Thread by @DrSchwitters

If advocating a boycott of the world's only Jewish state is a bad thing - or "looks bad" or "raises embarrassing questions" or "puts you in an awkward position" or whatever - where does that leave us?

I'm not an expert in the history of Zionism, but I'm not aware that anyone's ever advocated the establishment of more than one Jewish state. So Israel is going to remain "the world's only Jewish state" for the foreseeable future.

If that makes it problematic with regard to boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaigns, we're left with three possible positions.

One - the simplest and most obvious - is that, since Israel is the world's only Jewish state, no Israeli government can be targeted for boycott, sanctions or disinvestment; not now and not ever, irrespective of what those governments may do.

This seems unsatisfactory, to say the least.

The second possibility is to admit the possibility that *even* a state which is the world's only Jewish state can *in principle* be targeted for BDS, but argue that nothing Israel is doing is bad enough to merit that.

But this is - if anything - even worse. Firstly, it raises the obvious question of who is competent to decide whether the government of Israel's actions are "bad enough" or not. (It could be argued that Palestinians would make a good arbiter, for example.)

Secondly, it destroys all the arguments about BDS advocates "singling out" Israel and applying "double standards": the argument here is precisely that actions which would justify boycotting states A, B and C *don't* justify boycotting Israel, b/c world's only Jewish state.

If you can't (reasonably) say "no BDS against Israel, ever, in any circumstances" and you can't say "no BDS against Israel unless Israel's actions are substantially worse than other nations which might be subject to boycott", what can you say?

I think what you're left with is an argument about process: the implicit argument is "Israel is the world's only Jewish state, therefore any permissible BDS campaign should have the approval of people who demonstrably care about the Jewish people, e.g. us".

Basically it's a claim of vetting rights: people arguing in this way grant that in *some* circumstances a BDS campaign against Israel might be justified... but in *these* circumstances? Dear me no, I really couldn't approve that. Another time, perhaps.

This also helps explain the extraordinary rapidity with which 'antisemitic' shade gets thrown: if the argument is to work at all, the people advocating BDS have to be portrayed as (at least) not caring about Jewish people.

tl;dr The answer to "Israel is the world's only Jewish state" is "yes, and?".