A successful year for boycott activists?
IT HAS been a busy year for BDS — at least as far as the headlines are concerned.
The movement to boycott Israel has claimed many triumphs, and the Israeli government has scrambled to countermand them, over 2018.
There was the case of a Pink Floyd tribute band that announced — at the urging of Roger Waters himself — it would cancel its scheduled concerts in Israel. It was followed by a further announcement that they would perform after all.
There was the farcical saga in October of American student Lara Alqasem, who was incarcerated for two weeks at Ben Gurion Airport on Israeli ministers’ orders because of to her previous membership of a BDSsupporting group.
Ms Alqasem petitioned the High Court and was finally allowed to enter Israel and begin her course at the Hebrew University; since then, there have been no similar detentions at Israeli border control.
More recently, the BDS movement claimed a triumph in November when Airbnb, the home rentals website, decided to remove listings for Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Also last month, two Democrat congresswomen newly elected in the US mid-terms revealed themselves to be boycott supporters.
All of this amounted to many headlines, but very little substance.
As a concept, BDS — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel — has been around since 2005. Its online activist presence has helped, typically, to rally small demonstrations outside Israeli-owned shops in some western cities, force some artists to cancel their concerts in Israel or, in the case of a handful of student unions and local councils, to ‘divest’ the investments in Israel they never had.
But beyond the headlines, has there been any real effect? Did the BDS issue warrant so much attention from the Israeli government and Jewish organisations in the west?
In recent months there has been some soul-searching on the issue by various Israelis involved in confronting “delegitimisation” of Israel.
The consensus appears to be that the government should keep out of the issue and that a much quieter policy would be the best approach.
That is the feeling both of those who do not believe BDS is much of a threat and those who do fear its longterm implications.
“Basically, BDS is a failure which has not attracted any real or meaningful support,” says one veteran Israeli diplomat. “It’s only real success comes when Israeli ministers give it the oxygen of publicity.”
Those who have been affected by boycotts disagree on the movement’s potential for damage but are also trying to lower its profile.
“For Israeli researchers in the humanities, it does have an effect,” says one senior academic.
“You find certain faculties in the west and academic publications unwilling to accept Israelis. It’s a hindrance, because most places are still happy to accept Israelis but when there’s a lot of attention to a couple of cases, you find it has a chilling effect on others.”
Artists who withdraw from performances in Israel are hailed by BDS activists as a victory for their cause, but event organisers say there is more nuance to their attitude.
“I don’t come up against many people who actually support the boycott,” says the organiser of a major Israeli cultural festival.
“But a lot of people we would like to invite hear about how friends and colleagues were bullied online for appearing in Israel, and find it easier turning down our invitations.
“It makes it more difficult to build a line-up, though on the other hand, there are also people who will actually make a special effort to come to Israel, out of defiance to BDS, so it works both ways.”
A former Israeli intelligence official who served on a committee advising the government on “delegitimisation” explains: “If you look at the attempts to boycott
Israel so far in civil society, it has largely been a failure, but it’s hard to predict when public feelings will change in the west. The Israeli government currently doesn’t really take BDS into consideration in its decisions. From the politicians’ statements it looks like they do, but these — and actions like blocking Lara Alqasem from entering Israel — are really for domestic political consumption.
“If any serious thinking was being done, they would realise that all this attention to one very minor activist only serves to boost and strengthen BDS.”
It would appear the movement is not having a significant financial impact either.
Research by Adam Reuter, a former senior economist at the Bank of Israel, showed the boycott attempts achieved negligible impact on Israel’s economy — he estimates it at 0.004% of Israeli growth since 2010.
Dr Reuter also found some Israeli companies had even profited, thanks to supporters purchasing Israeli products and services in solidarity.
But a law passed in 2017 that allows Israel’s Interior Ministry to block BDS actvists from entering the country “falls short of aiding the struggle against the delegitimization of Israel, and arguably might even intensify it”, according to researchers from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank.
“We’re not saying BDS isn’t a threat,” says Michal HatuelRadoshitzky, one of the INSS researchers.
“But it’s certainly not an existential threat and we have to deal with it differently, because it’s a grassroots phenomena — and when you use state power against it, you give it legitimacy.”
A failure that has not attracted meaningful support