June 15, 2023

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is the latest weapon in the ongoing war against Israel that has been waged since the state’s founding in 1948.

However, the boycott call of Israel is nothing new. It was initially launched before the State of Israel came into existence when the Arab League called for a total boycott of Palestinian goods. Back then, “Palestinian goods” were Jewish goods.

The boycott has continued since then. For instance, in 1967, after the Arab countries again failed to destroy Israel in a war of annihilation, the Arab League called for a boycott of Coca-Cola since it sold its products in Israel, banning the sale in all Arab countries. Clearly, the boycott movement hurts Arabs more than Israelis, as the Arab world suffered through decades of RC Cola and Pepsi while Israelis enjoyed the real thing.

It’s important to understand that the boycott isn’t about the West Bank and Gaza, as its pre-dates the 1967 war. It’s about all Palestinian territories, and for them, this includes all the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Like the so-called “refugee problem,” the boycott is a political weapon utilized by the anti-Israel movement seeking to overturn the results of the 1948 War of Independence and dismantle and destroy the State of Israel.

The latest manifestation of this concerted campaign came in 2001, at the infamous United Nations hosted “World Conference on Racism” in Durban, South Africa, in September of that year. It was supposed to be an anti-racist forum, but it devolved into what observers deemed a forum of hate.

Keep in mind this was on the heels of President Bill Clinton-sponsored Camp David and Taba negotiations, where Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted the Clinton parameters for a two-state solution, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned down the deal and launched the Second Intifada. President Clinton told Arafat then, “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe,” and later remarked, “I still didn’t believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake.”

To prepare for the Durban Conference, leftist anti-Israel NGOs from Europe and elsewhere got together in Iran earlier in the year to plan their assault. Then in South Africa, outside the conference halls, thousands marched in anti-Israel demonstrations, holding signs that read “Hitler Should Have Finished the Job.” At the same time, booths sold copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and the Arab Lawyers Union distributed caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and fangs dripping with blood, clutching money. Jewish human rights activists were physically threatened, with mobs screaming: “You don’t belong to the human race!”

Inside the NGO forum of the conference, the participants, which included groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, released a formal declaration that called for a complete boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel, deeming the country to be a “racist apartheid state,” guilty of “genocide.” The declaration also called for the reinstitution of UN resolution 3379, deeming Zionism to be racism.

Needing a local Palestinian face for the movement, these anti-Israel NGOs found what they were looking for in Palestinian academic and activist Omar Barghouti, who has become the movement’s figurehead. In 2005, the BDS movement was officially launched under the guise of the Boycott National Committee (BNC), a conglomerate of “civil society” organizations that includes American and EU-designated terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation Palestinian (PFLP), along with several of their front groups.

The boycott movement has now reinvented itself to use the language of critical social justice theory, which is so salient in Western discourse today. To people in the West, BDS presents itself as a social justice movement, an LGBTQ+ rights movement, an environmental movement, and a women’s rights movement. They co-opt any progressive cause, whether blaming Israel for George Floyd’s death or climate change. BDS claims that to stand in “solidarity” with progressive causes is to support the Palestinian cause. Never mind that BDS cleverly obscures their true motives—that their real aim is Israel’s demonization and eventual elimination.

To further these aims, the modus operandi of the BDS movement can best be described as reductive, adaptable and discursive, or by the acronym RAD. It is critical for organizations countering the BDS movement to understand how they operate in order to push back against them effectively.

Taking each element of this in turn, by being reductive the BDS movement wants to change how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is discussed. It’s not a conflict; it’s genocide. Don’t dare talk about peace; it’s apartheid. It’s not a complicated situation; it’s settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing.

BDS is trying to establish the narrative and control the rules of discourse. They try to shut down speech and silence people in a move right out of the woke leftist playbook.

BDS is trying to establish the narrative and control the rules of discourse. They try to shut down speech and silence people in a move right out of the woke leftist playbook. They are not interested in discussing history, nuance, or facts, but rather reducing the conflict to a few simple buzzwords that are meant to demonize Israel. The partition plan of 1947 and the Gaza coup in 2007 require discussion, but genocide and apartheid are easily understood. They are evil, just like Israel.

For instance, vocal anti-Israel BDS activist Mohammed el-Kurd recently stated on a webinar that he is not interested in discussing what the term apartheid really means or if Israel’s conduct meets the definition, he just wants Israel labeled with the “negative connotation it carries in the psyche of the public.”

The BDS messaging is also adaptable. The anti-Israel movement effectively weaponizes this language by co-opting the ills of any country and forcing people to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through that lens. In South Africa, Israel is an apartheid state; in America, Israel is a racist state and just another example of white people repressing people of color; and in Australia, where Aboriginal rights are so salient, Jews in Israel are simply the colonizers of the indigenous Arab population. In Europe, members of the BDS movement understand that antisemitic beliefs are still deeply held by many Europeans, even if below the surface. Just as the term “antisemitism” was coined to sanitize anti-Jewish bigotry in the late 1800s, “anti-Zionism” has now become an acceptable form to express this hatred. BDS pushing an anti-Zionist narrative in Europe finds a receptive audience there.

BDS is fungible. Whatever the worst thing a country has done in its history, whatever a country’s most loathsome qualities, Israel is doing it now.

For instance, labeling Israel as a settler colonial state is central to this new paradigm. The Jewish state is a foreign body, a cancer inserted into the Arab Middle East that must be excised. Unfortunately, the boycott movement and its supporters genuinely believe this to their core and preach it in their teachings. They have convinced themselves that Jews are not really from the Land of Israel, and, like the Afrikaans of South Africa, they will eventually give up the country and hand it over to the Palestinians. Even more troubling for those who genuinely want peace and a resolution to the conflict, these people think that victory is close at hand. Israel will fall if they can just hold on for a few more weeks or months. This is the Middle East’s big lie: a willful misunderstanding of who Jewish Israelis are and rejection of the Jewish peoples inalienable ties and attachment to the Land of Israel. According to a recent Palestinian poll, two-thirds say Israel will not celebrate the centenary of its establishment, and the majority believes that the Palestinian people will soon recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes. Why make peace, why engage in dialogue, when Israel will be eradicated soon?

Finally, BDS is a discursive process that does not require its adherents and supporters to rely on facts but just to continuously make accusations. So anti-Israel activists simply ramble from one charge to the next. “The policing in America is Israel’s fault, George Floyd’s death was Israel’s fault, Jews have no connection to the land of Palestine, Jesus was a Palestinian not a Jew, Middle Eastern Jews are merely  a religious group and just Jewish Arabs, Jews from Europe are fake Jews and are really Khazars, Zionists caused the Holocaust to establish Israel, Israel is an apartheid state, Israel is a Nazi state, hundreds of Israeli laws are racist, Israel is responsible for Jeremy Corbyn’s ouster from the UK Labour party, the refugee issue is Israel’s fault, Oslo collapsed due to Israel, Israel keeps rejecting peace, before the Zionists came along, Arabs and Jews lived peacefully together as equals, etc.”

The goal is to keep Israel constantly on trial and in a position to defend itself, whether there is any validity to the claims made or not.

As British General Sir Ian Hamilton stated: “Propaganda is inverted patriotism, draws nourishment from the sins of the enemy. If there are no sins, invent them! The aim is to make the enemy appear so great a monster that he forfeits the rights of a human being.”

The BDS movement understands this intimately. While it claims to advocate for Palestinian rights, its far more concerned with the delegitimization and undermining of the very existence of the State of Israel. BDS proponents often employ manipulative rhetoric and misleading narratives to sway public opinion, painting a distorted picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its deeply deceptive tactics hinder meaningful dialogue and compromise and perpetuate a cycle of hostility and division, ultimately impeding the prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. BDS is anything but rad.

Ari Ingel is an attorney and the Director of Creative Community For Peace. You can follow him on Twitter at @OGAride.

As millions of student loan borrowers are forced back to repayment on September 1, the Biden Administration will preside over the largest wave of mass defaults in the nation’s history, which will reverberate into every sector of the economy from housing to travel to retail.

As American Jews, at what point do we stop to assess the collateral damage that the coalescence of crippling student loan debt and the advancement of AI in all facets of the economy will have on America’s working and middle class?

According to Goldman Sachs economists, as many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by the newest wave of artificial intelligence that has spawned platforms like ChatGPT, rendering the worker obsolete in a world where they are no longer relevant yet paralyzed by debt. Moreover, these economists predict that 18% of global work can be computerized, with the effects felt the deepest in more advanced economies. Further, as AI goes multimodal with the ability to draw on audio, pictoral and alphanumeric data to execute processes, even the current generation of ChatGPT could soon be made obsolete. With the return to repayment of the most burdensome and least protected type of debt experienced by now four generations, how will 45 million middle- and working-class Americans navigate the advent of automation while simultaneously being crushed by insurmountable student loan debt?

Consider this: Nearly 60% of all borrowers weren’t making payments on their loans even before the pandemic.

Since the Reagan administration first delivered deep cuts to higher education funding with the belief that the government shouldn’t be “funding intellectual curiosity,” the American middle class has shrunk to the point that it is otherworldly to recall that during the 1970s, a middle-class family could own a home, own a car, take a yearly vacation, and send their children to college on one salary. Further, as college tuition has soared far past the rate of inflation, 45 million Americans spanning four generations of all demographics are trapped in a vicious 2T student debt trap, uniquely stripped of the constitutional right of bankruptcy present in every other type of consumer debt. The newly passed debt ceiling deal has codified the end of the student loan payment pause, which has been a lifeline to millions of middle- and working-class Americans as they grapple with the additional $500 a month caused by inflation. Tack on student loan debt plagued by compounded interest and negative amortization, and the average borrower will now have to cover the costs of inflation plus an average of $400-$500 a month in student loan debt resulting in an extra $1000 a month that will never materialize. Moreover, according to the Department of Education, in 2019 nearly 60% of all borrowers weren’t making payments on their loans with the staggering statistic of a borrower defaulting every 26 seconds and that was before the pandemic.

The newly passed debt ceiling deal has codified the end of the student loan payment pause, which has been a lifeline to millions of middle- and working-class Americans as they grapple with the additional $500 a month caused by inflation.

Once this lending system is turned back on, that number will easily reach 80%, collapsing any purchasing power of the middle and working class. In essence, due to the false promises of trickle-down economics where the money never actually gets to the workers who keep the corporations profitable, the fault lines of what defines a middle-class life in America today will continue to be eroded by a lifetime of indentured servitude devoid of any consumer protections and with technology that will render what is left of the hollowed out middle class essentially extinct.

As the daughter of a legendary English teacher, I am reminded of the character Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” in which Willy, a career salesman, symbolizes the ordinary man in American society. His slow demise acts as a representation of the ordinary person leading a fruitless life in a flourishing nation that has left him behind. Willy ends up committing suicide after realizing that there is no place for him in a rapidly changing world where his skills are outdated and devalued. As a committed Jew, I am reminded of the timeless wisdom of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Z”L as he so keenly observed that the “feeling of isolation is very destructive. It has the power to crush man’s body and spirit, silence his spiritual powers, and stop up the wellsprings of his inner creativity.”

Ironically, the tragic words of Willy Loman ring just as true today as they did in 1949: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit.”

Lisa Ansell is Associate Director of the USC Casden Institute.

On June 6, New York City’s air quality index was measured at 200 (considered a “very unhealthy” level of pollution) due to wildfire smoke that had spread east from central Canada. As a native New Yorker now living in Los Angeles, I anticipated such an event was more likely to occur in my new state rather than where I grew up. This week, the true horrors of climate change are really hitting home for me.

What my family and friends are currently experiencing back east is nothing new to Californians. I have personally spoken with several Californians who, due to increasingly bad fire seasons, already had a stockpile of N-95 masks before the pandemic even started. What is a constant fear here became a reality in my home state, as wide-spread masking in New York City has made a comeback due to the dangerous conditions.

The number of fires across Canada, along with their emergence early in the season, mark a significant increase from prior years. The scorched area is already 10 times larger than what is typical this time of year, and the risk of fire is expected to remain unusually high throughout the summer. It’s as if these fires are nature’s way of sounding the alarm and alerting us to the devastation that will continue if we don’t take steps to mitigate our environmental footprint.

Of course, some say that climate change isn’t cause for alarm because climates change regularly. While that is true, it’s the long-term trend that distinguishes climate change from natural weather variability and crosses the line into chaos and uncertainty. What else could explain why California just saw one of its rainiest winters in years while New York barely got a drop of snow?

In recent years, the term “climate change” has more accurately turned into “climate crisis” because, quite frankly, the planet is at the end of its rope and has very little slack left to give. From our extraction of natural resources to copious carbon emissions to failed conservation policies, our actions have consequences.

But not all hope is lost. There are organizational and multinational efforts to take action. Currently, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is attempting to urge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to finalize the most ambitious carbon limits possible. Meanwhile, California and Mexico are working to address sewage and other toxic waste that are polluting waterways. Along with the Canadian-American joint effort to fight the recent wildfires, this demonstrates that the endeavors to protect our environment must reach across borders.

Unfortunately, elected officials seem more interested in maintaining power and helping their funders profit than they are in addressing the crisis at hand. They protect the status quo instead of finding innovative ways to transition to clean energy sources. They claim that their constituents will lose jobs without these power plants but fail to acknowledge that they have the power to create new jobs in clean energy fields. We need to call them out and push them to act not just to protect some abstract future, but also to protect us right now.

I’m calling on my cohort of like-minded, climate conscious individuals—Jews and non-Jews alike—to be that positive difference.

I’m calling on my cohort of like-minded, climate conscious individuals—Jews and non-Jews alike—to be that positive difference. We must work to protect our air and water quality at the local, state and national levels. This means urging the EPA to pass stricter measures when it comes to emissions limits, and supporting legislation in California like Senate Bill 252, which calls for statewide divestment from fossil fuels.

Let’s pressure our leaders to work for us, not against us. Who’s with me?

Hannah Pomerantz is a Jewish Center for Justice Summer Fellow and rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.