Divestment and the lies of BDS

The boycott movement against Israel is a complete failure. Israel's hi-tech economy is booming (Covvid aside - tourism was booming too) and BDS has nothing to show for 16 years of effort but a few activists taking selfies next to avocados on a supermarket shelf.

Sure, in confined political student circles, 14 students can force through a pro-BDS vote whilst the 22000 non politically active students on campus are busy with their actual studies, but in the real world - however, all of these students use Israeli hi-tech to communicate with each other.

BDS is a noise that spreads antisemitism, demonises Zionism, and hurts Jews in the diaspora but it doesn't actually do damage to Israel. Worse than this, where it does have some effect, it just ends up hurting Palestinians.

Because of this failure, what the BDS movement is forced to do is engage an absurd fake news strategy - any divestment of any Israeli stock or product for any reason - is promoted as a BDS victory.

For example - even when a football club changes kit supplier - something they all do every few years- if it is the brand of kit used by the Israeli team - BDS will falsely claim it is a 'divestment'. In the end, the embarrassed club can even be forced to issue a statement rejecting the claim. This happened to Luton Town FC just last year. Think for a while how pathetic this all is.

And if the evidence is not even there, they make it all up anyway. BDS and toxic organisations such as the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign just love to spread lies. It is all they have.

The latest PSC fiction

This week provided a perfect example. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign ran with a story that the East Sussex Pension fund had divested from Elbit, a successful Israeli arms company.

The news went around. The official BDS movement bragged about it, the thugs at Palestine Action sang about it, and Middle East Monitor wrote an article in celebration.

Ben Jamal, the hapless director of the PSC followed suit.  Incredibly, an industry magazine, 'Pensions Age' ran with the story too, in an article written by Jack Gray, their Brighton-based 'News Editor'.

Except of course the story is simply not true.

It is true that the PSC has been hounding the fund. During the last meetings of the fund committee - the PSC ran a campaign that got a few of their eager soldiers to write letters to ask the fund to divest from Israeli companies.

But in December, the committee gave a written response - that the PSC saw- and it was made absolutely clear that the fund couldn't actively divest from Elbit.

For more on the "Lies and more lies. PSC and the viral BDS fake news circus" go to David Collier