With support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement cresting at unprecedented levels in the United States, those who value Israel continuing as a Jewish state should have no illusions with respect to that movement's goals. The normalization of BDS has been gradual but reached an inflection point with the Gaza war. The movement went from being supported in campus newspaper editorials to wide ranging and ever growing academic, artistic and athletic boycotts. These actions have further expanded to economic and weapons boycotts.
The goals of BDS, in addition to seeking an end to the "occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall", are often cloaked in terms of either support for an undefined Palestinian liberation or Palestinian’s inalienable rights such as equality and an inclusive democracy that celebrates diversity. Some who are even sympathetic to Israel's right to exist rationalize their endorsement of BDS as a vehicle to condemn the Israeli government rather than support for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. The latter, however, is the fundamental goal of BDS as stated by one of its founders, Omar Barghouti, who said: "Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine." Ironically, if Israel were to become an Arab majority state and provide for the same political rights as other states in the region, the Arabs in what is now Israel would no longer be able to vote freely.
The opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is the ideological progeny of the long discredited UN resolution proclaiming that Zionism is racism. The connection is reflected in UN sponsored reports that identify Israel as an apartheid state (without being solely limited to policies in the West Bank and Gaza). As stated by the American political scientist Virginia Tilley in an article published by the Arab Center in Washington DC , "[s]ince the only rationale for two states in the cramped territory of Mandate Palestine is to preserve apartheid in one of them (that is Israel as Jewish state, in its present institutional configuration as a system of domination over Palestinians), a two state solution makes no sense." Similarly , Barghouti has stated that "[a] Jewish state in Palestine in any shape or form...perpetuate[s] a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically."
The vehicle of BDS for the elimination of a "Jewish state in any part of Palestine" is the stated goal of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to the 1967 and even 1948 lands. As Barghouti has said, "if the refugees return, you would not have a two state solution. Like one Palestinian commentator said, "you would have a Palestine next to a Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to an Israel.""
The prospect of Jews being a minority in a Palestinian state would present risks ranging from the expulsion and confiscation of property that took place in Arab countries in the fifties and sixties to an October 7 solution to the Jewish question. One would be dangerously naive to believe that a Jewish minority in a Palestinian state would, as contended by BDS activists, be "respected and protected". Moreover, a Jewish minority in a state called Israel would undermine the entire rationale for Jews to have some country which is theirs, which was to establish the one country in the world where Jews could avoid prejudice and persecution from being a minority. As stated by Hannah Arendt, "a people can be a minority somewhere only if they are a majority elsewhere."
The right of return is not a throwaway issue in a larger Palestinian-Israeli dispute but rather underlies every failed proposal to separate the Jews and the Palestinians. The right of return is interlocked with the repeated Arab rejection of a Jewish state with an Arab minority. This underlied the Arab's rejection of the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan of the British mandate, the 1947 UN partition plan, and the Oslo accords. With the latter, the unresolved issue of the right of return was a key reason that the Oslo accords foundered. Similarly, the rejection of a Jewish state fuels the battle cry of “from the river to the sea.” To achieve this call to action, BDS's weapon delivery system is the right of return. A demographic Trojan horse.
The acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state is foundational to peace in the region because the rationale for Israel's existence is inseparable from it being a Jewish state. There is no Israel without Zionism and there is no Zionism without Israel. The existential implications of the BDS view of Israel’s future was recognized by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, " It's clear to me that one can't be Jewish without Israel. Religious or non-religious, Zionist or non-Zionist, Ashkenazi or Sephardic--all these will not exist without Israel."
John G. Finley is the Chief Legal Officer for Blackstone Group
