BDS: What a lot of impotent huffing and puffing

DAVID SAKS

No steps were taken to arrest the “notorious war criminal”, notwithstanding the much trumpeted application made to that end by the Muslim Lawyers Association (who two years ago tried a similar stunt over the Obama visit).

 As for BDS-SA, little more than a dozen took part in its protest on Sunday evening outside the Sandton Convention Centre, where Peres was speaking.

Taken as a whole, efforts to promote a boycott of Israel have been characterised more by impotent huffing and puffing than practical success (despite the generally supportive stance of the media).

The last few years has seen a string of failed initiatives by BDS, with concrete achievements appearing to be in inverse proportion to the amount of publicity it generates. This is especially true of its anti-Woolworths boycott campaign to pressurise the retail giant into discontinuing its line of Israel-sourced products.

Despite disruptions of its AGMs, orchestrated acts of intimidation and interference with staff and patrons and even the looting of one of its branches in Pretoria, Woolworths was unwavering in its refusal to deviate from its standard practices.

Even more tellingly, in monetary terms the boycott failed to make even the slightest dent in its revenues – indeed, healthy group sales figures suggest that the opposite was the case.

In response, BDS resorted to concocting an alternate financial report ostensibly revealing huge monthly losses by Woolworths since the boycott began; it was subsequently revealed that the “academic expert” who produced the study was a Wits sociology student who just happened to be an active BDS member!

The most recent Woolworths-related disaster for BDS was the demonstration it organised against the Pharrell Williams concert in Cape Town last September. Bombastic predictions were made, suggesting that up to 50 000 demonstrators would descend on the venue, and the media dutifully fell in line by creating the impression that a major confrontation was on the cards.

The actual protest turned out to be an embarrassment of epic proportions, with barely 500 protesters turning up. All in all, the Woolworths boycott fiasco exposed how little influence BDS exercises, even in its natural constituency, the Muslim community.

Starved of real successes, BDS has resorted to concocting imaginary victories out of perfectly commonplace events. It has depicted the decision by the Reggies toy store chain to cease contributing to the JNF as a victory for the boycott movement; in reality, the chain’s Jewish owner had sold the business to two non-Jewish partners.

 Last month, a BDS press release strongly intimated that an envisaged water summit had been cancelled because of opposition to the participation of the Israeli ambassador, whereas, as confirmed by the organisers, it had been due entirely to logistical and funding issues.

Here and there, there have been small gains. In January 2013, Karsten Farms reportedly terminated its relationship with an Israeli company that operates in a West Bank settlement. BDS made much of this “breakthrough”, but since then no further leading companies appear to have followed suit.

Meanwhile, bilateral trade between Israel and South Africa continues to grow at a steady pace. 

Aside from its consistent failure to achieve practical results, BDS campaigns have resulted in a number of out-and-out PR disasters that have embarrassed the entire local Israel boycott movement.

Topping the list has to be the notorious “Shoot the Jew” chants by its supporters at Wits University three years ago, a blunder greatly compounded by BDS National Co-ordinator Muhammed Desai’s blithe denial that there had been anything seriously wrong with this.

Not far behind would be the “Porkgate” blunder, when overzealous BDS activists deposited a pig’s head in what was thought to be the kosher (but was, in fact the halaal) meat counter of a Cape Town Woolworths store.

As for the SRC of the Durban University of Technology, they did the BDS cause no favours by demanding of the vice-chancellor that, as a show of solidarity with the Palestinians, Jewish students at the institution be “de-registered”. There has been a host of other, less high-profile, incidents in which anti-Israel rhetoric has crossed over into blatant anti-Semitism.

None of the afore-going should be taken as implying that the BDS movement is essentially toothless and incapable of posing any kind of realistic threat to the South Africa-Israel relationship. Even though they have, in concrete terms, achieved little to date, BDS campaigners (both locally and abroad) may in time be seen as having successfully prepared the ground for boycotts against Israel in the future.

The battle against this pernicious movement is far from over, therefore, but Israel activists can nevertheless take heart from the victories that have thus far been achieved.