Legislatures in several states have passed, or are now considering, bills intended to combat the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS). Together with the movement’s failure to convince any American universities or major corporations to cease investing in Israel, does this suggest that the tide has turned against those wishing to wage economic warfare against the Jewish state? Ben Cohen warns that BDS will undoubtedly adopt new and perhaps more sinister tactics:

Unable to attack Israel directly, the BDSers will increasingly turn their sights on the majority of Jews around them. (To a great extent, this is what they have always done, as the primary harm that comes with their efforts has typically been felt by local Jews, and not the state of Israel.) On college campuses, for example, events showcasing Israel or involving Israeli participants will find themselves more vulnerable. Numerous incidents during the last decade, in South Africa and Europe as well as in the U.S., have demonstrated that there is a corps of BDS supporters with few qualms about violence.

It might even be the case that the BDSers will conveniently park their [professed] First Amendment commitments by trying to ban Jewish associations and societies unless these explicitly reject Zionism. For those who think that’s an improbable notion, well, it happened, in the British student movement during the 1970s. As Dave Rich argues in a superlative doctoral thesis on this under-analyzed episode of contemporary Jewish history, a general anti-fascist policy that “was intended to provide a practical tool for excluding racists and fascists from British campuses . . . came to be used to exclude Zionism.”

If this is, indeed, how the BDS movement twists and turns over the coming years, we shouldn’t simply assume that its appeal will fade as it becomes more transparently anti-Semitic. As to the really interesting question—whether those progressives who have made voguish anti-Zionism a part of their worldview will follow the BDS movement along this particular path—I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.