By Julie Nathan
July 6, 2016
The Boycott Divest­ment Sanctions (BDS) campaign is inher­ently antisemitic. BDS cam­paign­ers deny this. They indig­nantly claim that they have nothing against Jews or Judaism, and are “only” opposed to Zionism and the State of Israel. They are either being disin­genu­ous or it is evidence of their utter lack of com­pre­hen­sion of the protean nature of antisemitism. Regard­less, the aims, rhetoric, and actions of the BDS campaign show it is a campaign seeped in antisemitism.
The antisemitism of the BDS campaign manifests itself in three main ways.
Firstly, BDS denies the right of national self-determ­in­a­tion to the Jewish people in their national homeland. The Jewish people are indi­gen­ous to the land of Israel, and there has been con­tinu­ous Jewish hab­it­a­tion in the land for 3,500 years. BDS cam­paign­ers support a State of Palestine for the Palestini­an Arab people, which will give paramount expres­sion to their aspir­a­tions, language and culture, and their pre­dom­in­antly Arab and Islamic identity. Yet they deny this same right of national self-determ­in­a­tion to the Jewish people with regard to Israel. This form of dis­crim­in­a­tion is antisemitism.
The official aims of the BDS campaign, if imple­men­ted, would turn Israel from a Jewish state into another Arab state, primarily through the BDS demand that millions of des­cend­ants of Arab refugees be free to migrate to Israel. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of these des­cend­ants are natives or citizens of other states. BDS leaders like Omar Barghouti and Ali Abunimah advocate a “two-state solution” which would consist of one Judenrein state populated exclus­ively by Palestini­an Arabs and another Arab-majority state in which any Jews allowed to remain would be a barely-tolerated, dis­en­fran­chised minority. (This is what Barghouti meant when he infam­ously declared that he wanted to see a “Palestine next to a Palestine”). Jewish sov­er­eignty in any part of historic Israel is anathema to BDS cam­paign­ers. The only state in the world which they target for destruc­tion is the one and only Jewish state.
BDS cam­paign­ers lie shame­lessly in order to demonise and del­e­git­im­ise Israel. Every facet of Israel is scru­tin­ised, every short­com­ing is exposed, every mistake is condemned, every normal behaviour is given a sinister spin, and every good aspect is either ignored or rein­ter­preted as being part of a malicious ulterior agenda. When more ammuni­tion is required to demonise Israel then outright lies are fab­ric­ated and are spread quickly and widely. No other state in the world is treated with such insidious double-standards. The demon­isa­tion and lies are used in the attempt to deny Israel its right to exist.
Secondly, BDS cam­paign­ers portray Israel using the same demon­ising and hateful language and false accus­a­tions that were pre­vi­ously used against Jews and Judaism. Their discourse on Israel is often framed in false­hoods steeped in tra­di­tion­al anti-Jewish motifs – the Blood Libel, deicide claims, poisoning water, killing children, blood lust, and con­spir­acy theories about Jews aiming to control the world. The lies and demon­isa­tion are used to breathe new life into old anti-Jewish pre­ju­dices to further the pro­pa­ganda war against Israel that denies it legit­im­acy as a state and a part of the family of nations.
It is this nexus which makes ostens­ibly ordinary political discourse about Israel or Zionism antisemitic, as the negative sentiment, rhetoric and ste­reo­types about the Jewish people and the Jewish religion are revived, repack­aged and re-applied to the Jewish state.
Thirdly, the rhetoric and actions of BDS cam­paign­ers in the West create a poisonous atmo­sphere for Jews in the diaspora. Long-standing anti-Jewish canards, tropes, ste­reo­types, and imagery are being used not only against Israel, but also against all who support Israel’s right to exist, which includes the vast majority of Jews. It has become accept­able within the BDS campaign not only to demonise Israel, but also to openly dis­crim­in­ate against, vilify, and threaten Jews simply for sup­port­ing Israel’s existence.
It is antisemitic for BDS cam­paign­ers to target Jewish-owned shops, syn­agogues, Jewish theatre groups, kosher products, Jewish uni­ver­sity students, and the like. It is utterly hypo­crit­ic­al for them to piously disclaim that there is any antisemitism in their actions. Their actions are not only anti-Zionist, as they claim, but anti-Jewish. Replacing the word ‘Jew’ with ‘Zionist’, while using the same old malicious anti-Jewish descriptors and engaging in the same old anti-Jewish behaviour is simply not a credible defence.
Jewish concerns over antisemitism, in general and within the BDS campaign, are dismissed by BDS sup­port­ers as merely a cover to distract attention from criticism of Israel. As the number and severity of antisemitic incidents, and the level of shrill­ness of antisemitic discourse, continues to rise around the world, BDS cam­paign­ers are in denial when they fail to acknow­ledge that their own immod­er­ate rhetoric has given licence to this conduct. When has demon­ising a people not led to a rise in contempt, hatred, and violence against that people?
In summary, the BDS campaign is antisemitic in three main ways: by denying to the Jewish people the right to national self-determ­in­a­tion, by using classical anti-Jewish motifs and themes to demonise Israel, and by targeting all Jews who support Israel’s right to exist. These are not just anti-Israel, but anti-Jewish.
From time imme­mori­al the Jewish people have been subjected to dis­crim­in­a­tion and demon­isa­tion, oppres­sion and ostracism, vili­fic­a­tion and violence, massacre and even­tu­ally genocide. Many of the older per­se­cutors are gone, or are side-lined, but the targeting and per­se­cu­tion of Jews lives on through the BDS campaign and its sup­port­ers and allies.
The essence, if not the aim, of BDS is that Israel, and its Jewish citizens and sup­port­ers around the world, will continue to be demonised, incited against, and turned into pariahs, and become targets for physical violence. The BDS campaign needs to be exposed for the bigoted and racist campaign that it is.
Julie Nathan is the Research Officer for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.
This article first appeared the Times of Israel, 6 July 2016 
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