[Opinion] The BDS Wars: Some Signs of Success for the New Year
[EXCERPTS]
The past year was not particularly good for Israel in terms of the demonization and boycott campaigns, but it was not as bad as expected, and there were some successful counterattacks against the demonizers. In the shadow of last summer’s Gaza war, the BDS and lawfare movements prepared another major push, based on more false claims of Israeli “war crimes”.
When the UN report on the 2014 Gaza war was belatedly published in June, it came as an anticlimax, and the damage to Israel was relatively limited. As a result, although the ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation this year, this step is not, by itself, very damaging.
In parallel, the BDS movement to demonize Israel claimed some additional successes, but these were largely for media consumption…Similarly, on university campuses, particularly in the US and Canada, while BDS won some symbolic votes, watchdog groups reported that overall, the impact of hate campaigns against Israel did not grow.
While it would be premature to say that the war to defeat BDS and lawfare has turned in Israel’s favor, there are certainly some signs of optimism on this battleground as we go towards 5776.