The BDS Playbook

[shira]

There is a clinical term for an individual (BDS'er) whose lack of empathy for others makes them particularly effective at emotional manipulation: sociopath.

cont'd...

5. Despite the degree to which BDS advocates count on other people’s empathetic reaction to human suffering, the boycotters themselves possess no such empathy. This is why it is so easy for them to ignore or slough off demands that they respond to images or descriptions of suffering Israelis, or Palestinians and other Arabs whose suffering cannot be laid at the foot of the Jewish state. There is a clinical term for an individual whose lack of empathy for others makes them particularly effective at emotional manipulation: sociopath. And it is vital to understand how much the manipulative power of BDS rests on their representing that rare and dangerous phenomenon: the sociopathic political movement.

This lack of genuine sympathy with others makes it easy for the boycotters to bring their BDS resolutions before organizations again and again and again, no matter how many times they are rejected and no matter what harm they cause others by dragging the Middle East conflict into other people’s civic life. This is because, for the boycotters, targeted civic groups are not entities made up of real people with their own challenges and needs. Rather, such groups exist for the sole purpose of passing their anti-Israel resolutions.

Such relentlessness is also stoked by the fact that the BDS crowd considers it a victory if they can subject a group like a university Student Senate to hours and hours of anti-Israel invective, hoping that – even if they lose the vote – their steady drip of bile will eventually convince the public that Israel must be a pretty horrible place if people are saying so many horrible things about it.

An agenda built around poisoning the minds of the public is one of the reasons BDS advocates can claim that even if they lose a battle (like a student government vote) they are still winning a longer war, an argument our side often accepts (for better or worse).

But also remember that a political movement must be able to demonstrate actual success, something that’s been in short supply if you consider how Israel’s economy has boomed during the same decade and a half the boycotters have worked tirelessly to bring it to its knees. Such an empty record makes BDS reliant on creating the image (or, more accurately, the illusion) of momentum, and a political project that relies on fantasy is always going to be vulnerable to those who choose strategies and tactics based on reality.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/07/10/the-bds-playbook/