The right is mobilising to outlaw BDS campaigns
JVL Introduction
We were warned that introducing legislation to outlaw support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights would be the thin edge of the wedge.
So it is proving in the US, as Alex Kane makes clear in this analysis in Jewish Currents.
Campaigns to divest from fossil fuels, gun companies or industrial-scale agriculture companies are being attacked with proposed legislation in a number of southern States, showing the widening assault on social movements and the need for coordination among progressive activists who focus on different struggles.
Kane cites Lara Friedman, of the Foundation for Middle East Peace: “They’ve taken the anti-BDS template and pasted into it literally every industry that is important politically or economically to the state.”
Where the US leads, Europe is unlikely to be far behind
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Mon 4 Apr 2022. Read the original here.
What the Fossil Fuel Industry Learned from Anti-BDS Laws
Attacks on Israel’s critics have become the template for efforts to suppress climate activism, gun control advocacy, and other progressive movements.
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What an indictment of human beings, it goes to show just how thoroughly we can be manipulated and over time even believe it is right to carry out heinous crimes, all incredibly sad.
The JVL headline to this seems a bit misleading, since most people would understand “BDS campaigns” as referring specifically to campaigning about Israel-Palestine. In any case campaigns against fossil fuel companies typically involve boycotts and/or divestment, but “sanctions” are hardly relevant.
On the whole however this development is probably good news for the BDS campaign in the U.S., since similar attempted legislative attacks on other progressive campaigns only serve to highlight the reactionary and repressive commonalities of such assaults on freedom of expression.
Ever since I learned about the IHRA definition in late 2016, I could see it had ramifications for free speech going far beyond free speech on Israel, though I did not see that it could help the US gun-lobby. I immediately raised the alarm among Lib Dem colleagues but to no effect. The centre and centre-left of British politics are full of people who fool themselves that they will create a just society by taking the road of least resistance, appeasing bullies, and playing “Progressive except of Palestine” (PEP). Meanwhile the non-Zionist left and particularly JVL, has made a brave stand against the IHRA. Unfortunately however, people of the left sometimes (not always), portray the malicious and manipulative use of this document as simply “an attack on socialism” or Jeremy Corbyn. NO, NO, NO, this cancer is an attack on all decent human beings, and it is time we came together to oppose it, in solidarity. That’s why I and five others came together to form CAMPAIN, a non-partisan organisation formed to push back against serious misinformation and “misrepresentation in Public Affairs, Information and the News”. Please go to http://WWW.CAMPAIN.ORG, and JOIN US.
Use of a-bds legislation in this way ia a breaking of the liberal social contract ( Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, etc. ) between citizens and government for the latter to protect their rights – human , individual, and social. Included freedom of speech, expression, and association.