The effect on the BDS movement of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader remains to be seen. Corbyn has in the past backed certain boycotts of Israel, is himself an ally of the sworn enemies of the country, is supported by precisely the radical constituency of British politics that populates the BDS movement, and has appointed the Guardian writer Seumas Milne, who has argued that Israel has no right to defend itself, as Labour’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. Last November, Labour’s national executive decided to boycott G4S over the company’s connections to Israel.
On the one hand, an explicit endorsement of BDS by the Leader of the Opposition will surely give the movement a boost; on the other hand, if Corbyn fails to shake the perception that he adheres to, in David Cameron’s words, a “terrorist-sympathising and Britain-hating” ideology, any support he lends to BDS may do little more than underscore just how extreme and peripheral the movement is. Moreover, with the West’s newest liberal leader, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, having declared his opposition to boycotts of Israel, any endorsement of BDS by Corbyn would place him at the extreme radical end of the liberal spectrum on this issue as well as on so many others.
The concern over BDS should be widely shared, because the threat it poses is not just to the Jewish community and to Anglo-Israeli relations but to all Britons, to the security of the UK and to the Western world in general. Last autumn, Cameron named and shamed four universities as hotbeds of radicalisation and Islamic State recruitment. It is no coincidence that student bodies at each had endorsed BDS; anti-Semitism and the boycott of Israel are animated by the same hatred as Islamist extremism. The IS attack on Paris in November is another example. The Bataclan Theatre, where the terrorists murdered most of their victims, had for years been a target of BDS protests because the venue’s longtime owners – two Jewish brothers – had hosted many pro-Israel and Jewish events there. The ire of the boycotters was expressed not just in protests but also in threats of violence and at least two abortive terrorist attacks, including one by al-Qaeda. (The band performing on the night of the attack had also recently played in Israel, ignoring BDS demands not to do so.) The Bataclan’s Jewish owners had, as it happens, sold the theatre in September, as one of the brothers was moving to Israel, part of a wave of French-Jewish emigrants fleeing the country. France is a byword for anti-Semitism in Europe, and now it has also become practically a warzone, with armed soldiers visible across its capital as a desperate measure to salvage the security and comfort on which the West is built. BDS may begin with the Jews, but the radicalisation that fuels it has bigger ambitions.
The campaign to boycott Israel is just part of the anti-British, anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideology that pervades many of our colleges, religious institutions and charities and even some trade unions, and the government has recognised this. In announcing the BDS ban at the Conservative party conference, at the same time as he was condemning Corbyn and his allies as radical, terrorist-sympathising and Britain-hating, the Prime Minister was signalling that he understood the context in which BDS thrives and the threat it poses to us all. His intention is to consign it to oblivion, where it belongs.
On the one hand, an explicit endorsement of BDS by the Leader of the Opposition will surely give the movement a boost; on the other hand, if Corbyn fails to shake the perception that he adheres to, in David Cameron’s words, a “terrorist-sympathising and Britain-hating” ideology, any support he lends to BDS may do little more than underscore just how extreme and peripheral the movement is. Moreover, with the West’s newest liberal leader, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, having declared his opposition to boycotts of Israel, any endorsement of BDS by Corbyn would place him at the extreme radical end of the liberal spectrum on this issue as well as on so many others.
The concern over BDS should be widely shared, because the threat it poses is not just to the Jewish community and to Anglo-Israeli relations but to all Britons, to the security of the UK and to the Western world in general. Last autumn, Cameron named and shamed four universities as hotbeds of radicalisation and Islamic State recruitment. It is no coincidence that student bodies at each had endorsed BDS; anti-Semitism and the boycott of Israel are animated by the same hatred as Islamist extremism. The IS attack on Paris in November is another example. The Bataclan Theatre, where the terrorists murdered most of their victims, had for years been a target of BDS protests because the venue’s longtime owners – two Jewish brothers – had hosted many pro-Israel and Jewish events there. The ire of the boycotters was expressed not just in protests but also in threats of violence and at least two abortive terrorist attacks, including one by al-Qaeda. (The band performing on the night of the attack had also recently played in Israel, ignoring BDS demands not to do so.) The Bataclan’s Jewish owners had, as it happens, sold the theatre in September, as one of the brothers was moving to Israel, part of a wave of French-Jewish emigrants fleeing the country. France is a byword for anti-Semitism in Europe, and now it has also become practically a warzone, with armed soldiers visible across its capital as a desperate measure to salvage the security and comfort on which the West is built. BDS may begin with the Jews, but the radicalisation that fuels it has bigger ambitions.
The campaign to boycott Israel is just part of the anti-British, anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideology that pervades many of our colleges, religious institutions and charities and even some trade unions, and the government has recognised this. In announcing the BDS ban at the Conservative party conference, at the same time as he was condemning Corbyn and his allies as radical, terrorist-sympathising and Britain-hating, the Prime Minister was signalling that he understood the context in which BDS thrives and the threat it poses to us all. His intention is to consign it to oblivion, where it belongs.
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