Monday, September 09, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Last week, the BDS “movement” suffered another in a string
of defeats within academic associations when the American
Political Science Association rejected efforts to start the ball rolling on
a boycott of Israeli scholars.
This defeat took place at an early stage in the BDS playbook
during which partisans within the association organized “discussions” of
boycotting the Jewish state in an attempt to set the stage for an actual
boycott vote at subsequent meetings.
Historically, these one-sided propaganda exercises (announced
as “conversations”) take place outside public view, and given how few people
are aware that groups like the American Political Science Organization even
exist (and how few members participate in annual meetings), infiltrating a
committee is often the best way to get BDS on the agenda unnoticed. Unfortunately (for the boycotters) their
efforts to subvert academic associations over the last several years has put
their once-furtive efforts on the opposition’s radar.
The BDSers generally focus on one category of target for
several years before moving on, and given the number of eggs they’ve placed in
the academic boycotts basket over the last five years, it’s safe to say this
continues to be their priority. Their
optimism with regard to academic associations is based on having gotten the American
Studies Association to come on board several years ago which triggered hope
that academic boycotts would go mainstream.
As noted here,
however, no major group has followed ASA’s lead: not the American Historical
Association, not the American Anthropological Association, not the Modern
Language Association (which actually voted to stop the boycott propaganda
activity that had been forced on the group year after year after year).
One can look at this week’s victory for our side in different
ways.
If you’re inclined towards the half empty, you could point
out that exercises in academic boycotts are simply a feint, designed to
inject anti-Israel poison into academic discourse, regardless of whether a
boycott gets voted on or not.
If you’re more of a glass-is-more-than-half-full kind of
person, you could describe this string of BDS fails as the result of the Jewish
community rousing itself to fight back through groups like the Academic Engagement Network (AEN)
which has responded to attacks and helped rally members of targeted
associations to reject attempts to politicize their disciplines.
While I tend to favor the optimistic latter vs. pessimistic
former interpretation, I believe what we are seeing might represent another
example of a branch of civil society immunizing itself against the BDS
virus.
As just mentioned, BDSers tend to run to wherever they think
they can find success, often anchoring years of effort in one victory within a
category of institution. For example,
many years ago a single food coop in Olympia Washington (fondly referred to as
“Oly”)
announced that it had decided to boycott Israeli products which led to efforts by
Israel haters across the country to get other food coops to follow suit.
But even as the boycotters were fanning out to demand other
coops follow Olympia’s lead, chaos was breaking out back at Oly as members
revolted against a pollical move that had been made without their knowledge
(much less involvement or consent) in the dead of night behind closed
doors. The mayhem that ensued, which has
gone on ever since, sent a powerful message that countered BDSers’ claim that
joining a boycott was a simple, uncontroversial idea aligned with the (usually
progressive) ethos of the coop movement.
One coop, which actually held their debate on the issue in
the light of day, also performed research that convinced them such a boycott
would run counter to the very principles
the coop movement was founded upon.
With “Oly” as an example of what can happen when anti-Israel politics
gets injected into a community, and more and more coops justifying rejection of
boycotts on well-thought-out grounds provided by those who had previously rejected
BDS, the entire food coop movement eventually became immunized from further BDS
infection. And thus a category of civic
groups the BDSers placed their hopes on for nearly a decade translated to years
of wasted effort.
One can look at the American Studies Association playing a
similar role within the category of academic associations that Olympia played
for food coops. In the years since the ASA
boycott was passed, some members resigned, others sued, and many began to
question the wisdom of allowing the organization to fall into disrepute, just to
allow a handful of partisans to attack the academic freedom of fellow
scholars. To make matters even worse,
the ASA boycott call was never acted upon with the number of American Studies
departments at universities implementing the boycott standing at zero six years
later, meaning all the damage was caused so that a few partisans could pretend
a boycott was in place.
With this “shining example” of what happens to an academic
association that embraces BDS so vivid, groups like AEN, allied with scholars
who don’t want to see their field politicized for the aggrandizement of a few
radical hacks, have the vaccine they need: arguments that highlight that
boycotts damage not Israel, but the organizations that participate in them.
It’s too early to say whether BDS is dead within academic
associations since, as the head of AEN pointed out, the boycotters will be back
given that they are always the last to realize how much they overplayed their
hand.
But even with this victory, we need to keep in mind that
academic boycotts, like BDS as a whole, is simply the propaganda wing of a
wider war against the Jewish state. This
means boycott and divestment tactics will never disappear until those who
started that war call it off. Since
that’s not us, we will continue to have to man the walls until those who believe
another century of warfare is worth it change their minds.
