This article analyses the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. First, it adumbrates the emergence and emphases of the BDS campaign. Then, it explains the BDS tactics, particularly the boycott measure. Next, it highlights some of the contradictions surrounding the campaign. The article closes by identifying the campaign’s power and promise in its transgression of limits of the discourse of Palestinian-Israeli politics. More specifically, the campaign is powerful because it is a networked contestation of the discursive rules that require a symmetry be posited between Palestinians and Israel, Israel be represented as sui generis, and the relationship be temporally delimited to 1967.
HijabNadia, ‘Reversing defeat through non-violent power’, Contemporary Arab Affairs (Vol 2, no. 4, 2009), p. 569.
2.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Our South Africa moment has arrived’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, ed. BarghoutiOmar (Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books, 2011), pp. 191–204.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Introduction’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit., p. 17.
9.
AbunimahAli, ‘Finkelstein, BDS and the destruction of Israel’, op. cit.
10.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Organizing for self-determination, ethical de-Zionization and resisting apartheid’, Contemporary Arab Affairs (Vol. 2, no. 4, 2009), p. 585.
11.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Introduction’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
12.
FarsakhLeila, ‘The political economy of Israeli occupation: what is colonial about it?’, The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies (Vol. 8, Spring2008).
13.
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, ‘PACBI guidelines for the international academic boycott of Israel (Revised August 2010)’ (1 October 2009), available at: http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1108
14.
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, ‘Palestinian BDS National Committee marks five years of boycotts, divestment and sanctions’ (9 July 2010), available at: http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1305
WeissMartin A., ‘Arab League boycott of Israel’, Congressional Research Service: report for Congress (Library of Congress, Order Code RS22424, 19 April 2006), p. 4, available at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22424.pdf
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, ‘PACBI guidelines for the international academic boycott of Israel (Revised August 2010)’ (1 October 2009), available at: http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1108
25.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Academic boycott: moral responsibility and the struggle against colonial oppression’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
26.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Freedom versus “academic freedom”: debating the British academic boycott’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
NussbaumMarthaAbedMohammed, ‘Can (Israeli) academic boycotts be justified?’, Public Policy Research (Vol. 14, no. 4, December 2007–February 2008), p. 221.
29.
RoseHilaryRoseSteven, ‘Israel, Europe and the academic boycott’, Race & Class (Vol. 50, no. 1, 2008), p. 8.
30.
‘PACBI guidelines for the academic boycott of Israel’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
31.
RoseHilaryRoseSteven, ‘Israel, Europe and the academic boycott’, Race & Class, op. cit.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Introduction’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
37.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Why BDS?’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
38.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘Leadership, reference, and the role of Israeli anticolonialists: Omar Barghouti interviewed by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
39.
ErakatNoura, ‘BDS in the USA, 2001-2010’, Middle East Research and Information Project op. cit.
40.
HijabNadia, ‘Reversing defeat through non-violent power’, Contemporary Arab Affairs (Vol. 2, no. 4, 2009), p. 571.
41.
ErakatNoura, ‘BDS in the USA, 2001-2010’, Middle East Research and Information Project (40, 255, 2010), op. cit.
42.
GioraRachel, ‘Milestones in the history of the Israeli BDS movement: A brief chronology’, op. cit.
43.
BakanAbigail B.Abu-LabanYasmeen, ‘Palestinian resistance and international solidarity: the BDS campaign’, Race & Class (Vol. 50, no. 1, 2009), p. 29.
44.
ErakatNoura, ‘BDS in the USA, 2001-2010’, Middle East Research and Information Project, op. cit.
45.
AbunimahAli, ‘Finkelstein, BDS and the destruction of Israel’, Al Jazeera, op. cit.
46.
BarghoutiOmar, ‘“Boycotts Work”: Omar Barghouti interviewed by Ali Mustafa’, in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: the global struggle for Palestinian rights, op. cit.
47.
AlmeghariRami, ‘Chomsky in Gaza: academic boycott “will strengthen support for Israel”’, op. cit.
Says Barghouti incredulously: ‘Even committed “leftists” often grieve over the loss of Israel’s “moral superiority” after occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, as if prior to that Israel were civil, legitimate and law-abiding as Finland!’ BarghoutiOmar, ‘The Case for boycotting Israel’, Counterpunch (22 December 2004), available at: http://www.counterpunch.org/barghouti12222004.html
54.
DavisUri, Apartheid Israel: possibilities for the struggle within (London, Zed Books, 2003), p. 95.
55.
Ibid.
56.
‘TWP – Interview with Ilan Pappe’, podcast, Palcast (11 September 2009).
57.
‘An Israeli in Palestine: resisting dispossession’ podcast, Palcast (4 September 2009). Emphasis in original.
