That time Jews did BDS
Also: how many people can you kill if you invented the iPhone?
As part of my deep-dive into
’s honors thesis from 20 years ago, I looked into his thesis advisors, which included Professor Susannah Heschel, daughter of the famous Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (who marched with MLK1).
Soon after Oct 7, Professor Susannah Heschel seemed quite keen on keeping the discussion of the Hamas attack academic and open. Because of the work she and her colleagues undertook, unlike many other Ivy League schools, Dartmouth avoided the “problems” of Colombia, UCLA, and Harvard. For her efforts, the ADL gave her, and Dartmouth College, a C-grade.
But in a recent interview, her thoughts on the BDS movement against Israel were … well … sophomoric.
Here’s her quote, in context:
… I wanted [my students] to understand the complexity of [Israel], that it's not that simple2, and that for them to march around and say “end to Israel” or something like that, what's that going to do for anybody? What has BDS accomplished for Palestinian citizens of Israel? You want to boycott an academic institution in Israel, where the students are also Arab, and faculty members are Arab; you're going to boycott them too? So, the absurdity of it is something that needs to be brought across, as well as, by the way, the fact that they may want to boycott Israel, but what if Israel boycotted them? What would they do? They would have to give up their iPhone, and their laptop computers, and their generic medicines, and all the many technological, and medicinal, and scientific discoveries that are coming out of Israel. They need to think about it!
So, Professor Heschel makes two arguments against BDS here:
That boycotting Israel will harm Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Israel gave you your iPhone, laptop, and generic medicines, so shush about Israeli atrocities.
Let’s take those arguments in reverse order
Argument 1: … but, but, but Israel invented the iPhone!
This is also known as the Bad Hasbara Theme Song argument:
This is genuinely a poor argument, that stands very little probing. Let’s test it with a few questions:
What is the tolerable limit on Israeli atrocities because they invented the iPhone? Clearly, killing at least 50,000 people (including 17,000 children) and displacing 2 million residents of Gaza is fine. How many have to die in Gaza because Israel invented generic medicines? If I give up my laptop, how many lives could be saved?
If Israel hadn’t invented the iPhone, the laptop, and medicine, would it then be acceptable to undertake BDS against Israel? Is that why BDS against South Africa was acceptable? Because they didn’t invent, say, the fax machine?
Prior to the Holocaust, the Nazis invented the following: the Volkswagen Beetle (1938), the jet engine (1930s), magnetic tape recording (1935), Zuse Z3 Computer (1938), infrared night vision (late 1930s), synthetic rubber (Buna Rubber - 1930s), significant rocket advancements in the 1930s, synthetic fuel production (Fischer-Tropsch Process), and the Enigma cipher machine. Should the West not have very aggressively “sanctioned” the Nazis because of all these wonderful technological advancements?
Apart from Israel, which other country’s inventiveness grants them an exemption from international humanitarian law?
Argument 2: boycotting an apartheid Israel will harm Israeli Palestinians
Jews undertook BDS against Germany a decade before the Holocaust
As Professor Heschel is a historian of Jews in Europe, I found it astonishing that she has not published a single academic paper on the subject of the global Jewish boycott of German goods, services, and academy or on the controversial Haavara Agreement that undermined that boycott, and eventually ended it.
In the early 1930s, when Hitler's regime intensified its persecution of Jews in Germany, Jewish communities worldwide initiated a boycott of German goods, services, and their academy. This movement aimed to exert economic pressure on the Nazi government to cease its anti-Semitic policies, just as the BDS movement today tries to exert economic pressure on the Israeli government to cease its policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and now, genocide.
In the US, the Jewish War Veterans established a boycott of Germany on March 19, 1933. American Jews picketed stores importing German products (including Macy’s), urging consumers to avoid purchasing goods made in Germany.
In Europe, similar initiatives emerged. Jewish communities in France and Great Britain actively participated in the boycott, aiming to weaken the German economy and protest the Nazi regime's actions.
This Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany included a boycott of German academic institutions, including the exclusion of German scholars from international conferences and the refusal to publish in German journals.
There were student and faculty protests against German universities. In the United States and Britain, Jewish student organizations and groups urged universities to sever ties with German academic institutions. Some universities discontinued student exchange programs with Nazi Germany. (But Colombia University, yes THAT Columbia University, expelled a student for protesting Nazi Germany).
There was a boycott of German books and publishing houses, Jewish intellectuals and bookstores refused to sell or distribute German books, including those from major academic publishers. Libraries in the U.S., Britain, and Palestine reduced purchases of German academic texts.
In an effort to end this boycott, the Nazis agreed to the Haavara Agreement, signed on August 25, 1933, between Nazi Germany and Zionist organizations, and lasted till the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939. This agreement facilitated the emigration of approximately 50,000 - 60,000 wealthy Jews to Palestine by allowing them to transfer a portion of their assets through the purchase of German goods, which were then exported to Palestine and sold.
While the Haavara Agreement allowed wealthy Jews3 to escape persecution and contributed to the development of the Jewish community in Palestine, it also undermined the global boycott by promoting the purchase of German goods. The Haavara Agreement was good for Zionism in Palestine, and helped the Nazis increase their export market and end the international boycott of them, but it was bad for the Jews of Europe that didn’t have the necessary funds to escape.
It is good to restate that this Jewish boycott of the Nazis was a decade before the Holocaust and was in response to discrimination and a boycott of Jews by the Nazis. At the time, these Nazi atrocities against domestic Jews were far less egregious than what Israel is currently committing in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria since 1967.
Like Israel today says that Palestinians want to “voluntarily” leave Gaza, the Nazis used the Haavara Agreement to say that Jews were “voluntarily” leaving Germany.
The Haavara Agreement undermined the Jewish boycott of the Nazis, before effectively ending it, and continued to do so till the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Who knows what might have happened if that boycott had continued.
Palestinians are calling for a boycott of Israel
But what have Palestinian leaders said about the modern BDS movement against Israel? Do they understand that such a boycott may hurt the Palestinians they are looking to free from oppression? Is BDS intended to “end Israel”?
Omar Barghouti (Co-founder of BDS)
Omar Barghouti has been one of the most vocal proponents of the movement, advocating for a comprehensive boycott of Israel. He has argued that BDS should continue until Israel complies with international law, including ending the occupation, granting equal rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel, and allowing Palestinian refugees to return. He has said4:
“Not only do the oppressed lose nothing when people of conscience boycott institutions that are persistently complicit in the system of oppression; in fact, they gain enormously from the ultimate weakening of this complicity that an effective and sustained boycott leads to.”
Hanan Ashrawi (Palestinian Politician and Activist)
Hanan Ashrawi has supported BDS as a tool of nonviolent resistance. She has called on the international community to hold Israel accountable and encouraged cultural and academic boycotts. She once stated:
“BDS is not against Jews or Israelis as people, but against policies and practices that violate human rights and international law.”
It should be clear from these statements that the BDS movement is not intended to “end Israel”, as Professor Heschel implied, but rather for Israel to end its violations of human rights and international law.
Black South Africans called for a boycott of apartheid South Africa
Throughout the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, numerous individuals and organizations called upon the international community to implement boycotts as a means to exert pressure on the apartheid regime. Below are several notable quotes from South Africans and anti-apartheid activists advocating for such measures:
Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop and anti-apartheid leader, highlighted the role of international boycotts in ending apartheid:
"In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime."
Chief Albert Luthuli, the president of the African National Congress (ANC) and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, appealed for an international boycott of South African products. This appeal led to the establishment of the Boycott Movement in 1959, which aimed to persuade shoppers to refrain from purchasing goods from apartheid South Africa.
Elizabeth Mafekeng, a women’s leader within the ANC:
"To my sympathisers overseas, I can only say: If you can't help me or my family, you can help my people. We here will go on opposing apartheid. We are not frightened by these hard knocks. But people overseas must go on with the boycott — boycott South African goods until you make our oppressors change their hearts.”
Former international anti-apartheid activists reflected on their efforts:
"We called on people not to buy apartheid products and we discouraged tourism to the country. We campaigned for a weapons embargo, an oil embargo, a Krugerrand boycott, a sports, academic and cultural boycott. We pressurized companies and banks to withdraw from apartheid South Africa."
These statements underscore the critical role that international boycotts played in supporting the internal resistance against apartheid, ultimately contributing to the dismantling of the oppressive regime in South Africa.
Conclusion
I sincerely hope that the example of the successful boycott of apartheid South Africa, and the failed boycott of Nazi Germany, answers Professor Heschel’s question “What has BDS accomplished for Palestinian citizens of Israel”?
It is a sign of international solidarity that the world stands with the oppressed against the oppressor, even at short-term cost to those it is intended to benefit.
For what it’s worth, I would love to have the opportunity to undertake a thesis with Professor Heschel. My dissertation would be “Is Zionism, as implemented in Palestine, compatible with the tenets of Judaism?”
Just one last question: if BDS is inherently antisemitic, and hence illegitimate, can the professor suggest an alternative, non-violent form of protest against Israel’s policies and actions that has any chance of success? One that won’t get me sent to an El Salvador prison? Or worse, to an Israeli prison?
Anyone who marched with MLK has major brownie points from me. But the cognitive dissonance of marching with MLK, while in support of Zionism as implemented in Palestine, is truly pathological.
It is actually very simple.
They were literally called “capitalist immigrants”.
Omar Barghouti, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights.”