Our examination of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement last week drew plenty of fire. There were accusations and assertions that we’ll be examining. We also received numerous emails expressing gratitude for our editorial position on the matter.
Surprisingly, this latter sort of response outnumbered the negative ones. Many of them, foretelling the angry responses they were sure we would be receiving, and asking if we were okay. We are totally fine; no need to worry. However, that so many were worried for us was telling, as were that so many asked that their email remain confidential, not for publication.
Like we said last week, there is a deep hush now among many of Corvallis’ Jewish people and their allies. Other ethnicities in Corvallis have experienced the same at times. They probably still do.
Seeing our town’s sense of shared community erode in this way has been heartbreaking.
How we got here
Before we go much further, we remind that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS movement explains itself as Palestinian led and asserts that Israel is a colonizing apartheid state that is committing genocide. The movement’s organizers, among many other things, urge banks, local councils, churches, pension funds, and universities to withdraw investments from the State of Israel and all Israeli and international companies that sustain what they view as Israeli apartheid.
The Corvallis City Council is poised to approve a draft resolution that tries to avoid saying it’s a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS resolution, though it clearly is exactly that.
The draft doesn’t directly identify the BDS movement or Israel, but it does singularly refer to Investigate.info as a place the City could find lists of companies to financially divest from. When you navigate to the site, their lists have titles like, Divesting for Palestinian Rights and Companies Profiting from Gaza Genocide. Their lists share many commonalities with BDS lists.
Last week we published an editorial that examined how Jewish people may view that resolution and our city generally if it were to be approved. In preparing that work, we learned the overwhelming majority of Jewish people, 80%, oppose the BDS movement. We also shared that most Jewish people view Israel as integral to their Jewishness, and that they view the BDS movement as antisemitic.
We also examined the positions, goals and assertions of the Palestinian BDS National Committee alongside all of that. And we measured those against definitions of antisemitism that come from a cross section of Jewish advocacy groups and think tanks. Definitions that are accepted globally.
We then associated ourselves with the view that the BDS movement is implicitly antisemitic.
We answer our critics
Many readers, horrified by what they’re seeing in Gaza, see BDS as their only option to advocate for a stop to it. But in twenty years of existence, has the BDS movement stopped or changed anything? No. They may have cost some companies some money, but that’s about it.
So, what can you, as an activist do?
Firstly, support peace organizations and progressive groups within Israel. Impacting how Israelis engage, and vote is a far more direct way to influence the decisions of their elected leaders. The whole country is smaller than New Jersey and their voter turnout is way higher than ours. And of late, those groups have been filling Israeli streets with protests and marches. Supporting those groups offers a far more direct path to real change.
Start like this, just google, “Who can you support in Israel for peace with the Palestinians,” and pick an organization that feels like a good fit. But do a little due diligence. You may also want to see if they’ve allied themselves with progressive Israeli candidates in the past.
Many of these organizations have members or partners that include like-minded Palestinians. You’ll want to support groups that won’t be seen as antisemitic. Avoid organizations that use the same terms and rationalizations as the BDS movement, those groups aren’t going to change anything.
Though this doesn’t need to be dealbreaker if you think differently, we at The Advocate would encourage you to seek groups that have opposed Netanyahu’s judicial ‘reforms.’
You can also support U.S. congressional candidates in swing states that would seek to stop or at least condition aid to Israel.
None of this is antisemitic, but BDS is. Many readers, however, expressed the idea that the BDS movement is simply about protest.
But protest almost always has a goal, and in the instance of the BDS movement, it would amount to the end of Israel. Omar Barghouti, a co-founder, and leader of the BDS movement once said, “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine… [only] a sellout Palestinian would accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” In a separate New York Times interview, when asked if the Jews can have a state of their own, Barghouti said, “Not in Palestine.” Barghouti has on countless occasions said that the whole of the modern state of Israel is on Palestinian land.
In 2013, The New York Daily News ran an op-ed from Barghouti. They also wrote their own response to his commentary, saying, “Barghouti aims in the short-term to undermine Israel’s moral legitimacy on the way to the long-term prize of securing rights for Palestinians that would effectively dismantle the Jewish state.”
They went on to say, “His dancing around this central point lets Barghouti verge on anti-Semitism while claiming respectability,” and they also said, “Skilled as a propagandist, he piles falsehood upon falsehood to present Israel as relentlessly oppressing the Palestinians in violation of human decency, and to hold Israel exclusively responsible for the ills afflicting them.”
For Barghouti, there is no two-state solution, only the elimination of Israel. As its first goal, the BDS website says, “An end to Israel’s occupation of all Arab lands and dismantling the illegal apartheid Wall.” And like we’ve shown you, Barghouti believes it is all Palestinian, or Arab land.
By the time you read their other two goals, you know you’re in for some double-speak. “Full equality for Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel; and the right of return for Palestinian refugees,” which roughly translated means, whatever Jews are remaining, they’ll be outnumbered.
Oh yeah, and about that apartheid wall. Prior to the attack of October 7, 2023, that barrier reduced suicide bombings within Israel by about 90%. But then, it is possible that the BDS movement is not so supportive of reduced violence as many of our readers would have hoped.
The New York Times reports that, “B.D.S. National Committee’s members, for example, include the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. The council includes several groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
So, can we really leave aside the BDS movement’s wish to, in fact, eliminate Israel wholly. Should we ignore Barghouti’s regular rants about Jewish Supremacy conspiracies and the way they underpin the BDS movement. Shall we just accept the BDS movement’s flagrant applications of double standards to the world’s only Jewish state that they do not apply to the Palestinians, or any other people or nation-state worldwide.
We think not. But even if you don’t see their dialectic and goals as straight-up antisemitism, the BDS movement has had two decades to make a difference for the Palestinian people; and failed utterly.
The Corvallis City Council needs to reject the draft resolution, or anything similar. There is no benefit. Its only impact will be to communicate to the majority of Jewish people that Corvallis is quite probably a systemically antisemitic town.
This current resolution is not happening in isolation. Over the years, we have covered local antisemitic hate groups, less than satisfactory prosecutions of them, and poor Holocaust education at our local schools. Recently, we learned that Oregon State University has, after years of promises, continued to schedule student welcoming events during the High Holidays.
Like we said last week, our dream would be for a more compassionate dialogue. Last year, when the Council was considering a peace resolution, it came out that both local Jewish and Muslim people were encountering racism, frequently and right here in our shared community.
Working through that could be healing, and less divisive and punitive, even if doing so would be harder and less certain than what the Council is presently considering. If the Council chooses that direction, we’re here to help.
Answers on other points
Religions and ethnicity: Some readers have seen this as a religious matter, rather than ethnic. But many Jewish folks choose to observe other religions or even none whatsoever; this makes them no less Jewish. Many Jews also observe Judaism, which is a religion. Observant Jews are no more Jewish than non-observant. Probably, we should have been explicit about that in our piece.
Critics or antisemites: Many readers equated our finding that the BDS movement is implicitly antisemitic as an assertion that to be critical of Israel is antisemitic. However, what we said was that criticism is NOT antisemitic, but that certain tropes absolutely are, and that the BDS movement has clearly crossed that line.
As we’ve shown in this editorial, they want to destroy the state of Israel. And it’s hard to calculate what’s more antisemitic than that.
Source shaming: A few readers were quite unhappy that we quoted the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, which has a mixed record for reliability, and a history that is for some folks, controversial. But we hadn’t used their quotes to establish facts. They have a good think tank operation, and we used their quotes to reflect on facts that we had already established earlier in the story. We stand behind that decision. If we become insistent on absolute purity, we’ll never be able to quote another Democratic or Republican party operative, ever.
Finally: We strongly suggest reading our last week’s editorial titled City Council may Redefine Corvallis for Jewish People, Should They? It’s a tough examination of the Israeli divestment, or BDS resolution, the City Council is considering. It’s also a deep dive into how Jewish people may start to view Corvallis if it passes, and how it squares with antisemitism experts.
Do you have a story for The Advocate? Email editor@corvallisadvocate.com