BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is a movement which seeks to dismantle the Israeli state, in the same way that boycotting South Africa eventually led to the end of apartheid. It is based on the (obviuosly) false premise that Israel practices apartheid.
I have a lot to say about BDS in general, but I wanted to comment now on a fairly good post about Mattisyahu being disinvited from Spain's Rototom Sunsplash music festival (and subsequently being reinvited).
Vox Posts discusses the background of BDS and the reasons why Mattisyahu was booted from the program. He points out that in this case BDS has overstepped the mark, because BDS claims to be only anti-Israel (and anti-Zionist) but not anti-semitic. However Mattisyahu was singled out and kicked off the program solely because he was Jewish (he is not Israeli, does not affect Israeli policy in any way, and has more or less tried to keep out of politics and focus on his music).
He writes:
The controversy speaks to a much bigger fight over the growing international campaign to boycott Israel, and if that campaign can overcome the extremists in its ranks — or whether it even wants to.
He ends the article with the following:
Much of the support for BDS comes from anger at Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank and its policies toward Gaza. "The main reason for [BDS's] continued growth ... is the failure to end the occupation that began in 1967 and achieve Palestinian national liberation and sovereignty," Matt Duss, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said in recent congressional testimony.
Yet BDS has also attracted members who want to do more than just stop Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its policies toward Gaza. While the movement takes no official position on how to end the Israel-Palestine, one of its co-founders, Omar Barghouti, has called for unifying them into a single state, which would mean dissolving Israel as a Jewish state. This has fed suspicions that at least some proponents of BDS do not see it as just a means to pressure Israel to change its policies, but a means to ending Israel itself.
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That said, it would of course be wrong and unfair to judge an entire movement by the policy positions of a few of its members, or to judge all of BDS based on the statements of a few proponents in a protest. And indeed, many BDS proponents stress their support for a two-state solution that preserves Israeli statehood and protects Israeli interests.
In this he is partially correct and yet totally wrong. Unfortunately it is true that many of the supporters of BDS want Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders and allow for the creation of a Palestinian State on the West Bank. They believe in Two States for Two People. This is an admirable goal (regardless of whether you believe it is achievable in the current political environment). And that is the kind of people that BDS wants to attact to its protests.
However that was never the goal of BDS. From the outset Omar Barghouti (who is described as one of the co-founders, but he also serves as the head of BDS and has done so since its inception) has seen BDS as a mechanism for destroying the Israel as a Jewish State. He has stated so on many occasions. The "Occupation" that BDS seeks to end is not that of the West Bank, but of the entire State of Israel (pre 1948). The initial call for BDS is signed by 170 organisations and the first on that list is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. This is the group listed first on the current body of BNC, the Palestinian BDS National Committee.
This Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine is made up of many groups: Fatah, Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, PPP, FIDA, PPSF, PLF, PIJ, ALF, PAF, PFLP, Islamic National Salvation Party and Popular Liberation War Pioneers. I know that this sounds like something out of Monty Python's "Life of Brian", but in fact it is a list which includes several terrorist organisations (on the US terror list) and the main thing that almost all of these groups share is their desire for the destruction of Israel. Conveniently, this committee is led by Marwan Barghouti, a cousin of Omar. BDS is another tool in their war against Israel.
Since most people in the west do not support terror, nor do they wish for the desctruction of the State of Israel, BDS couch their language in terms of human rights (blatantly lying about the facts). Unfortunately, many well meaning individuals end up supporting BDS, but if they knew what it really stands for they would oppose it bitterly.
It is not "some proponents of BDS" who see it as a means to end Israel itself. That is the reson d'etre of BDS. If you don't believe me, google it yourself. Look up who supports BDS and what they have said about Israel. Do your research before judging them favourably.
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