My fear is that many college students will be turned off to a strident message about Israel’s virtues and charges of implicit anti-Semitism against Palestinians who are perceived in liberal circles as simply fighting for human rights and statehood. Skirting the issue of “the occupation” or insisting that the Palestinians initiated the conflict are unlikely to persuade young people who embrace the “why can’t we all get along?” viewpoint many of us dismiss as naïve.
Even as a number of pro-Israel groups have focused on BDS as a major threat and are pouring money and other resources into the battle, the BDS movement today is more a threat in our imaginations than in terms of real victories on campus. We shouldn’t ignore it, but the larger problem remains: Although Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says he is ready to get back to peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians are becoming more difficult to defend on campus, for Jewish students as well. We can’t just blame the BDS movement, the media or anti-Semites. And even spending tens of millions of dollars in a Good Guys vs. Bad Guys campaign won’t produce a dramatic turnaround.
Maybe we’re fighting the wrong battle.
Gary Rosenblatt, “The Wrong Way to Fight BDS”, The Jewish Week (16 October 2015), 8.