BDS: Failing for 13 years.

Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) have been a failing tactic since it was first introduced at Durban in 2001. By any objective measure, the economy of Israel is booming.  Investment in Israel flourishes. Israeli bond ratings remain high   A-list entertainers have continued to visit Israel,  both for personal travel and to perform before appreciative crowds.

If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.  Israel has consistently built a better mousetrap, and innovations in water saving technology,  defense technology, medicine and cyber-security  will keep the Israeli economy robust for years to come.

"Then why", the BDs'ers ask, "Why do you fight us if we are not a threat?"

I'd answer simply, in the words of  Thomas Paine's "It is an  affront to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance"

But our friends at Divest this! have a much better answer. In the comments section of the post  the Israeli Economy-Security Dialectic , the blogger is also asked (Why) " If BDS is almost constantly failing, that we should therefore concern ourselves with it?"

The response  nails it:

You’re not the first person to ask why we should concerns ourselves with BDS given that, as you point out, I spend so much time documenting is failures. To which I’ve responded: 

(1) BDS (as we’ve seen) can make progress if enough good people don’t stand up to fight against it (which is why I spend time helping those engaged with this fight);

(2) The goal of the BDS propaganda campaign is to convince others that the Israel = Apartheid propaganda message is embraced by broad swaths of society (especially progressive society) rather than being the opinion of a tiny, unrepresentative fringe. So, by that very formula, highlighting when they get rejected by progressive individuals and organizations diminishes their message and effectiveness; and

(3) Of all the de-legitimization activity going on in the world, BDS is one of the few areas we civilians can have an impact. Most of us are not in the position to affect how nation states or international organizations behave (even if we can communicate their failings). But we can protect the civil society in which we live from being infected by the BDS virus. And any failure BDS experiences rebounds against the anti-Israel de-legitimization project as a whole.

BDS: Losers and Liars

There is an interesting discussion taking place in the comments section of Divest this! (your one stop shopping for all things BDS).

Our old friend Mike asks:

 I have to say, Jon, while I very much respect the work that you are doing here and I value your insights, I cannot escape what seems to be a central contradiction.

On the one hand, you write about the BDS threat as if it is an actual threat to the Jewish people… which it is… but on the other hand you constantly inform us that BDS is failing. 

 If BDS is failing then it is not much of a threat and, therefore, why should anyone care?

Commenter Barbara nails it with her answer

What is BDS really about?
 
One might naively think its aim is to obtain a settlement between Israel and Palestinians, or perhaps even “justice for Palestinians” – whatever that might mean. The strategy is to apply pressure on an obstinate Israel to make concessions. The tactic is to use economic boycott. In actually recruiting boycotters, their success is minimal.

However, all that is a red herring, and at the same time a means to recruit unsophisticated, well-meaning, under-informed people to support their cause, and promote it.

However, the real aim of the BDS movement is to undermine popular support for the State of Israel (did the last Gallup poll say 72% of Americans hold a favorable opinion of Israel?) The strategy is to create a popular image of Israel as a cruel, evil, racist state whose creation was illegitimate and as a state, wantonly violates international law. The tactic is to use boycott efforts as a means of getting publicity to give voice for this narrative.

So while they don’t get institutions to join their cause, they do get plenty of platform for promoting their lies and distortions. Either way, those accusations cannot be left unanswered.

Why else would  various SJP's and MSA's throughout the UC system continue to put their student associations through the wringer, on a resolution that the Regents have guaranteed  will have zero effect?

Local divestment activist and UC Berkeley graduate Tom Pessah  has freely admitted the resolutions exist solely as a pressure tactic. He and his ilk have repeatedly shown their willingness to sacrifice their student governments' time and energy (for 13 years!)  for a symbolic "victory" worth no more than the paper its written on.

 
Its all about the noise level, and the student body, or the food coop, or the corner hardware store is just a means to an end.

Divest this! responds to Mike and Barbara:

 ...the war against Israel has always had multiple fronts. 

Originally, it was a traditional war in which the armies of neighboring states played the major role. But when that failed, some states (such as Egypt and Jordan) went for a grudging or de facto peace with Israel, while others moved the conflict to different fronts: unconventional warfare (i.e., terror/surrogate wars) coupled with a propaganda campaign designed to turn a conflict driven by an Muslim/Arab world refusing to accept a non-Arab/Muslim state in their midst to one perceived as the Jewish state refusing to accept a Muslim/Arab (i.e., Palestinian) state in *its* midst.

As that propaganda campaign expanded to include an attempt to characterize Israel as not just intransigent, but Apartheid and even Nazi like, the war moved to different fronts. But ultimately, it is still a war being waged by nation states (over which we have little control) which have succeeded in corrupting major institutions (like the UN), turning them into new fronts in the propaganda war. And when it comes to dealing with organizations like the UN (which represents states, not the people in those states), again there is not much we “civilians” can do (other than expose that corruption, as groups like UNWatch does so effectively).

But as the war moved to our backyards: to my home town, to Barbara’s food coop, to Will Spotts’ Presbyterian Church, that provided us an opening to actually join the battle and win. And winning has two advantages: (1) it empowers those who succeed and motivates them to fight further afield (which is why you’re reading what you’re reading now; and (2) it helps break the propagandists momentum and makes it that much harder for them to either corrupt a civic organization to their cause or have their accusations accepted at face value (since, remember, BDS has been exposed as not just a loser, but also a liar).

So that’s why I don’t see a contradiction between urging a continued fight against the BDS threat while also treating it like the loser it is. History is awash with little men and women who have been able to seize control and do huge amounts of damage because good people didn’t stop them. The fight against BDS both stops the bad guys and gives the good guys hope that they can achieve something if they just gin up the strength and resolve to join the fight.

In Summary.
BDS is full of losers and liars. Expose them. Because when we fight back we win.

The Return of Divest this!

You loved him in Young, Jewish and Proud. Oy. 

He made you laugh in the Hampshire SJP Planning Transcript 

And he broke your heart when he took a break from blogging. 

But now he's back.

The anti-divestment web site Divest This is back online. Check out the blog that highlighted the BS in the BDS movement.

Divest this! via CIF Watch: The ASA's decision to boycott Israel

Recently, the American Studies Association (ASA) voted on and adopted a highly biased and contentious resolution supporting an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions.  The vote represented less than 20 percent of membership and was  rejected by eight former ASA presidents.

The incomparable Divest this! has written some excellent commentary on the American Studies Association vote over at CIF Watch. Check it out

 How ASA Became RASA (Racist American Studies Association)

ASA President Marez told the New York Times that Israel was chosen to be the group’s human rights pariah because “you have to start somewhere.”  But the chances that the organization will continue from this starting point to act on human rights issues regarding other countries is nil since, as noted above, the ASA’s leaders are not human rights activists but anti-Israeli partisans first and last.  And given that they have forced the organization to throw academic freedom on the pyre in the name of their cause, I think it’s fair to say they should no longer even be considered scholars.

Anyway, as night follows day the script will play out.  Anger and recrimination by the 75% of members who didn’t vote on the issue (possibly because they – like a friend of mine who is in the organization – didn’t get the postcard voter reminder from the ASA leadership until a day after the vote had closed) will escalate once people realize that a group of people they have never met with no connection to the field is now speaking in their name.  Resignations will both shrink the organization while concentrating the radicals within it.  Real scholars (like those of AAUP) will continue to pour their scorn on the group which the BDSers will ignore as they travel the globe trying to find the next academic organization to corrupt in the name of ASA.

 Proposed ASA boycott of Israeli academics is a guaranteed moral fail

the BDSers took no chances when they stacked the deck of the committees responsible for the original decision and ensured a lopsided number of voices heard during that debate supported the leadership’s preferred outcome, they then went on to minimize chances that the hoi polloi of the American Studies Association (i.e., the scholars they were elected to represent) get in the way of their political crusade.

Exhibit A: While the ASA leadership gave themselves months to manage discussion of the boycott to ensure their desired results, they have given members just fifteen days to ratify the decision (fifteen days that – by a strange coincidence – coincides with finals period, the busiest time of the year for academics).

Exhibit B: While most normal votes about highly contentious issues would be accompanied by Pro and Anti arguments to give members a sense of the stakes involved and different points of view regarding a charged matter, the leadership decided all the members needed to hear was their own full-throated encouragement of a Yes vote.

 American Studies Association purges their Facebook page of critical comments     

Under normal circumstances, I’d take solace in the notion of hypocrisy being the complement vice pays to virtue.  But what are we to make of an organization that, in attempting to shut down inquiry with their Israeli colleagues is ready to first shut it down among its own members while simultaneously sending out e-mails urging people to participate in “discussion and healthy debate”?

American Studies Association ‘boycott Israel’ motion: The Justification

  ...The people claiming that their role as scholars gives them and their proposed boycott special meaning have chosen to act like garden variety propagandists – hiding facts, substituting gut emotion for rational debate, limiting rather than encouraging inquiry and debate – to get what they want.  And if they manage to eke out a victory, they will immediately try to use the virtues of scholarship they had so recently jettisoned to give their decision extra moral weight.

American Studies Association leaders to members: Dear Mindless Sheep

   ...the BDSers took no chances when they stacked the deck of the committees responsible for the original decision and ensured a lopsided number of voices heard during that debate supported the leadership’s preferred outcome, they then went on to minimize chances that the hoi polloi of the American Studies Association (i.e., the scholars they were elected to represent) get in the way of their political crusade.

    Exhibit A: While the ASA leadership gave themselves months to manage discussion of the boycott to ensure their desired results, they have given members just fifteen days to ratify the decision (fifteen days that – by a strange coincidence – coincides with finals period, the busiest time of the year for academics).

    Exhibit B: While most normal votes about highly contentious issues would be accompanied by Pro and Anti arguments to give members a sense of the stakes involved and different points of view regarding a charged matter, the leadership decided all the members needed to hear was their own full-throated encouragement of a Yes vote.

 Divest This! A modest proposal to the American Studies Association

 Most recently, a vote by the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions was passed the same way other votes have gone the BDSers way in recent months: by stacking decision-making committees with people who are BDSers first, academics second, whose fanatic devotion to “the cause” means they are ready to pass politicized motions they had no mandate to even discuss.  And like stacked student council votes that passed on a few campuses in the Spring, the notion that these measures represent student or academic opinion is laughable.