March13
Because BDS is a fundamentally radical and anti-peace movement at heart, its supporters are often prone to displays of violence and intimidation designed to bully others into compliance. This page tracks examples of BDS proponents using intimidation and threats, both on the Internet and in the real world, to pursue their goals. This can often include committing crimes as well.
BDS Intimidation on Campus
BDS Intimidation in Support of Cultural Boycott
BDS Intimidation of Musicians
BDS Intimidation in Support of Economic Boycott
BDS Intimidation in Support of Cultural Boycott
In Auckland, New Zealand, in the fall of 2011, a group calling themselves Global Peace and Justice Auckland gathered together to protest the young Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer, who was about to play her opening match at the ASB tennis classic. Though they claimed to be merely against Israel’s governmental policies, one carried the placard “the Zionists are the Nazis of the Middle East.” Eight protesters were arrested for making excessive noise that annoyed tennis players and spectators, and six were convicted of disorderly behavior, though New Zealand’s High Court overturned the conviction.
BDS supporters have crossed the line between legitimate protest and criminal behavior on many occasions. In Edinburgh, Scotland in October of 2012 BDS supporters brought their protest against the Batsheva Dance Company into the theater itself. The protesters disrupted the shows repeated, standing up and harassing the dancers as well as the audience. Audience members present felt “alarmed and vulnerable” according to Jackie Kemp of the Guardian. Despite this, no arrests were made.
When Israel’s Habima Theater Company was invited to perform The Merchant of Venice for the Globe Theatre in London, UK in the summer of 2013, BDS supporters pulled out all the stops to try and prevent them. Three dozen British celebrities, including actress Emma Thompson, wrote a letter to the Globe to try to convince them to cancel, allegedly because Habima had performed in Israeli settlements. When the Globe refused, the BDS proponents took matters into their own hands, disrupting the performance through shouting, waving banners and disturbing other audience members. Many were removed by security officials, six who had to be physically picked up when they refused to stop screaming or to leave. A protester was arrested on suspicion of assault after a security guard was injured. Despite this intimidating behavior, the Habima performance continued.
Also in London, in the fall of 2011 the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was invited to play in the BBC Proms. Again, supporters of the cultural boycotting arm of BDS demanded that the BBC cancel the concert. And again the BDS supporters refused to take “no” for an answer and 12 activists disrupted the concert both inside and out, thereby forcing the Proms to go off the air temporarily for the first time in its history. BDS activists bragged about their “victory.”
In the spring of 2013, Yossi Reshef, a pianist whose only connection to Israel is that he was born there, was stopped from playing at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa by screaming, vuvuzela-blowing protesters. Members of his audience were traumatized and manhandled. Ten student protesters were found guilty of misconduct for disruption or incitement, and were expelled from the University for one year.
Unfortunately this did not stick, because BDS struck again that fall with a protest against Daniel Zamir, an Israeli saxophonist. This time the protesters made international headlines when they chanted “Shoot the Jew” outside of the concert hall. Muhammad Desai, the BDS coordinator, tried to play down the incident and claimed the chants had been misinterpreted. Unfortunately for him, his fellow BDS advocates immediately distanced themselves from the protesters’ behavior and even criticized him personally.
In the Spring of 2014, a local art exhibit featuring the work of Israeli and Palestinian artists in Pittsburgh was forced was forced to shut down due to threats made by BDS advocates against the Palestinian artists for the crime of “normalizing relations with Israel.”
An Israeli theatre company called Incubator Theatre was scheduled to perform in Edinburgh in late July of 2014 but was forced to cancel after threats and protests from BDS supporters. According to reports on the ground, the protesters spat on a 14 year old girl and screamed at children (who weren’t even going to see the Israelis) that “you’ve got blood on your ticket.” Fortunately Incubator performed to sell out crowds in Glasgow, London, and Leeds. The ugliness of the BDS supporters was even noticed by the local media.
In New York City the Israeli basketball team Maccabi Tel Aviv came to play a friendly game against the Brooklyn Nets. But when BDS is in town, no friendliness is allowed. Arguments and protests took place during the game, and after it was over a BDS supporter assaulted Leonard Petlakh, breaking his nose and requiring him to receive eight stitches. Police billed the incident as a hate crime.
An award-winning Israeli filmmaker screened a film in Carpentras, France, or rather tried to before BDS got involved. While she was introducing the film, 20 BDS supporters stood up and began yelling insults while throwing stink bombs. They had to be removed by the police by force. A Palestinian from Gaza who was present at the screening told them to stop, that “this was not the way,” but they carried on protesting outside the theater, free from police interference, even though they did not have a permit. The Israeli filmmaker had to be escorted to her home by the police.
BDS intimidation has even made it to Ramallah where a group of activists disrupted a performance by an Indian dance group who had also performed in Israel. The Palestinian Authority arrested four of them and charged with “provoking riots and breach of public tranquility.” Khaled Abu Toameh explains:
A PA official in Ramallah explained that BDS and its followers make the Palestinians appear as if they are all radicals who are only interested in boycotting and delegitimizing Israel. “This goes against the PLO’s official policy, which is to seek a peace agreement with Israel based on the two-state solution,” he said.
BDS Intimidation of Musicians
Musicians coming to play in Israel are often threatened with boycotts, marginalization, or even death by BDS supporters. Scooter Braun, the manager of teen singer Justin Bieber, said that he had received “plenty of death threats from different groups over him coming to Israel [in 2011]. But most of the death threats were that ‘the Jew manager will die.’” Eric Burdon, the vocalist of the 1960s band The Animals, almost canceled his August 1st show in Israel because of threats. “We’ve been receiving mounting pressure, including numerous emails, daily,” his management said. The management of Salif Keita, a superstar of Afropop, canceled his performance in Israel because:
“[We were] bombarded with hundreds of threats, blackmail attempts, intimidation, social media harassment, and slander…These threats were made by a group named BDS, who also threatened to keep increasing an anti-Salif Keita campaign, which they had already started on social media, and to work diligently at ruining the reputation and career that Mr. Keita has worked 40 years to achieve not only professionally, but for human rights and albinism.”
Just about every prominent artist that performs in Israel will be targeted in this manner. There have also been rumors that Paul McCartney was threatened in 2008 and that Macy Gray’s family was threatened when she performed in Israel in 2011. Protests against the Pet Shop Boys immediately took on a personal tone, prompting a response from the band itself.
When asked to condemn this threatening and highly illegal behavior committed in its name, the leadership of BDS traditionally begins by accusing the victims of lying or exaggerating the claims before attempting to distance their movement from the threats:
“Recent claims of threats from ex-Animals singer Eric Burdon in an article published by Ha’aretz are vague and unsubstantiated. We do not know if they are made up by media hostile to the BDS strategy, or by artists and/or their agents, or if they are inflated reports of remarks made by individuals who do not represent the movement. USACBI advances the BDS movement not through threats, but rather by exposing Israel’s wrongs, and promoting non-violent ways to redress them, and achieve the rights of the Palestinian people.”-US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
“[He is] resort[ing] to unsupported claims of “threats” and potentially defamatory statements may be a tactic that some artists resort to when they do not wish to violate the Palestinian call to boycott Israel, but do not have the courage to take a political stance….Burdon did in fact travel to Israel despite the supposed “threats.”-Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Although it may be true that death threats against musicians performing in Israel were not officially made by BDS campaigns, it is also true that BDS supporters encourage their fellows to harass chosen targets with virtual lynch mobs, and they don’t hesitate to make it personal. The rapport between those making the threats and BDS as a whole might be compared to that between a Mafia hitman and godfather; they are very clearly working toward the same goal even if they have no formal relationship.
The manager of French musician Jacky Terrasson wrote a scathing attack on BDS in January of 2013 after an unsuccessful campaign to “convince” him to cancel a performance in Israel:
“We noticed that Erik and Jacky’s Facebook pages were overrun with intimidating comments, not from our fans, but from activists. Some of these comments are really obnoxious, rising to the level of sheer harassment and blatant denigration. Facebook has become a battleground for BDS campaigners, our fans, Israelis and those supporting Israel. How sad!”
He even wrote a letter to the BDS campaign in France:
“We refuse to be made into instruments, and we won’t give in to your pressure, whether by email, by mail, by telephone or on Facebook…Your activism and your intolerance are abominable. Phony Facebook “fans” have posted messages expressly asking our musicians not play in Israel. This is sheer harassment. Moreover, it’s really quite surprising because these fans purporting to sway the artists are not fans at all, but simply your army of little soldiers polluting the calm and positive spaces of our artists’ Facebook pages.
“What bothers me the most about your effort…is your hatred of Israel, a pathological hatred, blind and most assuredly hidden behind a veil of “political correctness.” Your actions don’t demonstrate a love or defense of Palestinians but rather a hatred for Israelis.”
When Sir Elton John announced in 2010 that he was planning a concert in Tel Aviv, he received a long communication from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine that could be interpreted as nothing else but an attack on him: “When you stand up on that stage in Tel Aviv, you line yourself up with a racist state.” Despite this, Sir Elton went ahead with the concert explaining that nothing was “gonna stop me from playing here” and that musicians aren’t supposed to “cherry pick our conscience.”
Alicia Keys was defiant in the face of BDS when she performed in Israel in July of 2013, despite claims by Roger Waters that doing so would mean she would “lend your name to give legitimacy to the Israeli government policies of illegal, apartheid occupation.” Alice Walker also wrote to Keys saying that she must boycott Israel to “save your soul.”
BDS Intimidation in Support of Economic Boycott
Generally BDS intimidation in support of economic boycotts takes the form of standing outside a shop known to be selling Israeli products and scaring people away from it. However it often escalates into attacking the store, its products, or its customers.
In Melbourne, Australia, in the summer of 2011, protests against the chocolate store Max Brenner became more and more radical. Paul Howes, the Australian Workers Union secretary, said he thought the protesters were “mimicking the behaviour of the Nazis thugs.” It is also worth noting that Australians for Palestine did not join forces with the Brenner protesters. 11 protesters were arrested and charged with “besetting premises” and “willful trespass in a public place,” though this was later overturned in court.
A group called “the Nesheron Gathering” in Amman, Jordan is intimidating stores into not selling Israeli products through depictions of a bloody Israeli flag over the products in question.
The most famous example of BDS intimidation in support of economic boycott was the furor over Scarlett Johansson appearing in a Sodastream ad that would air during the 2014 Super Bowl. Due to Johansson’s celebrity status, BDS proponents were unable to use the usual intimidation tactics that had served them in the past. Having failed to force FOX to pull the ad they helplessly attacked Johansson from the safety of the Internet: creating insulting depictions of her in memes, videos, and cartoons, which they then spread through social media. BDS supporters also tried to convince Oxfam, a charity for which Johansson is a global ambassador, to fire her over the ad. However, Johansson took the initiative and resigned, leaving BDS with nothing but anger.
In London, UK, there was an Israeli cosmetic store in Covent Garden. It sold Ahava products, which have long been a target for BDS, and so weekly protests took place there for four years. Four demonstrators were arrested and forced to pay a fine in 2011 after they chained themselves to a concrete block inside the store. However, the store was ultimately forced to close when the landlord did not renew its lease due to complaints from nearby store owners who claimed that the riots had affected their sales. “On some Saturdays it was a real nightmare being here,” one said. “We couldn’t walk on the street because of the protests and the area looked like a scene of a terrorist attack.”
In Birmingham, UK, 100 demonstrators gathered to protest at Tesco store in Hodge Hill, claiming to be inspired by the current conflict in Gaza. They entered the shop and immediately began destroying property there, taking pictures of the damaged products and spreading them through social media. According to witnesses, they were “getting aggressive” toward innocent shoppers and staff.
“If they say it was peaceful. It was anything but a peaceful protest inside the store.”
One person was arrested for assaulting a police officer and two more were escorted off the premises. Local MP (and BDS ally) Shabana Mahmood condemned the boycotters:
“Shoving people, intimidating people and throwing things as I am told happened by a small group of people at the Hodge Hill Tesco on Saturday are not the actions of people committed to taking part in a peaceful protest movement. It’s criminal behaviour that damages the cause that we fight for.”
In Cape Town, South Africa a group of boycott supporters proved their anti-Semitic and radical nature by bringing a severed pigs head into a store that carried Israeli products, ostensibly to prevent “people who will not eat pork to pretend that they are eating clean meat, when it is sold by hands dripping with the blood of Palestinian children.” It’s hard to see how this could be interpreted as anything other than an attempt to keep Jewish people out of the store. Although this group was not a part of the South African BDS campaign, the BDSers wasted no time in justifying their behavior. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies treated the incident as a hate crime.
