Every year or so, I’ll notice a fight breaking out in the Jewish press regarding whether or not we are winning or losing the fight against BDS. Most recently, the UK’s columnist Liron Velleman and US Commentary contributor Jonathan Tobin talked about the decrease in Israel Apartheid Week activities in the US and abroad, as […]
Tag Archives | #BDSFail
Winning and Losing
A key to victory in a long-game war is to never never mimic our enemies by mistaking fleeting (never mind trivial or false) “wins” as genuine successes.
BDS Lessons Learned – Paradoxes
This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Lessons Learned
The final major lesson I learned from this four-year research and writing exercise related to BDS is easily the most paradoxical one. It starts with an understanding of just how massively the deck has been stacked against the Jewish state in its struggle for survival. As Ruth Wisse has pointed out, the current war against […]
BDSFail at 12 – Continued
It looks like the whole #BDSFail meme is starting to affect the Dear Leaders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions “movement” who just published a piece of extended bombast even more longwinded than my usual postings entitled “BDS at 7 – Celebrating, reflecting and further misleading mainstreaming” (damn keyboard’s sticking). Before subjecting their manifesto of alleged success to some humble critiquing, it’s […]
BDSFail at 12 – Continued
This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series BDSFail
When we left our review of the BDS “movement’s” self-declaration of success, I had just gotten to the subject of ambiguity. Specifically, I was curious why a political project that can list so many large financial and investment firms as firmly in the BDS camp can’t seem to produce statements (at least ones not written in Norwegian) […]
BDSFail at 12
This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series BDSFail
When we left our review of the BDS “movement’s” self-declaration of success, I had just gotten to the subject of ambiguity. Specifically, I was curious why a political project that can list so many large financial and investment firms as firmly in the BDS camp can’t seem to produce statements (at least ones not written in Norwegian) […]
TIAA-CREF Hoax – Clarification
After watching the Presbyterians vote down divestment another 3-4 times on Friday (and seeing them boo someone trying to continue to drag it back on the agenda), I decided I could take a couple of days off before wrapping up the PCUSA story. But before that, it’s time to keep a promise I made before the […]
PCUSA Divestment – Results
I understand that we can’t count on anything until the final gavel sounds at the Presbyterian 2012 GA on Saturday, but assuming last night’s victory holds, there are a few important lessons to be drawn from this most-recent continuation of the BDS movement’s decade-plus-long losing streak. First off, we need to keep in mind that this […]
PCUSA Divestment – This Just In
I’m kind of stunned to be typing these words, but with regard to this year’s Presbyterian General Assembly (drum roll please): BDS Loses Again! As many of you know, I’ve been fairly resigned to the likelihood that the Presbyterians would do to themselves what they did in 2004 and drag the denomination into another two years […]
Tantrum
It’s astounding how rapidly the mask comes off the minute the divestment brigade doesn’t get what it wants. For weeks, the BDSers invested countless hours into writing, phoning and pressing the flesh with delegates to the soon-to-be-finished 2012 Methodist General Conference, quoting scripture, telling teary (and context-free) tales of Arab suffering, and generally playing their traditional […]
The Silent S
Two recent BDS stories, which have gotten categorized in the Twitosphere around the ever-popular hashtag #BDSFail, highlight a theme discussed a while back on the challenges facing those advocating for the “S” of BDS: Sanctions. Boycotts can be done by individuals, although in the case of BDS the goal is to get sellers to boycott […]