In recent years, the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement has positioned itself as a leading voice in a campaign to oppose what it characterizes as Israeli “oppression of Palestinians.”

While BDS organizers refer to their effort as “a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches, and grassroots movements across the world,” beneath the surface, the real nature of the BDS movement is much more nefarious.

The BDS campaign makes claims such as that Israel is guilty of “occupying and colonizing Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes.”

While these allegations are either false or highly misleading, the major flaw in the BDS movement is not merely that their criticisms of Israel are illegitimate, but that the BDS movement seeks to delegitimize Israel’s entire right to exist as a Jewish State, demonize Israel’s very character, and apply double standards that it would not apply anywhere else.

These three actions on the part of BDS activists (Delegitimize, Demonize, Double Standards) are what famed human rights activist Natan Sharansky “3D test,” to help separate legitimate criticism of Israel from overt antisemitism.

Delegitimization: According to the BDS movement and its leading activists, Israel has no right to exist. It was formed through “ethnic cleansing,” and exists only to “drive as many of the indigenous Palestinian population from the land as it can.”

It is therefore unsurprising that the BDS movement gives no airtime to the Jewish People’s three thousand years of history in the Land of Israel, their ancestral homeland, nor to the extensive legal rights that Israel possesses to the land.

In the words of As’ad Abu Khalil, a professor of political science at California State University and a prominent member of the BDS movement, “there should not be any equivocation on the subject. Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.” Ahmed Moor, a pro-BDS author, has stated unequivocally that “BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state…Ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish state itself.”

Demonization: The BDS movement and its senior activists do more than critique Israeli government policy; they regularly describe the Jewish State in terms reminiscent of Nazi Germany, including accusations that Israel commits genocide against the Palestinians. The BDS movement, on its official website, claims Israel is based on “racist ideology of late 19th century European colonialism.” By redefining Zionism into a racist colonialist effort, BDS activists are completely erasing both ancient Jewish ties to Israel, but also to the true meaning of Zionism, ie, the Jewish campaign for self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

Double Standards: While critiquing Israel is an entirely valid exercise, BDS activists regularly hold Israel to a standard that is rarely, if ever, applied to other countries, in particular other states in the Middle East.

For instance, during the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001, one of the most influential documents supported by BDS activists was created, which called for “the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links” between the world and Israel. To demand complete global opposition to Israel – a liberal, democratic state which provides equal rights to all its citizens, regardless of race, religion, or gender – while remaining silent on brutal dictatorships such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, is one of the most cogent examples of how the BDS movement is remarkably selective when it comes to delivering opprobrium.

While BDS activists claim their movement is a grassroots effort created out of a moral opposition to Israel’s alleged crimes, the truth could not be more different. The BDS campaign against Israel is little more than one of delegitimization and demonization, where Israel’s existence is denied, where three millennia of Jewish history are all but erased, and where the world’s only Jewish State is rewritten, not as a vibrant bastion of freedom, but as a murderous, apartheid-like regime hell-bent on carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The fabricated disinformation peddled by the BDS movement, despite its absurdity, has nevertheless continued to spread, on college and university campuses, to anti-Israel protests, and even into the halls of the United Nations.

It is therefore imperative that the BDS campaign against Israel be unmasked for what it is: an antisemitic effort aimed not at delivering justice for Palestinians, but at demonizing the world’s only Jewish State based on falsehoods.

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