March 15 marks the beginning of this year’s Israel Apartheid Week, during which campus groups around the world hold rallies and events for the purpose of defaming the Jewish state and mustering support for the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction it (BDS). Richard Kemp comments:
BDS’s leaders trumpet their claim to support “freedom, justice, and equality” for the Palestinian people. They are less open about their desire to eradicate the Jewish state for fear they would lose backing from individuals and organizations that have a genuine desire to improve the lives of Palestinians but do not want to eliminate a whole country and its Jewish citizens.
I have discussed all this with students brandishing BDS placards while squawking cliché-ridden slogans during Israel Apartheid Week on various campuses, including New York University and the University of Bristol. . . . All the protesters I met denied that they thought Israel should be destroyed or that they supported violence. Young and impressionable men and women, whose main attention is on studying for their degrees, have been duped by . . . . BDS rabble-rousers into thinking they were demonstrating in support of a two-state solution to be achieved by peaceful means.
The real truth about the global BDS movement is understood by very few. . . . In sixteen years, BDS has not laid a glove on Israel, achieving none of their main objectives. Despite endless efforts to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish state, they have had zero effect on its economy, politics or culture.
That stark and indisputable reality points to their genuine but unspoken purpose. The leaders of the BDS movement are far from stupid. They know from bitter experience that they cannot and will never end the Jewish state economically and are incapable of taking on the might of the Israeli military. Instead, their campaign is all about hounding Jews wherever they can find them, to punish Jews around the world for the existence of the Jewish state and undermine support for Israel among Jews as well as non-Jews.
Read more on Gatestone: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17091/bds-support