The fact that there are Jewish supporters of BDS is commonly taken to prove that these boycotts are unconnected to anti-Semitism. To the contrary, however, this is further evidence that they are. In every generation there are individual Jews who abandon the norms of the Jewish community or turn against it and become its tormentors. Indeed, some were among the worst purveyors of and apologists for anti-Semitism, such as Pablo Christiani, Karl Marx and Bruno Kreisky. That a small minority of Jews yet again stands against the overwhelming majority of their people is entirely to be expected.

In the past, those individuals turned on the majority partly to avoid the persecution to which they, as Jews, were subject. It is not all that different today: the Jewish state and Jewish Israelis — and increasingly diaspora Jewry by extension — are being persecuted out of the same anti-Semitic animus witnessed before, and the Jews who support the boycott are effectively trying to shield themselves from that persecution by joining in.

What sets these previous and contemporary anti-Jewish Jews apart, though, is that whereas the hatred that confronted the former threatened their very lives, what principally concerns the latter is, pitifully, the embarrassment they feel at being associated with Israel by their liberal friends who so despise it, but whose validation these Jews so desperately crave.

What, then, of the fight against BDS? In most cases when a BDS demonstration takes place or a motion is introduced, there will be a counter-protest or effort to defeat the motion. Jews and supporters of Israel in many different settings — whether at a university or within a trade union or at a synod — find themselves confronting a common enemy, and this has had a welcome uniting effect.

Several grassroots organisations have also been established across the country to advocate for Israel and combat BDS on the streets, on campus, in the courts and politically. Among them is a new organisation, founded a year ago, called Jewish Human Rights Watch (of which I am a director). JHRW has filed a complaint with the Charity Commission against War on Want for its support of BDS, and the charity is now under scrutiny. It has also requested judicial review of BDS motions by Leicester, Swansea and Gwynedd councils, threatened several in Scotland and lobbied the government for change. Thanks to these efforts, the Conservatives announced at their party conference their intention to pass legislation banning boycotts by local councils against foreign countries and the UK defence industry that are not in line with national policy, a move intended and interpreted as a ban on BDS.

In declaring its disgust with boycotts of Israel, the UK government is joining others that have taken similar action: in France, the “Lellouche law”, passed in 2003, extends anti-racism laws to those who target specific nationalities for discrimination. Consequently, last October the country’s highest court of appeals upheld earlier rulings punishing a dozen BDS protestors for calling for a boycott of Israel. In the United States, state legislatures in Illinois, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee have all passed motions in recent months condemning or restricting BDS activity or banning state pension funds or public bodies from investing in boycotters.

Congress has also taken steps against BDS, legislating last year that in its trade negotiations with the European Union the federal government must discourage boycotts of Israel or Jews in the West Bank (although the Obama administration has declared that it will ignore the part about the West Bank). Although there is much still to be done, especially on campuses worldwide, the tide is turning against BDS.