The mission statement for the United Nations World Conference against Racism, which took place in Durban, South Africa from 31 August to 7 September 2001, stated that the conference was “a unique and important opportunity to create a new world vision for the fight against racism and racial discrimination in the new millennium.”  

The Jewish delegates who attended expected that a rise in antisemitism and racism in the 1990s, especially in Europe, would be high on the agenda. 

How wrong they were. The language used was so viciously anti-Israel in both the conference and the resolutions that the United States and Israel both withdrew their delegations on the fourth day of the conference. 

The worst, however, was still to come, because as well as the main plenary there was also an NGO (non-governmental organisation) forum and a student summit. 

The NGO forum was attended by 1,500 NGOs and adopted a virulent anti-Israel final declaration and action plan based on the South African anti-apartheid campaign. The declaration called for “a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state...the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation, and training) between all states and Israel.” 

This was the beginning of the international Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement directed Israel. 

For the last two decades Israel and Jews in the diaspora have had to respond and deal with the threat posed by BDS. The key battle-grounds in the fight against BDS have been university campuses, churches, NGOs, social media, lawfare, cultural and sports boycotts and the boycott of Israeli settlement goods. 

The main centres of this activity have been remain the United States, Great Britain, Israel, South Africa, France, Germany, Canada and Australia.

The first major application of BDS took place twenty years ago on 6 April 2002, when the Guardian published a letter signed by 125 academics calling for a European Union moratorium on funding for grants and research contracts for Israeli universities. 

Their demand, originally seen as a spontaneous reaction to Israel’s military intervention in Jenin, soon became known as the academic boycott of Israel. 

For the next 10 years, campaigning activity in Britain was the driving force behind the adoption of BDS and the academic boycott of Israel, with various groups using London as the worldwide centre promoting the delegitimisation of the State of Israel. 

BDS did not gain traction on American campuses until after the 2008-2009 Israeli-Gaza war, with the establishment of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel — but the US is now the main centre in the world of BDS activity on campus. 

By 2021 more than 3,000 faculty members on hundreds of US campuses have endorsed calls for academic BDS.

The influential network of NGOs at Durban have over the last two decades played a central role by providing resources for global, Palestinian and Israeli BDS campaigns. The funds and resources that these NGOs devote to supporting the BDS movement are now estimated to exceed $100 million annually. 

International NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam all use anti-Israel rhetoric in support of BDS. 

In 2005, a group of Palestinian academics launched the Palestinian BDS campaign. This independent initiative followed the NGO Forum strategy by branding Israel as an evil, racist, settler colonialist apartheid state that practiced ethnic cleansing towards the Palestinians. 

The BDS movement portrays the conflict as a human rights cause, with Israel depicted as the aggressor and the Palestinian people as the victims in order to attract the support of human rights campaigners and the liberal intelligentsia. 

The ultimate aim of the BDS movement is the destruction of Israel by non-violent means, which their supporters believe can be achieved through a campaign of political delegitimisation and economic destabilisation which they hope will lead to Israel’s isolation and the acceptance of their demands to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, to end discrimination against Palestinian citizens in Israel, and to allow the “right of return” for several million first-generation Palestinian Arab refugees as well as their descendants. 

BDS is not only anti-Zionist as it rejects Zionism, the belief of self-determination for the Jewish people in the biblical land of Israel, but also antisemitic because it rejects Israel’s right to exist. 

Although there is a belief that BDS was established as a grassroots Palestinian-led movement, it was British academics who first called for an academic boycott of Israel and who also helped create the 2004 Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). 

PACBI serves as the “face” of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) which was formed in 2008 to lead and support the BDS movement. 

However because the BNC does not have direct control over the hundreds of groups worldwide which support BDS, it can only advise them in their campaigns. The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in the UK is one of the largest BDS groups in the world.

BDS poses a legal problem because it challenges fundamental standards of society; it is discriminatory and infringes existing anti-boycott legislation especially in the US. 

If a boycott of Israeli products and services were to be imposed by a government or local authority it would affect the quality of life of that population because there would be a ban on the use of Israeli technology in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and computing, as well as pharmaceuticals and other products, all of which the general public have come to rely on. 

Legal measures and proceedings against BDS taken by governments and individuals and special interest groups are important because they set the tone and are effective ways of curbing BDS. 

After two decades, the BDS movement has yet to make a major breakthrough in political and governmental arenas in the Western world. For most of the time it operates in the margins of society. 

It is only in times of conflict between Israel and Hamas that BDS enters mainstream civil society. In June 2021, shortly after another round of heavy fighting, the British government spoke for most European governments when it said that the UK is strongly opposed to the BDS movement against Israel.

So has BDS succeeded in any of its aims?  

If you believe the BDS movement then it is indeed succeeding. They make a lot of noise, concentrating on individual actions — but the reality is that they have failed; Israel is not isolated politically and its economy is stronger than ever.  

The academic boycott has failed because Israeli scientists and engineers are world class, and no serious person would turn down the opportunity to work with the best.  

The fight back against BDS may be succeeding but the pressure of countering these incessant campaigns harassing Jews has put Israel’s supporters under immense psychological and mental pressure. 

The same applies on campus on both sides of the Atlantic where antisemitism is on the increase on campus because Jewish students who have exercised their right to assembly and freedom of speech have found themselves having to endure increasing levels of violence, intimidation and discrimination.

Dr Ronnie Fraser is Director of the Academic Friends of Israel.

He and Lola Fraser are the editors of a forthcoming collection of essays, entitled “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign directed at Israel: International Responses”, which will be published by Routledge in the autumn and on general release