Criticism
A number of analysts, journalists, and policy groups have argued that the BDS movement promotes the delegitimization of Israel. In The Jerusalem Post, Gil Troy argues that the BDS movement does not target Israel's policies, but rather targets Israel's legitimacy. Similarly, The Reut Institute, an influential Israeli think tank, argued that by what they perceive as singling out Israel and applying double standards, the BDS movement delegitimizes Israel. These groups and individuals argue that regardless of whether or not the participants in boycotts seek to threaten Israel's legitimacy, the movement itself and the organizers behind it have the same goal: isolate Israel like South Africa. Although BDS has tried to finesse the question of whether the movement is seeking a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many of its leaders have gone on the record as seeking this, including Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BDS movement. Furthermore, many have gone as far as to call for the complete destruction of the Jewish state, including Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, who wrote in Al-Akhbar that he agrees that "the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel" and that "Israel will have to submit to the will of the Palestinians."
Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz asserted that the BDS movement abets terrorism. "People who advocate boycotts and divestiture will literally have blood on their hands," he said. "They encourage terrorism and discourage the laying down of arms."
Martin Raffel, who oversees the Israel Action Network, argued in March 2011 that Israel's supporters can respectfully debate artists who choose to boycott the West Bank town of Ariel, but that "not recognizing Israel as a Jewish democratic state is a completely different story".
The Economist contends that the boycott is "flimsy" and ineffective, that "blaming Israel alone for the impasse in the occupied territories will continue to strike many outsiders as unfair," and points out that the Palestinian leadership does not support the boycott.
The director of communications for the New Israel Fund wrote in March 2012 that the BDS movement "has accomplished very little" and that it should be relegated "to the trash-heap of failed strategies, where it belongs". Naftali Balanson, writing a response, says "Even if BDS messaging were improved and there was no backlash among 'besieged' Israelis, BDS would still be immoral and inherently wrong."
Read more about this topic: Boycott, Divestment And Sanctions
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)