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. It’s too early to gauge how the impact of the blogosphere may change this, but currently in the U.S. not only partisan politics but broader political debate tends too often tends toward two extremes: bland mush or character assassination. One symptom of this sorry state of affairs is the prevalence of the tactic of responding to an intellectual challenge, not with a reasoned answer, but with the ad hominem counter-charge that “you are impugning our character or right to free speech.” Our critique of BDS has already begun to elicit such unhinged criticism. This Report’s purpose is primarily not to question anybody’s motives—though motives do matter—and certainly not to silence debate over West Bank settlements or Israeli government policies. If we are guilty of anything, it is of this: taking the measure of BDS—a movement that’s been gathering momentum in union halls, colleges and universities, the entertainment media, and the churches for over a decade—by taking seriously the BDS’ public history including the words of its most prominent leaders and supporters, their collective actions, and the probable consequences for the Mideast peace process, currently on life support. In my view, for us to characterize as hateful a Movement which aggravates rather than ameliorates hatreds across borders and among peoples is not to indulge in “hate speech.” Alas, the BDS Movement—rather than defend its claims such as that Israel is “an Apartheid State” which must commit national suicide by admitting “the right of return” of five million Palestinians claiming refugee status—specializes in wrapping itself free speech’s raiments to gain entry to the public debate, but then stripping off the civil façade to close down the other side of the debate by every means possible including the iron fist. Take just one recent example from American college and university campuses: In February, UC Berkeley Professor Judith Butler defended a pro-BDS-only discussion of the issues at a Brooklyn College event—that spurned of pleas from Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz and others that alternative points of view be given voice—as a perfect example of academic-freedom-in-action. Among the handful of pro-Israel students to brave the hostile crowd was 23-year-old CUNY graduate student Ari Ziegler: “I heard probably about half of what Judith Butler said when I got kicked out. . . . CUNY police escorted us out and when we asked them what we did wrong they said, ‘we don’t have an answer’.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg, while declaring “I couldn’t disagree more violently with BDS,” told those opposed to an officially-sponsored, taxpayer-funded, no-criticism-allowed event: “If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.” Of course, New Yorkers did not need to take an international flight, but just a subway ride to experience a univocal propaganda circus. Although I’ve studied closely the rise of Hamas and the evolution of Islamist extremism, I don’t hold myself out as an expert on the present or future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, about which I share the view that a true tragedy is not the clash between “right and wrong” but between two conflicting “rights.” When I hear well-meaning people, including many idealistic young Jews, voice concerns that democratic Israel’s government should do more than it has to resolve the settlement issue and achieve a just peace, I listen respectfully. It’s just that—having studied for almost 40 years intergroup relations in this country and around the world—I think I know the difference between movements that promote peace and reconciliation and movements that do the opposite. BDs belongs to the latter category.