS supporters. In Boston and Seattle this story has been repeated. This is troubling on many levels, not the least of which is that a foreign nation is directing attacks on individuals in the United States.
For these defenders of Israel, the basic tactic is to use fear-mongering to change the subject from the Occupation to an existential threat from rabid anti-Semites. This is not a new tactic and it isn’t playing to younger Jews. It’s also not succeeding with older American Jews and is indicative of a greater split between Disapora Jews and Israel, in part over the Occupation.
BDS and liberal Jews
BDS is also suspiciously or negatively viewed by many liberal Jews. Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Michael Lerner, both lightning rods for their criticism of the Occupation, oppose BDS, as do Israel’s Gush Shalom founder Uri Avnery and various progressive American Jewish groups such as Meretz USA and J Street. They see BDS targeting not only the Occupation but also positive aspects of Israeli society and democracy, and they complain that BDS targets only Israel.
Well-known critic of Israel, Noam Chomsky, judges BDS to be ineffective because, in his calculations, only the US government, not consumer pressure, will work on Israel to end the Occupation. Chomsky also opposes BDS on principle because “breaking contact with Israeli academics, artists, writers, journalists … means breaking contact with many people who have played an honorable and courageous role well beyond what can be found here, and are a much more substantial element within their own society.” Americans for Peace Now, like J Street, opposes cutting US military aid to Israel, preferring diplomatic efforts and reductions of non-military aid (both unsuccessfully tried).
Arieh Zimmerman, a friend who lives on a kibbutz a couple miles from Gaza, understands the Palestinian use of BDS: “We so outgun the Palestinian side of the equation that any serious resistance to Israeli rule is effectively ruled out. Personally, I prefer the idea of economic resistance to that of suicide bombing. But what is clear is that any people with their backs to the wall will find some means of resistance to their conqueror.” But he also believes that BDS is a crude tool where precision is required, and boycotts raise the same ethical issues posed by Israel’s own collective punishment of Palestinians: “There are boycotts and there are boycotts. Boycotting the corner butcher because he is known to have a heavy thumb is one thing; boycotting his neighborhood to teach him a lesson is another. Can collective punishment ever be excused? Unless collective guilt is proven, what justification can there be for collective punishment?”
But some Jews regard BDS more as a set of tactics than just a movement – tactics which must be at least selectively tried, given the lack of political will by presidents and congress to resolve this festering international issue. Jewish Voice for Peace cautiously supports BDS as a tactic. Independent Jewish Voices in Canada and Americans Jews for a Just Peace cite human rights as their justification for supporting BDS.
But cultural boycotts are especially troubling for many Jews because of strong family, cultural, and religious connections. Rabbi Brant Rosen echoes Zimmerman and describes the painful realization that “though a movement like BDS might feel on a visceral level like just one more example of the world piling on the Jews and Israel, we need to be open to the possibility that it might more accurately be described as the product of a weaker, dispossessed, disempowered people doing what it must to resist oppression.” Orthodox Jewish studies and philosophy professor Jerry Haber recently enumerated 13 reasons for Liberal Zionists to give guarded support to the BDS movement.
BDS is as American as apple pie
While Palestinians may have recycled BDS from the South African anti-Apartheid movement, boycotts have precedents in American and Jewish history. The original Boston Tea Party was part of a wider boycott of British goods. The day after Rosa Parks was arrested, 35,000 flyers were distributed urging a boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama transit system. Recently a number of cities have passed resolutions calling for a boycott of Arizona over several pieces of legislation directed at Latinos. Rather than being a tool of hate, boycotts have more often been used as a tool of justice.
And boycotts have been frequently used by Jews, too. The Talmud recounts the boycotting of price-fixed myrtle. In 1936, American Jews organized a counter-boycott of German products. In 1989 Jews boycotted the 50th anniversary of WWII in Poland. In the 90’s, the Reform movement proposed boycotts of several states. In 2008 Israelis in Acre boycotted Arab merchants. Jewish organizations have at various times promoted boycotts of Pepsi, Coke, Burger King, and Starbucks. Were these signs of bigotry or simply acts born out of principle?
Divestment, too, is an everyday investment activity. Whether to avoid supporting defense or tobacco industries, or to promote green products, we often align our investments with our ethics. Churches apply their own teachings to guide investments. Catholic Church doctrine on abortion and contraception frequently initiates their divestments. Similarly, many Protestant churches have pursued selective divestments because of the Occupation, not because they hate the people who brought them the Old Testament.
Finally, American sanctions have been imposed on Cuba over human rights abuses which have affected far fewer people than in Palestine. Sanctions have also been slapped on Iran in recent years. Unfortunately, sanctions as practiced by the US have often been a proxy for warfare. Despite Israel’s hostility to the US and intransigence toward repeated demands to end settlements, any use of sanctions on Israel – at least by that name – would not fly in the US in the present political climate. However, pulling the plug on Israel’s many sources of American taxpayer-funded revenue might during our economic disaster. Israel is becoming an economic liability.
BDS can be applied selectively
I tend to agree with critics of BDS that it’s basically a poor replacement for US pressure on Israel. But what kind of pressure could be applied – and what grassroots efforts would convince the US government to translate public sentiment into political action? Largely due to AIPAC, Christian Evangelicals, and other Jewish organizations’ stranglehold on the discourse, the average citizen’s more moderate views generally go unheeded by his congressman.
Administrations come and go, going through the motions of proximity talks and shuttle diplomacy, but it is increasingly a heartless, unconvincing performance. BDS is a real way that individuals can move the Israel-Palestine issue forward. While the BDS movement may prefer to see their whole program implemented, we are free to select those tactics we are comfortable with. Here are my preferences:
The most effective pressure on Israel to end the Occupation and vacate illegal settlements would be withdrawing its $3.15 billion a year military subsidy. If this does not work, it’s money well saved – especially since Israel just joined the OECD, an exclusive club for the wealthiest nations. But if Americans still want to reward Israel’s bad behavior, these funds could be placed in escrow to assist the eventual evacuation of settlements rather than to subsidize them.
Temporarily cutting joint economic and energy development projects, suspending the 1985 free trade agreement with Israel, and making it known that we will no longer be a rubber-stamp for Israel at the UN would also go a long way toward resolving this issue. The United States keeps timidly pleading with Israel to simply freeze settlements, not evacuate them, and is generally rewarded with the diplomatic version of an obscene gesture by Israel. Using leverage with demands, rather than useless pleading, is a language Israel will finally understand.
I oppose a cultural boycott of Israel because I am opposed to the suppression of ideas by anyone. Avigdor Lieberman should have an opportunity to make his views public so that Americans can actually hear what spews out of his mouth. The same applies to athletic, artistic, academic, or any other human boycott. Despite Israel’s own use of collective punishment in the West Bank and Gaza, racist visa policies toward Arab Americans, and harassment of NGOs and critics, no individual Israeli should have to answer for people’s displeasure with his government, even if he supports its views. Here I agree with the critics.
I have no such ethical qualms about an economic boycott. But consumer boycotts of non-military Israeli products are economically meaningless. Most of the economic value Israel receives from the United States is in joint military projects and outright gifts, such as the recent Iron Dome giveaway, and this could be best addressed by sanctions.
Boycotts of Israel’s non-military products are economically meaningless for another reason: Americans have not been known to deprive themselves of consumer goods for political principles for roughly 40 years. And that’s the problem with tactics – they depend on the times and the situation. Resurrecting anti-Apartheid economic tactics, despite all the “existential” warnings from the Reut Institute and others, will probably be ineffectual today.
One of the attacks on BDS is that it targets only Israel, but it’s hardly the case. Foreign and multinational corporations producing particularly repugnant products, such as the militarized Caterpillar and Volvo tractors used to crush Palestinian homes (and occasionally people), have more often been the target of boycotts and divestment. Motorola has been a target because of products used for monitoring the “separation wall” and on civilians in Gaza. The list of targeted companies includes almost every global defense corporation from Boeing to Raytheon.
While an individual consumer may find it impossible to avoid the Motorola cell phone that comes with his phone plan, divestment is a more powerful tool. Investors have every right to eliminate tobacco, nuclear, or Occupation-related industries from their portfolio.
Don’t write off BDS
There are many Jews who, despite the conflation of BDS with anti-Semitism, “existential” threats, “blood libels,” and other forms of rhetorical hysteria, simply want the Occupation to end. We see BDS as a less-than-ideal grassroots tactic in the absence of any real political will to create Two States. Whatever your flavor of Zionism (or not), a Jewish rebirth in Israel should not mean the demise of Palestinians or their hopes self-determination.
BDS should not be regarded just as a monolithic movement but as a non-violent toolkit for registering our individual and collective rejection of Israel’s Occupation. You don’t need either the BDS movement itself or Jewish defense organizations to tell you which elements you can or can’t use. Moral foreign policy would be ideal, sanctions would be great, divestments are your own concern, and the jury’s out on the effectiveness or appropriateness of economic and cultural boycotts.
But let your own conscience be your guide. Don’t write off BDS.
