In July and August 2014, Israel’s recent war with Hamas in Gaza created a massive upswing in worldwide Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activity. Economic boycotts of Israel were the most obvious, together with massive anti-Israel, anti-Semitic demonstrations in the streets of cities around the world, but impacts were also felt in politics and academia.
Initial indications also suggest it will be an exceptionally toxic year for BDS activity, especially in academia, and will include increased anti-Semitic violence and threats.
BDS in academia had been on a slower track thanks to the summer recess but the Gaza war has already inspired a number of troubling developments that portend a chaotic, radical school year.
Of direct relevance to students was an incident at Temple University where a Jewish student was verbally and physically attacked by an individual associated with Students for Justice in Palestine. The group later issued an apology, claiming the attack was not made by one of its members. Temple University claims to be investigating the incident.
BDS calls intensified in various academic settings. The executive committee of the American Studies Association (ASA), which in late 2013 endorsed BDS, called for the US to end support for Israel. At the same time, Penn State Harrisburg had withdrawn from the ASA over its anti-Israel stance. BDS resolutions were also pushed by student groups in South Africa, Britain, and by a unionized group of graduate students in the US. The latter move met with public condemnations from groups opposed to BDS.
A group of over a hundred Middle East specialists signed a letter calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions that was published on the Arab Studies Institute web site. The letter endorses the Palestinian “right of return” and thus the destruction of Israel. Signers include numerous well-known BDS supporters. Another petition by a group calling itself “Historians against the War” also accused Israel of “war crimes” and demanded the US withdraw support. The group was originally formed in 2003 in opposition to US involvement in Iraq but largely went into abeyance until this year. Observers have noted the historians’ stance objectively supports Hamas.
Pronouncements attempting to appeal to the conscience of academics supportive of the BDS movement often also depict Israel as a Nazi-like state. These views—once labeled extreme—have become increasingly mainstream as academics call for Israel’s destruction, not by might or power but by bad analogies and misguided ideas.
A careful look at the BDS movement and its methodology shows not legitimate criticism but a movement that is racist and anti-Semitic. Why? Because BDS clearly targets Israel and does not promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Its stated goals vary but all include the “right of return” for Palestinian “refugees.” The effort is cloaked to give the impression that ending specific Israeli policies, such as the “occupation” or “apartheid,” would also end efforts to ostracize Israel and would result in peace for the region. Yet their maximalist demand —the flood of Palestinian refugees, which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state—is carefully hidden.
Overall, the BDS campaign is contrary to the search for peace, since it represents a form of misguided economic warfare. It is directly in opposition to decades of agreements between Israeli and Arab Palestinians, in which both sides pledged to negotiate a peaceful settlement and a commitment to a two state solution, but only Israel has repeatedly made concessions for peace. Additionally, by focusing exclusively and obsessively on Israel, and not on many other countries in the world where actual human and civil rights abuses exist, the actions of those supporting the BDS campaign are, according to former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, “anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent.”
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) urges those committed to peace and justice for the people of a region which has had too much war and violence to join with us in rejecting the politics of hatred that the BDS movement represents and urges all intuitions of higher education to ensure that none of its academic units sponsors this racist, counter-productive campaign in the form of panels, symposia, conferences, or other school-sponsored events that politicize scholarship and are intellectually biased against Israel.
Therefore, SPME condemns all efforts to use academia to promote boycotts, divestiture, and sanctions against Israel, including the promotion by student governments of resolutions calling for divestiture, as they represent an abandonment of scholarly principles, a degradation of campus civility, and a violation of the precepts of unbiased, rational academic inquiry.
SPME
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) is not-for-profit [501 (C) (3)], grass-roots community of scholars who have united to promote honest, fact-based, and civil discourse, especially in regard to Middle East issues. We believe that ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, including anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, have no place in our institutions, disciplines, and communities. We employ academic means to address these issues.
