The list of people who oppose the BDS movement includes those who have either voiced opposition to the BDS movement, accused it of antisemitism, or spoken out against comprehensive boycotts against Israel. It does not include people who have been unwilling to commit to a boycott of Israel, only those actively opposing it.
Name | Occupation | Country | Year | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Brian A. Cunningham | Politician | United States | 2022 | [1] |
Nas Daily | YouTuber | Israel | ? | |
Robert Kraft | Owner of New England Patriots | United States | ? | |
Joe Biden | President | United States | 2020 | [2] |
Helen Mirren | Actor | England | 2016 | [3] |
Arthur Orr | Politician | United States | 2016 | [4] |
Boris Johnson | Prime Minister | United Kingdom | 2019 | [5] |
Barack Obama | President | United States | 2012 | [6] |
Theresa May | Prime Minister | United Kingdom | 2018 | [7] |
Aziz Maraka | Singer | Jordan | 2020 | [8] |
Sari Nusseibeh | Professor of Philosophy | Palestine | 2014 | [9] |
Reuven Rivlin | President | Israel | 2016 | [10] |
José María Aznar | Prime Minister | Spain | 2015 | [11] |
Jan Bartošek | Politician | Czech Republic | 2019 | [12] |
David Cameron | Prime Minister | United Kingdom | 2014 | [13] |
Gilad Erdan | Strategic Affairs Minister | Israel | [14] | |
Steve McCabe | Member of Parliament | United Kingdom | 2021 | [15] |
Israel Katz | Intelligence Minister | Israel | [16] | |
Rachel Riley | Television presenter and mathematician | United Kingdom | [17] | |
Sharon Osbourne | Television personality | United Kingdom | [17] | |
Thom Yorke | Singer | United Kingdom | 2017 | [18] |
Abraham Foxman | Lawyer | United States | 2013 | [19] |
Ritchie Torres | Politician | United States | 2020 | [20] |
Adam Milstein | Real-estate investor, lobbyist and philanthropist | United States | 2016 | [21] |
Yishai Fleisher | Settler and spokesperson | Israel | ? | [22] |
Hillary Clinton | Politician | United States | 2015 | [23] |
Justin Trudeau | Prime Minister | Canada | 2019 | [24] |
Alan Dershowitz | Lawyer | United States | 2013 | [25] |
Cary Nelson | English professor | United States | 2018 | [26] |
Deborah Lipstadt | Holocaust historian | United States | 2019 | [27] |
Judea Pearl | Academic | United States | 2018 | [28] |
Mordechai Kedar | Politician | Israel | ? | [29] |
Ed Asner | Actor | United States | 2017 | [30] |
Stephen Fry | Actor | United Kingdom | 2019 | [17] |
Yossi Beilin | Politician and scholar | Israel | ? | [31] |
J. K. Rowling | Writer | United Kingdom | ? | [32] |
Charles Krauthammer | Pundit | United States | 2014 | [33] |
Lisa Nandy | Politician | United Kingdom | 2021 | [34] |
Nick Cave | Singer and author | Australia | 2017 | [35] |
John Lydon | Singer | United Kingdom | 2010 | [36] |
Gene Simmons | Musician | United States | 2011 | [37] |
Paul McCartney | Singer and musician | United Kingdom | 2008 | [38] |
John Lewis | Politician and civil rights leader | United States | 2019 | |
Jamaal Bowman | Politician | United States | 2021 | |
John Fetterman | Politician | United States | 2023 | |
Eric Adams | Politician | United States | 2022 |
The Biden campaign published something on their website called "Joe Biden and the Jewish Community: A Record and a Plan of Friendship, Support and Action." It highlights some policy objectives and the presumptive nominee's "unstinting support for Israel." It also declares that a Biden administration would "firmly reject the BDS movement, which singles out Israel — home to millions of Jews — and too often veers into anti-Semitism, while letting Palestinians off the hook for their choices."
That same year, Orr also sponsored a senate resolution condemning the BDS movement.
The Strategic Affairs Ministry, headed by Likud minister Gilad Erdan, has for years been spearheading an international campaign to counter what it sees as "de-legitimization" of the State of Israel. This project has, in large part, involved providing funds and handing down directives to non-governmental organizations and journalists in order to enlist them in the fight against BDS.
If you see it from their perspective, you can understand that they are saying we have got to somehow shutdown this thing called "the settlements," but at the end of the day the symbol of it is very clear. It is the same thing the Nazis did by boycotting Jewish stores. It's really economic warfare. It's really a civilian form of warfare. Don't forget that besiegement and starvation are forms of warfare, and this is kind of a civilian form of the same type of effort to starve somebody out, close them down, and delegitimize them.
We need to repudiate efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS is the latest front in this battle. Demonizing Israeli scientists and intellectuals, evenyoung students, comparing Israel to South African apartheid, now no nation is above criticism. But this is wrong and it should stop immediately.
We have to recognise that there are things that aren't acceptable, not because of foreign policy concerns, but because of Canadian values," Trudeau said. "It's not right to discriminate or make someone feel unsafe on campus because of their religion and unfortunately the BDS movement is often linked to those kinds of things," he said, after being asked by a member of the audience whether he would reverse his anti-BDS stance. "So yes, sir, I will continue to condemn the BDS movement.
BDS is a movement that is trying to eradicate Israel altogether. They are following exactly what the Arabs did from 1948 until the mid 60's, when Arabs boycotted companies which dealt with Israel. They also boycotted companies which worked with companies that worked with Israel—a secondary boycott. Companies like Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Coca Cola did not work in Israel until the '70s and even into '80s because of the Arab boycott. The anti-Jewish boycotters of Israel combined with the Arab/Islamic immigrants in America and Europe are trying to do it again. We already experienced this boycott—it is nothing new and it doesn't work.
I am against a boycott against myself. I don't think Israel as a state should be boycotted. The BDS movement fails to make the difference between Israel and the Occupied Territories, which in my view is a big mistake. I don't support a boycott against settlements either, but I can understand people who don't want to buy settlement products because they don't want to encourage this enterprise.