List of people who oppose the BDS movement include 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 |
Jewish Voice for Peace is an American anti-Zionist left-wing Jewish advocacy organization that is critical of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
The IsraelFootball Association is the governing body of football in Israel. It organizes a variety of association football leagues where the highest level is the Israeli Premier League; as well as national cups such as the Israel State Cup, the Toto Cup, and the Israel Super Cup; also, the Israel national football team. The IFA was founded in 1948 as the Palestine Football Association and is based in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. The Association is controversial due to its inclusion of clubs playing in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Engage is a British website, and briefly an online journal, that aims to help people counter the boycott Israel campaign. Engage describes its mission as to "challenge left and liberal antisemitism in the labour movement, in our universities and in public life."
StandWithUs (SWU) is a nonprofit right-wing pro-Israel advocacy organization founded in Los Angeles in 2001 by Roz Rothstein, Jerry Rothstein, and Esther Renzer.
Mondoweiss is a news website that began as a general-interest blog written by Philip Weiss on The New York Observer website. It subsequently developed into a broader collaborative venture after fellow journalist Adam Horowitz joined it as co-editor. In 2010, Weiss described the website's purpose as one of covering American foreign policy in the Middle East from a 'progressive Jewish perspective'. In 2011, it defined its aims as fostering greater fairness for Palestinians in American foreign policy, and as providing American Jews with an alternative identity to that expressed by Zionist ideology, which he regards as antithetical to American liberalism. Originally supported by The Nation Institute, it became a project of part of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change in June 2011.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a nonviolent Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. Its objective is to pressure Israel to meet what the BDS movement describes as Israel's obligations under international law, defined as withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and "respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties". The movement is organized and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.
Omar Barghouti is a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He received the Gandhi Peace Award in 2017.
The AMCHA Initiative is a non-advocacy group that combats antisemitism on campuses through investigation, documentation, and education in order to protect Jewish students from assault and fear. In that capacity, it has sought to undermine BDS activities on campuses. AMCHA was founded in 2012 by University of California Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and University of California Los Angeles Professor Emeritus Leila Beckwith. The term Amcha is Hebrew for "your people" or "your nation."
Boycotts of Israel are the refusal and calls to refusal of having commercial or social dealings with Israel in order to influence Israel's practices and policies by means of using economic pressure. The specific objective of Israel boycotts varies; the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement calls for boycotts of Israel "until it meets its obligations under international law", and the purpose of the Arab League's boycott of Israel was to prevent Arab states and others to contribute to Israel's economy. Israeli officials have characterized the BDS movement as antisemitic.
The current campaign for an academic boycott of Israel was launched in April 2004 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign calls for BDS activities against Israel to put international pressure on Israel, in this case against Israeli academic institutions, all of which are said by PACBI to be implicated in the perpetuation of Israeli occupation, in order to achieve BDS goals. Since then, proposals for academic boycotts of particular Israeli universities and academics have been made by academics and organisations in Palestine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. The goal of the proposed academic boycotts is to isolate Israel in order to force a change in Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, which proponents argue are discriminatory and oppressive, including oppressing the academic freedom of Palestinians.
Students for Justice in Palestine is a pro-Palestinian college student activism organization in the United States, Canada and New Zealand. It has campaigned for boycott and divestment against corporations that deal with Israel and organized events about Israel's human rights violations. In 2011, The New York Times reported that "S.J.P., founded in 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley, has become the leading pro-Palestinian voice on campus."
The American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 2006.
Reactions to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) refer to the views of international actors on the BDS movement.
The Amendment No. 28 to the Entry Into Israel Law prohibits the entry into Israel of any foreigner who makes a "public call for boycotting Israel" or "any area under its control" – a reference to the Israeli settlements. It denies entry, visa and residency permits to these affected foreigners.
Canary Mission is a website established in 2014 that compiles dossiers on student activists, professors, and organizations, focusing primarily on those at North American universities, which it considers be anti-Israel or antisemitic, and has said that it will send the names of listed students to prospective employers. Canary Mission listings have been used by the Israeli government and border security officials to interrogate and deny entry to pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) American citizens, and by potential employers.
With regard to the Arab–Israeli conflict, many supporters of the State of Israel have often advocated or implemented anti-BDS laws, which effectively seek to retaliate against people and organizations engaged in boycotts of Israel-affiliated entities. Most organized boycotts of Israel have been led by Palestinians and other Arabs with support from much of the Muslim world. Since the Second Intifada in particular, these efforts have primarily been coordinated at an international level by the Palestinian-led BDS movement, which seeks to mount as much economic pressure on Israel as possible until the Israeli government allows an independent Palestinian state to be established. Anti-BDS laws are designed to make it difficult for anti-Israel people and organizations to participate in boycotts; anti-BDS legal resolutions are symbolic and non-binding parliamentary condemnations, either of boycotts of Israel or of the BDS movement itself. Generally, such condemnations accuse BDS of closeted antisemitism, charging it with pushing a double standard and lobbying for the de-legitimization of Israeli sovereignty, and are often followed by laws targeting boycotts of Israel.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) is a document meant to outline the bounds of antisemitic speech and conduct, particularly with regard to Zionism, Israel and Palestine. Its creation was motivated by a desire to confront antisemitism and by objections to the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, which critics have said stifles legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and curbs free speech. The drafting of the declaration was initiated in June 2020 under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem by eight coordinators, most of whom were university professors. Upon its completion the declaration was signed by about 200 scholars in various fields and released in March 2021.
Anti-Palestinianism or anti-Palestinian racism, refers to prejudice, collective hatred, and discrimination directed at the Palestinian people for any variety of reasons. Since the mid-20th century, the phenomenon has largely overlapped with anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians today are Arabs and Muslims. Historically, however, anti-Palestinianism was more closely identified with European antisemitism, as far-right Europeans detested the Jewish people as undesirable foreigners from Palestine. Modern anti-Palestinianism—that is, xenophobia with regard to the Arab people of Palestine—is most common in Israel, the United States, and Lebanon, among other countries.
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.