BDS is a threat to the entire free world (Richard Landes)
This is a guest post from Richard Landes, professor of history.
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Every once in a while articles have
been published by legacy media outlets like AP and Time, and newer ones like Vox, introducing the BDS Movement (which
advocates boycotting Israel) to a larger public. They often take the form of a
backgrounder (“what you need to know”), and do little more than rephrase
a press release from the organization itself, with a modicum of
disagreement from “the other side” which is then downplayed.
The uninformed come away from
these articles with the impression that BDS is a group of Palestinian
civil-society, non-violent, human rights NGOs and allies, defending Palestinian
rights, and using the moral protest of a boycott to oppose Israel’s suppression
of those rights. It’s not trying to destroy Israel, but to hold it to universally
recognized moral standards. Zionists who complain about BDS as antisemitic are
trying to silence legitimate criticism, and anyway, not all Jews are Zionists: progressive Jews don’t object to BDS. Some even join.
On and on it goes, with both sides
dredging up arguments that have been around for years. Both BDSers and
Zionists seem to have inexhaustible energy, each accusing the other of
elaborate schemes to dupe outsiders.
Why should you care?
Here’s why.
This isn’t a fight happening in a
far off land. This is here, today, in America and Europe. It has been brought
to your homes. Whether you like it or not, when your children go to college,
they will find BDS among the most militant and dominant groups on campus. When
they take classes or go to talks, BDSers will exercise significant influence on
what they can read, hear or discuss. when you look at the most radical voices
in American politics today, you’ll find BDSers and a large following of social
mediaites who wish to launch an American Intifada (uprising.) When you look at the most extensive re-writes of high school curricula, and you’ll find the BDSer
narrative. So, whether you like it or not, you have skin in this game.
I admit, I am one of their targets: an American-raised Zionist who moved to
Israel. Even though it is a simple matter to demolish the BDS arguments,
I advise you to pay attention not so much either to what BDS says, or to
its impact is on its alleged target – Israel – and more closely on the impact
it has on your own societies.
BDS is using the language of human
rights to abrogate human rights. It uses the language of democracy to promote
an anti-democratic agenda. BDS is using modern liberal concepts to push a very
illiberal stance. And what the BDSers are attempting to do to Israel is
what they want to do with all free, democratic societies.
BDS is not about justice. It is
about wiping the most liberal, free society in the Middle East off the map. And
to do so effectively, it needs to appeal to
liberal, democratic societies with an argument that can and will be used against
those cultures foolish enough to respond to their “moral appeal.”
That’s why it matters that the BDS
goal of boycotting Israeli Jews is a virtual clone of the Nazi boycott of
German Jews. That’s why it matters that BDS claims that Israel is guilty of
ethnic cleansing is really a smokescreen for their own desire to ethnically
cleanse all Jews from the Middle East – or to relegate them to the same legally
inferior status they have had for 1400 years under Islam.
Noura Erekat, a US lawyer of Palestinian
heritage, claims:
“If you say anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism then you’re basically condemning all
Palestinians as anti-Semites because they decide to exist.” It
is important to understand what she means. Is she saying that all
the Palestinians want to do is exist, and the Zionists call even that basic
human right, antisemitism? Or
is she saying that Palestinians define their existence in terms of not
allowing Jews a state of their own? Not only do the answers matter, they have
much larger significance for citizens of democracies the world over.
If Palestinian leaders define
their existence as the elimination of the only Jewish state on the planet, the
only one in the last two millennia, then they have no commitment to the kinds
of Palestinian rights they demand Israel respect. Indeed, they offer the
textbook case of a hypocritical strategy: demanding respect of Palestinian
human rights from those whose rights they wish to deny.
Every meaningful and progressive
change in history had, at its core, the rejection of this deceptive,
retaliatory, authoritarian strategy. If BDS, or the Palestinian cause, deserves
condemnation, it’s not for “wanting to exist,” but for insisting in that their
national existence demands the non-existence of the Jewish nation. And if
that is the kind of false, zero-sum moral claims BDSers make, what other
extremist groups will follow their example if they are seen to succeed?
If there’s one thing over two
millennia of experience with Jew-hatred have taught us, is that people who
succumb to its blandishments do not prosper: compare 16th century
Spain and the later 20th century Arab world. Indeed, spreading
hatred is a sure-fire recipe for social failure, and the more widespread
the hatred, the more extensive the damage. Because what starts with the Jews
never ends with the Jews. Once one shifts attention to what
BDS actually does, one finds a strong and consistent legacy. Consider for
example, academia, where the movement has had its most favorable and enduring reception. On campus, BDS wages a
relentless campaign of slander and demonization, punctuated yearly by an orgy of misinformation and propaganda called “Israel Apartheid Week.” It de-platforms, sometimes violently, anyone who dares challenge their dogmas. They
have managed, with these techniques, to politicize and polarize both campus and
academic discussion, to make Western universities places of indoctrination
rather than of learning. In the name of liberal values, they have created
a deeply illiberal pedagogy.
Wherever
BDS succeeds, whether on campus or in high schools, the scene becomes
profoundly hostile to Jews, both students and faculty. This is not inclusive excellence; it’s exclusive mediocrity. If
it succeeds, it will not only produce more tendentious, repetitive, and misguided research, but drive out a major source
of modern and post-modern intellectual thought. The revolution, hijacked by
bloody-minded zealots, eats its own, starting with the vast majority of Jews who are guilty of
the modern crime of being Zionist.
BDS is not confined to the campus.
It is influential in “human rights” organizations. It is making inroads in the
halls of Congress and world parliaments. When BDS is ascendant, it is
intolerant of any other opinions – and of the people who hold those
opinions.
These are deeply troubling
developments. Those
who worried
about Trump’s
proto-fascismshould understand that he has had only a fraction of
the “will to dominate” that we
find in both BDS and its allies. Whenever leaders use the language of
liberalism to trample liberal principles, you need to ask yourself whether your
own beliefs put you on their enemies list.
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