I don’t want to write about BDS.
Like many others, I have spent the past 18 months watching a real-time horror movie unfold on my social media feeds and in news broadcasts. In fact I’ve seen things no horror movie would dare portray, such as a father cradling his headless baby or another father carrying his dismembered children in plastic bags.
As I am writing this it has been over two months since Israel broke the ceasefire and started slaughtering Palestinians again, killing and maiming thousands more and supplementing their massacre with a complete blockade of food and aid into the strip. Terms like ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘genocide’ seem insufficient to describe the level of inhumanity on full display before the world, yet some still pretend those descriptors are exaggerations, and even more absurdly what is happening is a ‘war’.
Naturally, focusing on “long game” strategies like BDS feels like a wildly inadequate response to genocide. BDS will not directly put food in their mouths or shelter over their heads in Gaza. But the sad truth is that it’s extremely likely that many more Palestinians are going to die, lose their limbs, and be forced out of Palestine in the coming months and there is little to nothing anyone can do about it. What we might be able to do is reverse some of the damage done when the current onslaught inevitably ends, and take away Israel’s power to do more of the same in the future.
I had heard the term ‘BDS’ for years before October 2023 but never really understood what all the fuss was about. I understood it was about boycotting Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, but as I’ve written about (probably too much already) I didn’t really know (or care) about Israel or Palestine until October 2023.
Even though I didn’t know much about BDS or why it was important, it did always strike me as absurd that there were attempts (sometimes successful) to ban it at the state and federal level.1 I couldn’t grasp how a law banning boycotts was logically different from a law requiring people to shop somewhere they don’t want to shop, which seemed like an absurd thing in a capitalist economy.
What is BDS?
The BDS movement is a call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel in order to pressure them to stop oppressing the Palestinians. The “against Israel” part is particularly important, because a common criticism of BDS is that it unfairly “singles out Israel”, a dumb critique because it’s like saying that boycotting Starbucks for its complicity in genocide is unfair because it “singles out Starbucks”.
Um, yeah. That’s the whole point.
BDS is an international movement currently coordinated by an organization called the BDS National Committee (BNC)2. It was founded in Palestine by Omar Barghouti and Ramy Shaath, and the current General Coordinator is Mahmoud Nawajaa.
The original “Call for BDS” (below) was endorsed by a long list of Palestinian political parties, unions, associations, coalitions and organizations representing the three integral parts of the people of Palestine: Palestinian refugees [around the world], Palestinians under occupation [in Gaza, the West Bank, Golan Heights, etc.] and Palestinian citizens of Israel [who live under an apartheid system of governance].
In the midst of a genocide it is unreasonable to expect the people who are struggling to survive to have the capacity to strategize beyond how to meet their immediate needs. As Naomi Klein made famous in her book The Shock Doctrine (citing Milton Friedman), in the shock of crisis people will adopt"the ideas lying around”. For this reason she argues that the BDS Call is a critical touchstone.
“I think it really does matter to re-read the BDS call, because that was a remarkable collaboration from Palestinian civil society—as far as my understanding the broadest coalition ever of Palestinian civil society—coming together for an agreed upon call, and the call is for the application of international humanitarian law.” —Naomi Klein in podcast The Fire These Times: Voices From The Periphery
It is relatively long, but I think worth reprinting in its entirety:
The Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS:
One year after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel's Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal; Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court's decision. Thirty eight years into Israel's occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies. It has unilaterally annexed occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and is now de facto annexing large parts of the West Bank by means of the Wall. Israel is also preparing - in the shadow of its planned redeployment from the Gaza Strip - to build and expand colonies in the West Bank. Fifty seven years after the state of Israel was built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, a majority of Palestinians are refugees, most of whom are stateless. Moreover, Israel's entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.
In light of Israel's persistent violations of international law; and
Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel's colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies; and
Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine; and
In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions; and Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression;
We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
What has BDS Accomplished?
This Collective Action Timeline is an interactive graph of impact the BDS movement has had in its 20 years of existence.
Controversy
On July 2nd, 2014, the prominent leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky wrote a piece criticizing BDS in The Nation magazine. I highly recommend reading his critique, the published responses, and his response to the responses in full. Although I initially intended to try, I’m sure I won’t do any of them justice by attempting to summarize the debate here.
I will however point out that this debate happened over 10 years ago, and since then the facts on the ground have changed significantly. I don’t know whether Chomsky would support BDS today and unfortunately it is unlikely we will ever know given his recent major stroke and improbable return to the public sphere. However one of his main critiques, that US public opinion is nowhere near where it needs to be, has changed dramatically, especially in the past 18 months.
Conclusion
I know there are people who think that BDS is insufficient or even counterproductive, and for all I know they are right. However as Naomi Klein and many others have pointed out, there is no other action that has the full-throated endorsement of such a broad swath of Palestinian people and organizations in Palestine and the diaspora. So if you want to support the Palestinian people broadly, that seems the best way to go.
Several of the projects we support at Tech for Palestine are BDS-related, such as boycat, ethics.vc, the-wall, and wtrmln, but we could use a lot more. If you have an idea for a project, want to take on the responsibility of building one of the many projects on our list of ideas or want to suggest an idea of your own, let me know in the comments or email me at tom@techforpalestine.org.
More on anti-BDS legislation here and it’s worth noting that the now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio introduced an updated version of that legislation in early 2023. Meanwhile, The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found that BDS is not merely a right, but an obligation. See also how anti-BDS is framed as fighting “antisemitism” by the Zionist “Jewish Virtual Library” (a project of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE))
The efforts to coordinate the BDS campaign, that began to grow rapidly since the 2005 Call was made public, culminated in the first Palestinian BDS Conference held in Ramallah in November 2007. Out of this conference emerged the BDS National Committee (BNC) as the Palestinian coordinating body for the BDS campaign worldwide. - Tripp, Charles (25 February 2013). The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East via Wikipedia
Tom, thanks so much for bringing attention to the powerful BDS movement.
I've been boycotting Israel and, here in Canada, many of us also boycott the USA for its complicity in sending arms and funds to Israel, and for the tariffs they've imposed. Unfortunately, the Canadian government supports Israel too, it's just sneakier about it.
Here are some resources to help with the BDS movement and to support Palestine that I share in the footer of all of my posts:
I love the BDS campaign and the effect it’s having on Israel’s economy.
Here's an excellent list of products from Israel: https://boycott.thewitness.news/browse/1
Here's a way to help others not in your bubble to boycott Israel: https://www.cjpme.org/stickies_2024_en
And here's where you can support Palestine by buying a keffiyeh: https://www.hirbawi.ps/
Well articulated as always. You've hit the nail on the head - the fact that there are so many efforts all around the globe to ban it is all the evidence one needs to show that it works. The official BDS line (last time I looked) was to target a relatively few selected companies. While I can understand the rationale, I still struggle with it. I instinctively want the BDS movement to publish a comprehensive list. I use the No Thanks app as an alternative.