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Does Anyone Take the B.D.S. Movement Seriously?

The effort to punish Israel has symbolic value for both sides — but its substance has lost all significance.

Dr. Alterman is the media columnist for The Nation and a professor of English at Brooklyn College.

In recent years, the debate surrounding the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel over its treatment of Palestinians has expanded from food co-ops and university department meetings to the House of Representatives. Alas, it has not improved in clarity — if anything, this latest round shows that for both sides, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement today has very little to do with the movement’s original goals.

On Tuesday, the House voted 398 to 17 to support a bill denouncing B.D.S. for allegedly promoting “principles of collective guilt, mass punishment and group isolation” vis-à-vis Israel. It was strongly supported by most mainstream Jewish organizations. It was opposed, however, by many progressives, including a number of presidential candidates, perhaps because B.D.S. supporters are often liberal and left-wing activists — the kinds of people who volunteer for presidential campaigns and vote in their primaries and caucuses.

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Pro-B.D.S. protesters outside New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s offices after he signed anti-B.D.S. legislation in 2016.Credit...Erik McGregor/Pacific Press, via LightRocket, via Getty Images
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Supporters of Governor Cuomo’s anti-B.D.S. legislation outside his office in 2016.Credit...Erik McGregor/Pacific Press, via LightRocket, via Getty Images

This isn’t the first time anti-B. D. S. legislation has come up in Congress. Politicians looking to play both sides have often abstained from such bills, claiming that they violate protesters’ freedom of speech. This time was different: After the anti-B. D. S. bill was introduced, Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat from Minnesota, offered a bill affirming the “right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad.”

Though the resolution never explicitly mentions B.D.S., it references boycotts against “Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust” — setting off a storm of outrage from Ms. Omar’s critics. The bill has only six co-sponsors, but they include the legendary civil rights leader John Lewis, and it has earned the support of both the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street and the A.C.L.U.

All of this makes for dramatic news coverage. But with each iteration of the B.D.S. “debate,” the underlying issues seem to recede into obscurity.

Consider the way Republicans took up the issue. Republican congressional leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, for example, apparently saw the B.D.S. debate as yet another cudgel with which to beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats over the head with the trumped-up charge of disdain for America’s Jews.

Writing together in The Washington Post, they lamented that she “has let the legislation languish on her desk,” frustrating the “bipartisan group of members of Congress committed to confronting anti-Semitism.” Senator Marco Rubio went even further, attacking Ms. Pelosi for allowing what he called “the radical, anti-Semitic minority in the Democratic Party to dictate the House floor agenda.”

One reason partisans feel comfortable using B.D.S. as a political tool is that, as a political movement, B.D.S. is insignificant. Representative Brad Sherman, the Democrat, admits: “Am I worried about the overall B.D.S. movement worldwide as an economic matter? No. As an effort to delegitimize Israel, of course.”

Mr. Sherman’s candor is welcome. Recent studies have demonstrated that the B.D.S. movement has had no discernible impact on Israel’s economy. And while stories continue to pop up of troublesome student protests and faculty members who refuse to write recommendations for study in Israel, hardly any significant American institution — government, corporate or academic — has actually signed onto the boycott. Were I a bookie, I would offer better odds on the folks waging the War on Christmas.

Supporters of B.D.S. are no less slippery. Representative Omar says, “We must support an end of the occupation and seek to achieve a two-state solution.” The movement she supports, however, does not. Nowhere in the movement’s official documents is there any recognition of Israel’s right to exist within in its pre-1967 borders. Mr. McConnell and Mr. McCarthy are not wrong to remind us that “Omar Barghouti, one of the movement’s co-founders, proclaimed in 2013 that ‘no Palestinian — rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian — will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.’”

If you ask even the most prominent B.D.S. supporters and leaders about their strategic vision for victory, they inevitably start talking about South Africa and the need to be “on the right side of history.” What they cannot offer is a remotely practical theory of how their movement will somehow lead to a better life for Palestinians, much less their “free Palestine, from the River to the Sea” pipe dream.

Instead, B.D.S. has become a purity test of sorts for progressives in certain corners of American society — a defining part of what it means to be woke. I see it every day, in my triple role as a college professor, columnist for a left-liberal magazine and father of a college-age daughter who gives me regular reports about her school’s “Israel Apartheid Day.” From all three, I get a regular earful about the importance of B.D.S. — but I’ve learned over time that actually boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel could not be further from most anyone’s mind, either as a threat or a goal.

Like vegetarian diets and carbon-neutral living, it has become something that is vital to espouse, but much less important to explain, let alone carry out.

So why are so many people worried about B.D.S.? Partly, concern over the movement is driven by parents — with whom I can relate — who fear that their children are being permanently turned against Israel by their professors and fellow students. The rapid growth of anti-Zionist organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, along with calls I get from my daughter, tells me that these fears are not entirely unfounded.

In turn, “pro-Israel” groups and cynical politicians exploit these fears largely for fund-raising purposes by pretending that the threat of a genuine boycott of Israel is real. Some even engage in McCarthyistic attacks on pro-Palestinian faculty members. Even among the more honest opponents of the movement, there are so many Jewish groups tripping over one another to “help” students oppose B.D.S. on campus these days that I would not be surprised if they were driving up the price of kosher catering.

The propensity of activists on either side to try to turn B.D.S. into a litmus test is misguided at best. Both sides make a huge deal about it because neither side any longer engages with its substance.

As a liberal Jew who agonizes over what this endless occupation is doing — not only to the Palestinians but also the Jews, both here and in Israel — I wish I could find a movement that actually sought to help Israel realize the folly of the self-destructive path it is currently on and simultaneously advance the cause of a peaceful state for the Palestinians. Unfortunately, I can’t find one, on either side of the B.D.S. divide.

Eric Alterman is the media columnist for The Nation and a professor of English at Brooklyn College.

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A correction was made on 
July 29, 2019

An earlier version of this article misidentified a congressman critical of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It is Brad Sherman, not Brad Schneider.

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Does Anyone Take B.D.S. Seriously?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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