Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and Political Theory (original) (raw)
Related papers
‘BDS – it’s complicated’: Israeli, Jewish, and others’ views on the boycott of Israel
The International Journal of Human Rights, 2017
This study explored attitudes of 501 Israelis-Jews and non-Jewsand Jews and others from western countries concerning Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which aim to change Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. We studied the relationships between views on BDS/PACBI, understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and anti-Semitism, in the different groups. Our internet questionnaire led to snowball sampling, resulting in a highly-educated sample. Israeli-Jews were more inclined to participate than others. Few Palestinians from the Occupied Territories responded; hence we could not compare this group to the others. Overall, more respondents opposed the boycott than those who favoured it. Jewish-Israelis showed the lowest agreement with BDS while non-Jews from western countries exhibited the highest. Jewish-Israeli responses were similar to responses from western Jews and non-Jewish Israelis tended to respond like western non-Jews. Jewish respondents saw BDS as less non-violent than the other groups, while non-Jews disagreed more with the statement that BDS is anti-Semitic than the Jewish respondents. In conclusion, since views towards the boycott were found to be nuanced, researchers and activists need to be aware of these complexities when engaging in human rights work in the Israeli-Palestinian context.
Israeli Policies Toward International Boycott Movement (BDS) 2009-2019
Russian Law Journal
This study sought to understand the nature of the "Israeli" policies toward the international boycott movement (BDS), - Recognising the laws that Israel has taken to undermine and weaken the international boycott movement (BDS). The researchers relied on the descriptive analytical approach in interpreting the Israeli policies in confronting the international boycott movement (BDS); it also relied on the decision-making approach to understand and explain the nature of Israeli Policies Toward the International Boycott Movement (BDS). The researchers arrived at several results; the most important of which is, The Occupation tried to prosecute and distort the movement. Still, it continues to maintain its presence, impact, and expansion. The study recommends maintaining the international boycott movement (BDS) away from political polarisation and formulating a media discourse that refutes the "Israeli" accusations while paying attention to social media sites and openi...
The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel
2014
Last year, the British scholar Alan Johnson spoke up against a resolution to boycott Israel at the National University of Ireland, Galway. As he recounts the experience, "Anti-Israel student activists tried to break up the meeting by banging on the tables, using the Israeli flag as a toilet wipe, and screaming at me, again and again, 'Fuck off our fucking campus you fucking Zionist!'" This outburst came from students "whose heads were filled with the common sense of intellectual circles in Europe-Zionism is racism, the Zionists 'ethnically cleansed' the natives from the land in 1948, Israel is an 'Apartheid State,' Israel is committing a slow genocide against the remaining Palestinians, and so on." Johnson recognizes that students who recite this litany of angry accusations are "in thrall to anAnti-Zionist Ideology" that turns them into dedicated "Anti-Zionist Subjects." Most probably know little if anything about the history of Zionism or have any first-hand experience of Israel, but this ignorance does not keep them from eagerly participating in the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement or from putting forward resolutions such as the one to which Johnson objected. Johnson's essay appears in Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm's impressively comprehensive collection The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel.
This dissertation examines the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign1 in terms of three dimensions: as a discourse, as a strategy and as a political movement representing the interests of Palestinians. Following an overview of the historical context in which the BDS emerged in chapter one, in chapter two I evaluate the role of the BDS in promoting a new discourse based on international law and human rights. I argue here that this new discourse marks a departure from pragmatic negotiating positions and towards a debate which opens up fundamental issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Chapter three investigates the BDS as a strategy for galvanising public opinion and putting economic and social pressure on Israel. This chapter includes a comparison with the South African anti-apartheid campaign which largely inspired the BDS. In the fourth chapter, I consider the extent to which the BDS constitutes a political organisation representing the Palestinians and the extent to which it advocates a particular solution to the conflict. I argue that the BDS is primarily a campaign to inform and empower individuals to act according to their moral conscience, therefore, it assumes no mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians in favour of any particular political settlement. I conclude that the role of BDS is not to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What it does is far more limited, but nevertheless very powerful: It provides a narrative to the Palestinian case; enabled by the BDS discourse, globalised by the strategy, and directed by the moral compass of the world.
1960
An intelligent understanding of international relationships requires a special study of the critical places where continuous crisis arises. It was felt, therefore, desirable to examine a significant aspect of the conflict between the Arab World and the State of Israel that provides the subject of this study. The economic boycott of Israel has assumed a grave significance in international relations, yet to the author\u27s knowledge this subject has not been investigated in a scholarly and comprehensive manner in any available publication. The writer embarks on this topic in the hope that it may provide the American student of Middle Eastern affairs with the essential data for its clear understanding