BDS calls itself a peaceful movement for rights. Read its three demands closely, and the third one says the quiet part out loud: the end of the Jewish state.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement asks for three things, and the first two sound unanswerable: end the occupation, treat Arab citizens equally. Who could object?
But BDS takes no public position on whether Israel should exist at all, by design, so it can hold moderates and eliminationists under one banner. And its third demand quietly does the work the slogans avoid. Here is each demand, what it says, and what it means.
You do not have to infer the goal. The movement states it. Defending the “right of return,” BDS's own material concedes that it would “effectively end the Israeli regime” and its Jewish majority, then insists this is somehow not the elimination of Israel.
Its co-founder, Omar Barghouti, has been plainer still:
“No Palestinian will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
He opposes not just the settlements, not just the occupation, but a Jewish state in any borders. That is the project the first two demands are the friendly face of.
Boycotting Jews is not a new idea. In April 1933 the Nazi state launched “Kauft nicht bei Juden”, do not buy from Jews, stationing brownshirts outside Jewish shops. The medieval world had its versions too. A campaign to make the world refuse Jewish goods carries that history whether it means to or not.
And it is, as ever, a double standard. There is no comparable global movement to boycott China over the Uyghurs, Iran over its hangings, Syria over its barrel bombs, or any of the world's actual tyrannies. Only the one Jewish state draws the campaign. See the double standard →
And it hurts the people it claims to help. When BDS pressure forced the SodaStream factory to close its West Bank plant in 2015, the people who lost their well-paid jobs were the hundreds of Palestinians who worked there alongside Israelis. The boycott is felt first by Palestinian workers, last by the state it is aimed at.