Monday, May 07, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
One of the things that makes debate over whether BDS is
winning or losing so confusing is lack of common agreement regarding what
constitutes success and failure.
For example, this year we saw more
BDS votes in student government than in previous years, and more of those
votes go in favor of the BDSers.
Needless to say, a movement like BDS which demands we treat everything (including defeat) as
wins for them insists that more student government votes going their way
constitutes unstoppable momentum for their cause. And, from our side, it’s difficult to totally
dismiss more student votes against Israel as irrelevant.
Yes, school administrations have held the line by condemning
and insisting they will never act on the non-binding requests made by this
year’s Student Senate. And after two
decades of effort, it is relevant to point out that all BDS has to show for
itself are some toothless measures passed by transient student leaders through
votes often taken behind the backs of constituents (meaning they cannot be said
to represent campus opinion).
But this assumes that the goal of the BDS “movement” is to
actually cause financial harm to the Jewish state. While that may be an ultimate desire or
dream, their main or current goals might be different, requiring us to tease these
out before measuring success or failure (or selecting our own strategies and
tactics to fight them).
The most obvious goal the boycotters are trying to achieve
is to brand Israel as a racist, repressive state akin to South Africa (which,
it should be noted, ended its Apartheid system years before most of today’s
college students were born). Given this,
anything they can do to poison the minds of the young against the Jewish state
represents furthering their actual
goal. So even if a student government
vote does not go their way, the speeches they make and letters in school papers
condemning Israel in harsh and unfair terms represent the actual political
activity they are engaged in designed to further their real goal of making Israel
seem so loathsome that its elimination should be seen as virtuous rather than
horrifying.
Another goal was best labeled by William Jacobson at Legal
insurrection who described BDS as a “Settler
Colonial Ideology” which strives to colonize and dominate the entire Left
end of the political spectrum and make anyone who considers themselves left of
center subservient to their will.
This goal has received a boost over the last year as
anti-Trump “resistance,” coupled with the emergence of the ideology of
intersectionality (which insists all progressive causes be linked), provided
the most aggressive activists (which tend to be anti-Israel partisans) the
opportunity to make demands on those with whom they join in “common cause.”
The scare quotes I just used around “common cause” was meant
to illustrate that for a Settler Colonial Ideology like BDS, finding common
cause is a one-way street. This is why
women and gay groups must sign onto the anti-Israel agenda to be considered
intersectional partners in good standing, while those pushing the
intersectional agenda will never mention – much less fight for – women and gays
repressed throughout the Middle East (including in “Palestine”).
In many ways, ground-level successes – such as the
aforementioned student government votes – are a result of the success the BDS
colonial project over the last year.
And, as we have seen in the UK, the fully colonized anti-Israel/anti-Semitic
Left can end up just one election away from obtaining genuine power.
So now that we know what the most important goals of the BDS
project really are, how best to fight it?
Having our own goals clearly articulated is a first step, a subject I’ll
discuss next.
