The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions crowd make a lot of noise. They march, they chant, they campaign. And, in a chilling echo of another time in history, they put much of their effort into a form of mob rule attacking specific Jewish businesses, trying to make it impossible for them to carry on trading. But, as the latest trade figures between Israel and the UK show, for all the huffing and puffing, the BDS campaigners are spectacularly ineffective.
Far from contracting, trade between the UK and Israel is booming. In 2012, bilateral trade totalled £3.81 billion - well on track to reach UK Trade and Investment's target of £4 billion by 2015. Pharmaceutical exports from Israel, which make up over half of all exports, were up 11 per cent on the previous year. That trend is likely soon to be repeated across the EU. Again, far from imposing a boycott, last October the EU lifted a block on Israeli medicines. It is heartening that for normal people, the warped motivations of the BDS crowd are an utter irrelevance.
