Boycotts and Backlash: Canadian Opposition to Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movements from South Africa to Israel

Boycotts Past and Present

In 2005, Palestinian civil society activists called for boycotts, disinvestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, stating they were 'inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid'. 2 Indeed, the South African experience and analogy is central to their campaign. It provides a framework for a moral critique of Israel as an 'apartheid state', creating an imperative for outsiders to support Palestinians as they did black South Africans, in the name of 'moral consistency'. More problematically, the South African anti-apartheid movement's (AAM) use of BDS provide a 1 Research for this chapter was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant (RES-061-25-0500

Monthly Review, 2015

When in March 2012, Barack Obama paused briefly from approving orders for drone killings of Pakistani and Yemeni villagers, in order to reassure the attendees at the annual gala of the AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) that, "when there are efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, we will stand against them," 1 the real target of his declaration was elsewhere: the myriad grassroots organizers across the world who have made the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns unignorable. Their mounting influence has provoked efforts to declare them anti-Semitic or illegal from London to Long Beach. 2 In fact, the series of victories across the University of California system has so annoyed its managers that they have hauled in the Caesar of domestic repression, Janet Napolitano, to deal with campus activists. 3 Obama's declaration of support for Israeli colonialism had a simple message to those many activists: back down, because Washington will not. And now, after close to a decade of waxing campaigns and some high-profile victories, a few book-length reflections on BDS have appeared from leftist presses. The most recent is Generation Palestine, edited by Rich Wiles-a collection of articles from organizers working across four continents. This small book is a well-executed movement document: useful, thoughtful, readable, and reflective. It represents a range of voices, most of them organizers directly involved in various civil society campaigns, who are able to speak from grounded knowledge of what works and what does not. Wiles strikes a skilled balance between historical reflection on boycotts in India, the U.S. South, and the global Palestinian campaign, while effectively bringing in critical Israeli voices and deftly coordinating perspectives from outside organizers and Palestinians themselves.

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.

This paper is a literature review of various scholarly works about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. It explores the bitter divide between scholars on this subject, and argues for why it is important to bridge the gap in dialogue in order to maintain integrity in academia.

Contemporary Political Theory, 2019

A Critical Exchange on the importance of the academic boycott of Israel for political theory and/as political praxis.

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...

Moving the Social, 2017

This article examines the genesis and development of transnational anti-apartheid activism between the 1960s and the 1980s. Underpinning anti-apartheid was the fundamental principle of “solidarity”, an emotional and ideological connection between the self and a distant oppressed other. It was this concept that served to mediate the transnational dimension of anti-apartheid as a form of humanitarianism. Calls for sanctions against South Africa represented the movement’s most explicit engagement with political systems and structures, and thus the shifting power of humanitarian values in political discourse. Participation in boycotts represented a kind of activism from the ground up, in which individual economic decisions — the refusal to “buy apartheid” — became humanitarian acts. The notion of solidarity marked, moreover, a significant break with the paternalism of ”imperial” humanitarian efforts, while calls for sanctions and disinvestment promoted a global norm of racial equality a...

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.

Radical History Review, 2019

This article explores the debates in Canada over the call for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against apartheid South Africa, and demonstrates how the African National Congress (ANC) became a significant reference point for both supporters and critics of the anti-apartheid movement. Through close engagement with Canadian civil society, the ANC built its status as the exclusive voice of South Africans, a position that allowed it to influence the movement’s demands, including its support for armed struggle. Friends of South Africa, unable or unwilling to defend apartheid itself, instead focused their efforts on demonizing and delegitimizing the ANC as terrorists and agents of the Soviet Union—but this failed to significantly damage the reputation of the ANC or weaken the call for boycotts. This article is based on extensive new archival research from sources including the Canadian Mission of the ANC and the Canadian-South African Society (an affiliate of the South Africa Foundation).

Philip Mendes (2022) “The BDS movement in Australia: A case study” in Robert A. Kenedy et al (Eds.) Israel and the Diaspora: Jewish connectivity in a changing world. Springer Nature Switzerland, pp.221-238., 2022

This chapter examines the key manifestations of the BDS movement in Australia from 2002 to the present day. Particular attention is drawn to the activities of the University of Sydney Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Greens, a small number of trade unions, and the protests against the Max Brenner Chocolate Shop. The BDS movement has arguably had little impact on mainstream Australian political parties and public debate in terms of influencing attitudes towards the State of Israel. But it has succeeded in poisoning segments of academic discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and at times excluding moderate voices in favour of a negotiated two-state solution from progressive debates.