Two weeks ago, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, of all days, KCL Action Palestine – a student campaign group at the prestigious London university King's College – held an anti-Israeli event with the participation of BDS founder Omar Barghouti.
The event was called "Building a United Anti-Racism Front." When Jewish students protested against the event's timing, its organizers claimed they had not noticed that its date coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day. On the other hand, when a member of the audience voiced the opinion that "It is right to hold the event on this day, since the Palestinians are the second victims of the Holocaust," no one objected, including the organizers.
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Little wonder, since this is exactly the message the BDS Movement wishes to convey: That propaganda employing the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in support of the Palestinian cause is legitimate.
"Why is Boris Johnson's new government so intent on fighting the BDS struggle for Palestinian rights?" asked Barghouti, and went on to explain that "Johnson is following not only in Trump's footsteps but in those of Margaret Thatcher, who, in 1988, prohibited the boycott of South Africa. While Israel is becoming a model for extremist right-wing, authoritarian, and xenophobic leaders worldwide, BDS is gaining ground in a growing international progressive campaign for justice and against fascism, xenophobia, and rampant neoliberalism."
Until recently, a propaganda event of this sort would have taken place without anyone protesting or even considering to do so.
Britain is one of the major outposts of the movement to delegitimize Israel. Its universities have long been seen as "occupied territory" in the hands of pro-Palestinian activists who did as they liked, including demonstrations of hostility toward Jewish students. The situation became so dire that Jewish youth stopped applying to certain universities due to recurrent anti-Semitic harassment.
However, the tide is now turning against BDS: more and more public and other institutions in Britain are endorsing the working definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which asserts that anti-Semitism is prejudice directed specifically against Jews.
Jeremy Corbyn's pro-BDS Labour government lost the elections, and many of its members have made a clear stance against the anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian legacy of Corbyn and his supporters. Concurrently, Johnson's conservative government has expressed its commitment to fighting BDS.
Many of the problems plaguing the BDS movement in Britain today involve campaigns by Jewish students at various universities. These young Jews have managed to shake off their passivity and have begun fighting back. One such student is 21-year-old Esther Walker from the Jewish Students' Association at King's College, whom I met, together with other activists, at the London offices of the World Zionist Organization – the headquarters of the new group.
"Before Barghouti's appearance," says Esther, "we sent a letter to the university board, in which we expressed our concern that the speech would incite the audience to hostile action. The response was that one could not judge a person before he speaks, but rather based on the things he says.
"In other words, even a well-known Holocaust denier can deliver a speech on campus. We decided to be present at the event in order to challenge Barghouti and the other speakers. We were greeted with a great deal of hostility, including on the part of radical left-wing Jewish activists. I would have been scared to go alone, but we were a group of 20 people.
"People yelled at us, calling us 'racists.' One of the panel members called us 'the Israeli embassy delegation.' We were barely allowed to speak. They compared Israel with the Nazis. After the event we filed another complaint with the university board, detailing all of the anti-Semitic statements voiced there. The response we received was, 'We do not consider this anti-Semitism, different opinions were expressed and respected.' This response shows us, as students, how seriously the university takes the subject of anti-Semitism. But we won't back down. The issue is still under investigation. Bristol University refused to accept the working definition of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic lectures and declarations were allowed there. Jewish students and organizations kept up the pressure, and about two months ago the university endorsed the definition."
Approaching Zionism
Aryeh Miller, CEO of the Union of Jewish Students in Britain, adds: "Lately we have witnessed a change in the activities of the delegitimization movement on university campuses. They have moved away from boycott slogans and have instead begun campaigning for divestment: Stopping the sale and purchase of weapons, sanctions on economic relations with Israel, and so on, as well as promoting the idea that Israel is an apartheid state. But the number of campuses organizing 'Israeli apartheid weeks' has decreased since the government advised university boards to avoid supporting such initiatives and allowing their implementation.
Furthermore, the number of active BDS organizations at campuses has declined. This has to do, among other things, with the shift of focus among students towards support for the 'Corbyn project' and his election as prime minister, as well as the lack of recent military confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians.
"The level of hostility towards Israel on campuses has also declined, as a result of the hundreds of pro-Israeli events that we organize annually. Out of 300 events held last year, disturbances occurred only in ten. True, demonstrations by Jewish students against anti-Israeli events do not change the positions of the other side. However the students themselves feel better by being able to hold their ground and wave the Israeli flag without fear."
"Following Johnson's victory we have seen a significant decrease in the number of activists of 'Jewish Voice for Labour,' the group that supported Corbyn unconditionally in every confrontation regarding the working definition of anti-Semitism, the adoption of which he repeatedly postponed," says 19-year-old Harry Markham, National Director of Herut UK.
Markham pinpoints the main problem of the struggle against delegitimization within the Jewish community: "Our goal is to attract young Jews back to Zionism. In today's British reality, there is a difference between being pro-Israeli and being Zionist.
"Zionism has become a dirty word. There are many students, including non-Jews, who are prepared to support Israel as a democratic and liberal state, but are unwilling to identify with the Zionist idea. For BDS there is no difference between the settlements in Judea and Samaria and Tel Aviv. Their position is that Jews have no right to any part of the land. In a poll held recently among Jews in Britain, 93% said that Israel holds central importance for them, but only 53% said they were Zionist. That gap is alarming, and we should try to understand where we've failed. People can't be recruited to pro-Israeli action without knowing about Zionism and understanding it."
