BDS: ANTISEMITISM OR POLITICS?

Dear Deborah:

This is all very enlightening—and very disturbing. But one question remains. However antithetical to academic freedom BDS may be, can it truly be called antisemitic? Whether its proponents publicly advocate for a “two-state solution” or a single “bi-national” Jewish and Arab state (putting aside for the moment the question of how viable that option may be), do they truly fit into any of our previously established categories of antisemites?

Yours,

Joe

Dear Joe and Abigail:

I begin with a deeply unsatisfying answer to Joe’s question: It depends.

First, I separate the BDS movement from many of its followers. Though that is generally a false dichotomy, in this case I believe it applies. BDS supporters who are critics of specific Israeli government policies believe this protest movement will result in Israel’s relinquishing control of the West Bank, which will then (together with Gaza) become the State of Palestine, which will peacefully exist alongside the State of Israel, and everyone will live happily ever after. But if they were to seriously examine BDS’s founding documents or some of the statements made by its founders (such as those of Omar Barghouti that I quoted in a previous letter), they would find that its objective is in fact the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state, which is what would occur if the more than seven million Palestinians currently living outside of Israel were granted Israeli citizenship and permitted to exercise their right of return.1

There are anti-Israel activists who take matters further by propagating the Arab and Marxist charge that Zionism is a form of racism. In actual fact, Zionism is the national liberation movement of Jews. To argue that only Jews, among all the peoples in the world, are not to be permitted to have a national home (or, more precisely, to return to their national home) is to deny Jewish peoplehood. The negation of Jewish nationhood is a form of antisemitism, if not in intent, then certainly in effect. This is particularly so today, when the State of Israel, which was created by a United Nations resolution in 1947, exists. To have debated the efficacy of a Jewish state prior to its establishment was one thing. To advocate for the dissolution of a state that is now home to seven million inhabitants is something else entirely. Policies that will lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state constitute, in the words of progressive essayist Ellen Willis, “an unprecedented demand” for an existing democratic state, “one that has a popularly elected government, to not simply change its policies but to disappear.”2 This may explain why people such as Ken Livingstone always talk about their opposition to Zionism rather than to the existence of Israel: It’s easier to oppose a movement than it is to call for the end to a nation-state.

Many anti-Israel advocates contend that the fact that Israel is a country with an established state religion renders it archaic, and this justifies its dissolution. They are strangely silent on the validity of the nondemocratic Islamic theocracies in the same neighborhood. And the fact that Great Britain, Denmark, Greece, and Monaco have official state religions doesn’t seem to bother them, either.

Ultimately, however, the BDS campaign is not about divestment. As one Stanford University professor observed when the issue was debated on that campus in 2015, even the proponents of the effort knew it was not going to happen. Why, then, bother to fight for it? Because “the actual goal” is not “the stated goal.”3 BDS supporters aim to convince students that Israel is the sole impediment to peace in the Middle East, if not the world. Nussbaum describes BDS as a “symbolic” boycott that is intended to make a “public statement” about opposition to Israel’s policies.4 It’s another example of the attempt to toxify Israel.

In response to an attempt in 2016 by the American Anthropological Association to sign on to the BDS initiative, the Harvard professor Steven Pinker issued a public statement that eloquently sums up the situation:

[Are Israel’s] policies really so atrocious, so beyond the pale of acceptable behavior of nation-states, that they call for a unique symbolic statement that abrogates personal fairness and academic freedom? It helps to put the Israel-Palestine conflict in global and historical perspective—something that anthropologists, of all people, might be expected to do. . . . Why no boycotts against academics from China, India, Russia, or Pakistan, to take a few examples, which have also been embroiled in occupations and violent conflicts, and which, unlike Israel, face no existential threat or enemies with genocidal statements in their charters? In a world of repressive governments and ongoing conflicts, isn’t there something unsavory about singling the citizens of one of these countries for unique vilification and punishment?5

Nor do these critics of Israel acknowledge that there is virtually no Muslim state that treats its minority populations—Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Yazidis, or any other religious group—with equality.6

When BDS was hotly debated by students at Stanford, more than one hundred and fifty faculty members issued a statement decrying the “one-sided condemnation of Israel” and the “single minded ferocity” of the BDS campaign. (Rarely do faculty members criticize a student resolution.) Professor of history Steven Zipperstein observed that in his thirty years at Stanford, “no issue has captured as much attention” at the school. Zipperstein put it bluntly: “That’s bizarre.”7 It is bizarre unless one acknowledges that something else is hovering beneath the surface. Equally bizarre were the responses given by those professors who led their academic associations in support of BDS resolutions. After the American Studies Association (ASA) voted in 2013 to adopt BDS and boycott Israeli academic institutions, the president of the organization was asked why it had done so, given that it had never before called for an academic boycott of any other country, “including many of Israel’s neighbors, which are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable.” His stunningly simplistic answer: “One has to start somewhere.” Equally strange was the answer given by University of Texas professor Barbara Harlow when she was asked why she was advocating an academic boycott of Israel and not any other country accused of human-rights abuses. Her response: “Why not?”8

The proponents of these campaigns would vigorously deny that their singling out of Israel in this way is antisemitic. But their myopic focus on Israel is antisemitic in consequence, if not in intent. There are those who use traditional antisemitic stereotypes to demonize Israel, as Mark Yudof, president emeritus of the University of California writes:

[T]heir rhetoric corrupts the language of human rights and expropriates the words historically used to demean the Jew, focusing instead on the Jewish state. . . . For example, at the University of California at Berkeley, a professor who attended the BDS debate reported to me that Israeli soldiers were accused of deliberately killing women and poisoning wells. In an age of exquisite sensitivity on some campuses to microaggression, or language that subtly offends underrepresented groups, the ironic toleration of microaggression against Jews often goes unnoted.9

But it seems to me that this response doesn’t typify most of those engaged in this debate. There are supporters of pro-Palestinian causes who do not wish to see the destruction of Israel and who believe that their participation in movements such as BDS may genuinely lead to Israel changing those policies that adversely affect Palestinians. It seems unnecessary to point out that many Israeli citizens also oppose some of these policies. While some BDS supporters may not knowingly engage in the demonization of Israel I described above, the movement they support, with its singular and imbalanced view of Israel and its support of the dissolution of a Jewish state, does.10

The impact of BDS on Jewish students is quite real. Jewish students running for office in student government have also been uniquely targeted by Israel-bashers. Jewish candidates have been asked by other students to sign pledges not to travel to Israel or affiliate with student groups considered pro-Israel. A candidate for Stanford’s student government, a Latina Jew, sought the endorsement of the university’s Students of Color Coalition. During her interview, she responded without incident to a multiplicity of questions concerning campus issues. She was then asked: “Given your Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?” The student, “taken aback by the question,” inquired about what the students interviewing her were “really asking.” According to this student candidate, her questioners told her that they saw “that I had a strong Jewish identity, and [wondered] how that would impact my decision.” When the student candidate said she opposed divestment, there was “an awkward silence, and the interview ended a minute later.” She did not receive the endorsement. (The student group claims this exchange never happened, but it’s hard to believe the student would have fabricated such an exchange.) Equally revealing of the atmosphere on campus is that prior to her campaign, this candidate had felt compelled to remove all her pro-Israel posts from her Facebook page. Her campaign manager explained, “We did it, not because she isn’t proud [to support Israel]—she is—but the campus climate has been pretty hostile, and it would not be politically expedient to take a public stance. She didn’t want that to be a main facet of her platform. Of course, she was going to be honest if she was asked about her stance on divestment.”11

I often hear the argument that the BDS movement can’t be considered antisemitic because many of its supporters are Jews. And, just as often, I hear the counterargument that these people are, simply, “self-hating” Jews—a term that I find unhelpful and inaccurate. It is sadly true that one of the most pernicious results of prejudice is when members of a persecuted group accept the ugly stereotypes used to characterize them. As Anthony Julius has observed, “contempt for Jews, when sufficiently widespread, can foster self-contempt among Jews.” It can convince Jews that unfounded, inaccurate accusations leveled against them or, by extension, against the Jewish state, are true.12 Anti-Zionist Jews who are opposed to Israel’s existence believe that they are expressing universalistic Jewish “values,” such as support for the downtrodden and for victims of injustice. It’s unfortunate that they have bought into the anti-Israel narrative and are proud of the fact that they have the “courage” to counter what they feel is a deluded, omnipotent, organized Jewry. I feel sad and frustrated that these people have internalized these antisemitic motifs. They may not personally be antisemites, but they facilitate it. On the other hand, I wouldn’t consider them antisemitic. But organizations such as BDS that negate the existence of a Jewish state most definitely are.

Yours,

DEL