Black Friday False Claim "BDS is Working"

On Black Friday, local anti-Israel groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Berkeley Women in Black are organizing a vigil in the San Francisco Union Square Shopping center. Their theme "BDS is working".

Its wishful thinking, on their part.

The Israel economy continues to show exceptional growth.

Israel's Gross National Product

Israels Gross National Income

Tourism to Israel is equally unaffected by the BDS movement

Out of 3.3 million visitors in 2014, 2.5 million arrived by air (78%) About 400,000 came through the land borders (12%)  Tourism from the USA continued to represent the largest country of origin for incoming tourism to Israel, with 626,000 visitors arriving in 2014, (representing 19% of all incoming tourism), 1% more than 2013. In second place is tourism from Russia with 567,000 visitors, a decrease of 6%. Tourism from France takes third place, with about 301,000 visitors, followed by Germany (196,000) and the United Kingdom (179,000).

58% of tourists were first time visitors, and 42% returning visitors.

Since the  Boycott, Divestment and sanctions movement was introduced in Durban in 2001, the Israeli economy has grown dramatically.  Moodys continues to rate Israeli bonds A1.  In spite of  a variety of toothless student resolutions directed against Israel, not a single university has divested a penny from Israel- with many reaffirming and strengthening their relationships instead.

After nearly 15 years of BDS, Israel's reputation as the start-up nation remains unassailable. Senior representatives from leading multinational companies including AVG, Ford, GE, Tyco, GM, ProSieben, Mail.ru, Bloomberg, Yahoo are set to come to Tel Aviv on December 16 for the Axis Tel Aviv Corporate Edition 2015, aimed at connecting companies looking to invest in Israeli Big Data, Cloud, CyberSecurity, ICT, IOT, Mobile, and e-Commerce startups. Israeli startups had their best year ever in 2014, with exit deals totaling $15 billion, a dramatic increase from $7.6 million in 2013.  2014, 18 Israeli companies going public raised nearly $10 billion.

By any objective standards, BDS is a failed enterprise  Any claim by the anti-Israel activists converging in Union Square that "BDS in winning" is just wishful thinking on their part.