A new year and BDS already challenging heart of Zionism

Strong piece in this weekend’s New York Times by Palestinian Omar Barghouti on the logic and increasing power of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] against Israel:

The… landslide vote… by the American Studies Association in December to endorse an academic boycott of Israel, coming on the heels of a similar decision by the… Association for Asian-American… Studies, among others, as well as… divestment votes… by several university student councils, proves that B.D.S. is no longer a taboo in the United States.

The B.D.S. movement’s economic impact is also becoming evident. The recent decision by the $200 billion… Dutch… pension fund, PGGM, to divest from the five largest Israeli banks due to their involvement in occupied Palestinian territory has sent shock waves through the Israeli establishment.

To underscore the “existential” danger that B.D.S. poses, Israel and its lobby groups often invoke the smear of anti-Semitism, despite the unequivocal, consistent position of the movement against all forms of racism,… including anti-Semitism. This unfounded allegation is intended to intimidate into silence those who criticize Israel and to conflate such criticism with anti-Jewish racism.

Arguing that boycotting Israel is intrinsically anti-Semitic is not only false, it also presumes that Israel and “the Jews” are one and the same. This is as absurd and bigoted as claiming that a boycott of a self-defined Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, say, because of its horrific human rights record, would of necessity be Islamophobic.

The B.D.S. movement’s call for full equality in law and policies for the Palestinian citizens of Israel is particularly troubling for Israel because it raises questions about its self-definition as an exclusionary Jewish state. Israel considers any challenge to what even the Department of State has… criticized… as its system of “institutional, legal, and societal discrimination” against its Palestinian citizens as an “existential threat,” partially because of the… apartheid… image that this challenge evokes.

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