Yet the targets of BDS propaganda are in the West, and here the leaders of BDS have found even more fertile ground, as boycotts of Jews in Europe date back at least as far as the Middle Ages, and include Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses and academics in the 1930s. BDS is precisely a continuation of this sort of anti-Semitism as well. BDS boycotts, while ostensibly geared toward all Israelis in a given field (such as academics), encompass in reality only the Jewish Israelis in those areas (excluding, for example, Arab-Israeli scholars).

At home, BDS protesters routinely praise Hitler, deliver Nazi salutes, paint swastika graffiti and openly declare themselves to be haters of Jews. The notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been on sale at BDS events. Academics who support boycotts have alluded to infamous conspiracy theories about Jewish power. Pro-BDS unions show no regard for their Jewish members who complain of discomfort during debates and lobbying over BDS, nor universities or student unions for Jewish students who feel too intimidated at pro-BDS campuses to attend lectures.

In 2012, BDS activists targeted the Hebrew production of The Merchant of Venice at the Globe Theatre, part of an initiative to perform Shakespeare in multiple languages. In 2014, the Tricycle Theatre in north London sought to boycott the Jewish Film Festival — which caters to the Anglo-Jewish community — because it was partly funded by (unconditional) grants from the Israeli embassy. Supermarkets that were targeted by BDS campaigners were briefly forced in that year to remove all kosher food from their shelves.

Last year in South Africa, pro-BDS students tried to have their Jewish peers expelled from university because of their ties to Israel. In California, Jewish students running for office or seeking to vote on BDS motions have been opposed by Israel-boycotters on the basis that their being Jewish renders them untrustworthy or biased. BDS activists disrupted a vote commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz at a New York City Council meeting, purportedly in protest against visits to Israel made by councillors. And last summer, BDS agitators managed to have Matisyahu, a Jewish American rap star who is not Israeli, briefly banned from a Spanish music festival because he refused to denounce Israel — an absurd demand not made of any other performer. (All this dovetails with the well-known pattern of flare-ups in the Arab-Israeli conflict being accompanied by attacks on Jews elsewhere.)

Clearly, BDS makes no effort to distinguish between Israel and Jews, an omission that perturbs and offends a great many of its opponents. But this concern obscures a more profound and inconvenient truth, which is that any attempts to separate Israel and the Jews are futile because Israel is part of the identity of almost all diaspora Jews in some form or other. Opposition to one is intrinsically tied to opposition to the other. Jews will inevitably be connected to Israel in religious, economic, cultural and familial ways that displease BDS campaigners, and Israel is naturally tied to Jewish life in the diaspora, be it through kosher food (much of which comes from Israel), funding for Jewish cultural activities, and so on. The Jewish community in the UK has thus become a target for Israel-haters. Judaism and Israel are to all intents and purposes simply indivisible, and this is the nub. It is why BDS, even if it tried, cannot be anything but the newest manifestation of the oldest hatred.