Q: What's the difference between BDS and terrorism? A: Nothing. (update)

While there is no single accepted definition of terrorism, the dictionary definition of terrorism is:

The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

Terrorism's main purpose is to terrorize, to instill fear in a large population by attacking a relatively small number of people. That's why the threat of a "dirty bomb" is a perfect example of terror - in general, it wouldn't hurt very many people but it would cause panic, which would affect people's behavior.

When Palestinian Arab terrorist groups shoot rockets or send suicide bombers, the number of casualties is relatively small. But if you look at their media afterwards they exult on the larger effects that such actions cause even more than the direct damage. Every time the schools in Ashkelon are closed because of rocket threats, it is reported in the terrorist-leaning Arabic media as a victory. They love making videos showing Israelis running to shelter during Code Red alerts.

To terrorists, fear is the goal - causing panic among a large population by attacking a small number of people.

This story, which may or may not be true given its source*, gives a perfect example of how the goals of BDS are identical to the goals of terrorist groups:

Leading international companies bidding to build private seaports dropped out of the Israeli government’s tender due to concerns over the political repercussions, a report said on Tuesday.

The Israeli daily Haaretz said that Royal Boskalis Westminster, a Dutch operator of ports that had submitted a proposal under the name Holland Terminal in the prequalification stage last December, dropped out shortly thereafter. More recently, Italy’s Condote

Haaretz said that the companies that had initially expressed their interest in the PQ stage last April made their decisions to drop out in recent months as boycott pressure on Israel has grown. The deadline for submitting bids was Monday, the report said.

Notice the reasons given for this alleged dropping of bids. The companies didn't do it because of Israel's policies; they didn't do it for "moral" reasons, they didn't announce that they would never want to work with a country such as Israel because of its supposed mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs..

The story says that they dropped out because of fear that the boycott movement might attack them.

In other words - they were intimidated. They were coerced.

They were terrorized.

The same thing happens with the vast majority of the small number of popular music stars that have decided to cancel concerts in Israel. Except for a couple of hardcore haters like Roger Waters, the stars calculated that any controversy is toxic to their careers and therefore the effort is not worth it.

They, too, were terrorized.

The tactics of Palestinian terrorists are meant to create an environment of fear where Israelis must worry about possibly being attacked by a tiny number of people whose importance gets magnified by their methods. Ultimately, they want to create an environment where Jews would flee Israel because the fear outweighs the benefits of living there.

The tactics of the BDS supporters are also meant to create an environment of fear, where companies and public individuals will be afraid of a backlash from a similarly tiny number of noisy people who can create an impression of being much larger by targeted, noisy use of social media and protests. Ultimately, they want to create an environment where companies and entertainers and governments would abandon Israel because the fear of controversy outweighs the benefits of working with the most liberal and successful country in the region.

Neither side spends too much time trying to actually convince a larger audience of the righteousness of their cause, although they both try to pretend that they have the moral high ground. Both sides are obviously hypocritical. In both cases, the bulk of their time is spent trying to figure out how to cause the most fear in the people they are threatening. In both cases, they celebrate when the targets cave to their threats and change their behavior. Likewise, in both cases, they will make up fake "victories" and celebrate them, because when the goal is to terrorize innocents, perception is more important than truth.

BDSers and terrorists are identical in strategy, in their intent, and in their definitions of victory. The only difference are specific tactics (and the BDSers generally have no problem with terrorism as well, as their leaders have admitted.)

BDS is a terror movement. Its economic impact is negligible but that isn't what they are after - they want to terrorize companies and individuals by creating an atmosphere of coercion and fear.  Their victims need to understand that they are being intimidated and coerced by people whose morality and goals are virtually indistinguishable from that of jihadists.

UPDATE: *Israel's Presspectiva proved my skepticism about Haaretz' reliability on stories like these. It is really a shame that their lying about stories they want to be true is so utterly predictable. (h/t Yenta)