Global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement

Analyzing the Global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement
In Favor of BDS (Anecdote)
As an individual with friends in Palestine, I have heard the stories and seen firsthand the immoral acts committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank. I have seen the bulldozed homes, the illegal Israeli settlements, the victims of Israeli aggression, the loved ones buried—killed by soldiers or burned and murdered by Israel’s use of white phosphorous, which others have also reported on (Kaposi, 2016). The BDS Movement is a movement that aims to draw attention to these crimes and to hold Israel accountable. It aims to put pressure on the state—economically—so that the state begins to realize the enormity of its crimes and makes amends.
One story that I can share that will illuminate the reason why BDS should be supported is this: not to long time ago, my friend and his family lived in their home in the West Bank. The Israel bulldozer arrived like an angel of death out of nowhere and began knocking down the homes—even as my friend, his family and his neighbors were all still living in them—were in fact still in them at that very moment. The bulldozer did not care and did not stop its destructive work. If you wanted to live, you left. If you wanted to protest and demonstrate in front of the bulldozer, it did not care: it would bury you in the rubble. It was your choice. Of course, the Palestinians including my friend and his family all chose to live. The stood by as the bulldozer destroyed their homes and their belongings so that Israel could establish illegal settlements on the West Bank. The Palestinians were forced to move. This is not an isolated incident: rather, this type of thing happens all the time with Israel. That is why BDS needs to be supported.
Response (Normative)
Israel has a right to defend itself: those who support the BDS movement are anti-Semitic (Sheskin & Felson, 2016). They are the same people and of the same mindset as the Nazis who sought to persecute defenseless, innocent Jews during WW2. The stories that are told about Israelis bulldozing Palestinian homes and erecting settlements illegally are all untrue. Israel has a right to defend itself and a right to lay claim to territory on the West Bank. That right is part and parcel with its right to defend itself. Israel has never acted unjustly or immorally in any regard.
What Israel has done is to assert its right to self-determination. For centuries Jews have been persecuted by the West. They have been the victims of hate. Now they have a state and in order to be strong and to defend themselves from outsiders who want to run them into the sea, as Iran has said it wants to do to Israel, it must take a firm hand. If Israel shows any slack, it will be attacked and its nation will be overthrown. Israel acts, therefore, with Israel’s best interest in mind. But Israel is still weak, like a fledgling bird and it relies on the support of friends like the Americans in the U.S. government. Israel cannot be discarded like a crumb: its history is too great, its own stories of persecution too meaningful. Jews were once rounded up and gassed in gas chambers and their bodies incinerated in brick ovens. Should that same thing happen once more? It will if BDS is allowed to move forward. Those who support BDS do not support Israel. Those who do not support Israel are not friends of the Jew. Personal anecdotes about violence on the West Bank are one-sided and not an accurate reflection of the animosity that Palestinians show towards Israeli authorities. Any Palestinians removed from the West Bank are removed for security reasons, plain and simple.
Against BDS (Normative)
The BDS movement is an immoral deligitimization campaign being waged by anti-Semites against the people of Israel (Cohen & Feilich, 2018). Anyone who supports it is an anti-Semite. Anti-Semitism was responsible for the brutal murder of 6 million Jews during WW2. The BDS movement, if not stopped, will lead directly to another Holocaust, and the world should never ever have to witness such a brutal moment again. For that reason, the BDS movement should not be supported and should be prevented from gaining support—starting right now. If you are a friend of the Jews and not an anti-Semite you should work with AIPAC and with the Zionist World Congress to end this campaign once and for all and to make it illegal for anyone to criticize the state of Israel or to protest its actions by boycott.
America has a special relationship with Israel and that relationship should be supported—not thrown into the dirt and trampled upon. Yet the BDS movement is a threat to the special bond between Israel and the U.S. Both countries share a sacred bond that should never be violated. The U.S. helped to save the Jewish paper in WW2 and they recognized the Jewish State of Israel as soon as it was founded. The U.S. has supported the state of Israel with foreign aid for years and Israeli’s have appreciated the benefits shown to Israel by the Americans.
America has always trust Israel to do what is right and to do what is in its best interests. The BDS movement is an attack on Israel’s best interests. It is meant to derail the state of Israel and to rob the state of Israel of its right to exist and its right to self-determination. Everyday Israel is at risk of an attack from foreign aggressors or hostile actors. It is constantly being fired upon: missiles rain down upon Israelis from Gaza, from Hezbollah, from all over the land. Israel needs sympathy, not condemnation.
Response (Evidence)
It is clear that the Israel lobby is the most powerful lobby in the U.S. (Aridan, 2019). Its influence stretches far and wide, which is why Congress is so beholden to the whims and will of Israel. Yet Israel is not a U.S. state nor an official U.S. ally. It has been charged with human rights violations by the UN (UN, 2019). As Gazit (2015) points out, it engages in state-sponsored acts of vigilantism against the Palestinian people. It is not interested in a peaceful solution nor in giving back the land it has illegally taken from the Palestinians. Israel’s aim is to ethnically cleanse the region of the Palestinian people and the only thing preventing the state from achieving this ambition is the fact that so many people around the world have rallied together to raise with one voice their protest against the slaughter being inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israelis.
Israel wants to be the dominant power in its part of the world. It does not care about human rights abuses. It does not care about the rights of Palestinians or Lebanese. It does not believe those people also have a right to exist or have a right to self-determination. In their eyes, only Israel has a right to self-determination. It is a hypocritical political and social doctrine that animates Israel to act. It is hypocritical of the U.S. to support Israel’s antagonism of its neighbors, to say the very least. The BDS movement is a way for Americans and others all over the world to protest what they see as intolerable actions on the part of Israel towards the people of Palestine, people who are everyday 100x more oppressed and victimized than the people of Israel. Yet Israel wants to act like the victim: the state should be ashamed of itself. BDS must go forward and Israel must be made to understand its actions are reprehensible.
References
Aridan, N. (2019). Israel Lobby. Israel Studies, 24(2), 128-143.
Cohen, M. S., & Freilich, C. D. (2018). War by other means: the delegitimisation campaign against Israel. Israel Affairs, 24(1), 1-25.
Gazit, N. (2015). State-sponsored vigilantism: Jewish settlers’ violence in the occupied Palestinian territories. Sociology, 49(3), 438-454.
Kaposi, D. (2016). On the possibility of critiquing Israel: The Times’ engagement with Israel’s deployment of white phosphorous during the first Gaza war. Media, War & Conflict, 9(3), 272-289.
Sheskin, I. M., & Felson, E. (2016). Is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement Tainted by Anti-Semitism?. Geographical Review, 106(2), 270.
UN. (2019). Israel’s Exploitation of Palestinian Resources is Human Rights Violation, Says UN Special Rapporteur for the Situation of Human Rights in the OPT. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/unispal/document/israels-exploitation-of-palestinian-resources-is-human-rights-violation-says-un-special-rapporteur-for-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-the-opt-press-release/