It has been remarked that New York City is the only American municipality with a foreign policy, and perhaps for that reason the mayoral candidate Andrew Yang mentioned his attitude toward the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS) in an article he wrote for a Jewish newspaper outlining his “vision” for the local Jewish community. Therein he pledged that if elected he would “push back against the BDS movement,” which, he added, is “rooted in anti-Semitic thought and history, hearkening back to fascist boycotts of Jewish businesses.” The statement drew outrage from the usual quarters. Stephen Norwood and Rafael Medoff defend it:
The best known “fascist boycott” against Jews was waged by the government of Nazi Germany, beginning with a one-day nationwide action, on April 1, 1933, shortly after Hitler’s rise to power. Throughout the Reich on that day, stormtroopers were stationed at entrances to Jewish stores and offices, and above the doors, they posted a yellow circle—the medieval symbol associating Jews with gold and prostitution. The boycott was intended to demonstrate that the Nazis could readily threaten Jews’ economic survival. In subsequent years, the Nazis avidly enforced local boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses across Germany.
Obviously, there are many differences between the anti-Jewish boycotts of the 1930s and the BDS campaigns of our own time. Yet we dare not ignore the parallels.
Today’s BDS advocates heatedly deny that they are fascists or anti-Semites. They claim they are “only” boycotting Israelis, not Jews. Likewise, advocates of “partial” BDS say they are boycotting “only” Israeli “settlers,” not residents of Israeli towns within the pre-1967 areas.
If that were true, the BDS movement would boycott Israeli Arabs as well as Israeli Jews. And the “partial boycotters” would target Israeli Arab residents of communities beyond the pre-1967 lines. They would also refrain from boycotting foreign-born Jewish “settlers” who are not Israeli citizens.
Of course, this is not the case.
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/andrew-yang-got-it-right-on-bds/