Unmasking BDS: Radical Roots, Extremist Ends

In the summer of 2014, Hamas fired more than four thousand rockets, and assaulted Israel using a vast underground network of attack tunnels that reached well into Israeli territory. The Israel Defense Forces responded by targeting the terrorist infrastructure of Gaza, triggering scores of pro-Hamas demonstrations in European and North American cities in which protesters held placards reading 'Free Palestine,' 'End the siege on Gaza,' 'End Israeli Apartheid,' and 'Stop Israeli state terror.'

These public protests demonizing, criminalizing, and delegitimizing Israel also characterize the ongoing boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. Global BDS activists exploited the 2014 Gaza conflict to reinvigorate their political and economic warfare campaign against Israel. On August 20, 2014, at the height of the war, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters in New York City carrying placards that read 'Israel=Racism and Genocide' and Palestine from the river to the sea - a public call for Israel s destruction - also dropped a massive flag from the Manhattan Bridge that read 'Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.'