WHY THE DEBATE OVER THE BOYCOTT/DIVESTMENT/SANCTIONS (BDS) MOVEMENT MATTERS

Voltaire said: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” A difficult standard not always lived up to by Voltaire—who often used invective (including anti-Semitic invective) to try to silence his own critics.

In researching and writing the Wiesenthal Center’s new critique of the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) Movement—Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) Against Israel: An Anti-Semitic, Anti-Peace Poison Pill (link: http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/REPORT_313.PDF)—I was struck, again as I have been in the past, by an unfortunate paradox. In the United States—with the freest of free speech charters—political debate is poorer and more constrained than it is, for example, in the UK without a First Amendment. I won’t defend my argument here other than to point to the contrast in quality between televised coverage of the debates on the floor of the U.S. Congress with those in the House of Commons. (more…)