Yawn: Marking 5 years of Failure: BDS Media Day fizzles

A call from the usual suspects to turn July 9th into BDS Media day has taken on water and sunk like a brick. Locally, the Meserele verdict and ensuing “Will loot for justice” riots took precedence over the non story of BDS "success".

Anti-Israeli activists were urged by their handlers to “celebrate their achievements” on July 9th by

- Publishing BDS articles in the local and national press;

- Briefing journalists on BDS activities, establish enduring relationships and make a case with them on why they should cover BDS;

- Staging public actions with focus on media, such as direct action and launching of high profile campaigns, publicize legal actions, expose violators and promote public debates;

- Use alternative media to mark the anniversary;

The day instead was marked by neither sound nor fury, nor press coverage.

I visited the Berkeley Bowl, a local independent grocer on July 9th, to see what was happening in the campaign to bully the Bowl into compliance by the local enforcers of "political correctness". The store was quiet, though I couldn’t help but notice they’ve added a new line of Israeli olive oils to their stock.

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement has a long history of failure. The single best documentation of the divestment movement can be found here

"During the very period when BDS was supposedly on the march, the size of Israel’s economy (as measured by GDP) nearly doubled from $110B to $190B. Now given that the BDS project is based on their activity having economic consequence for the Jewish state, the takeaway from this chart seems to be that such consequence has been an explosion of growth in the Israeli economy."

A recent article in Bloomberg News called the Israeli economy one of the world's "happy stories"

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described Israel was one of the small number of countries, such as Canada and Australia, that were able to weather the current crisis well. Israel’s rebound from the global financial crisis has been powered by exports, which make up almost 50 percent of gross domestic product.

Israel’s economy expanded an annualized 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010, led by exports.

Omar, what were you saying about "momentum" in the BDS movement again?