Fathom – BDS

Book Review | Challenging the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement: Twenty Years of Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns

By Kenneth Waltzer
This collection of essays prepared by Ronnie and Lola Fraser, veteran British anti-BDS activists, assesses how friends of... Read more > October 2023

‘The Monash Soviet’ and Israel: A case study of how the Australian campus far left lost its way after the...

By Philip Mendes
For a half century, for good and for ill, Western universities have been incubating world views which go... Read more > June 2021

Arab Council Takes Aim at Arab Laws Banning Contact with Israeli Citizens: an interview with Mostafa El-Dessouki

By Mostafa El-Dessouki
At a watershed event in London last November, 32 prominent civil society figures from 15 Arab countries publicly... Read more > March 2020

Four things I learned talking to the world’s diplomats about Israel

By Jeremy Havardi
Jeremy Havardi is the Director of the B’nai B’rith UK’s Bureau of International Affairs (BBLBIA). In this candid... Read more > February 2020

The BDS Faith: Judaism without Zion

By William Kolbrener
Jews don’t know what antisemitism is because they don’t have the right definition of Judaism. Such is the... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State

By Eve Garrard
This is a horrifying book. Not because it's a bad book – on the contrary, Cary Nelson has... Read more > November 2019

UK Labour and Israel: the little-noticed shift in party policy

By Luke Akehurst
While the four-year long controversy over antisemitism in UK Labour has monopolised media attention, the 2019 UK Labour... Read more > October 2019

The BDS mindset is a challenge to liberal democracy here, as well as in Israel. Centrists must defend a precious...

By William Kolbrener
William Kolbrener is professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University and the author of several books including Milton’s Warring... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | Behind the Mask: The Antisemitic Nature of BDS Exposed

By Cary Nelson
‘The world would be soooo much better without jews man.’ This post from a social media account appears... Read more > October 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (4) | Ilan Troen responds to Gershon Shafir

By Ilan Troen
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > July 2019

The Re-emergence of the Jewish Question

By Shalom Lappin
The Jewish communities of Europe and the US increasingly find themselves caught between the rising forces of the... Read more > May 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (1) | Cary Nelson Reviews Word Crimes

By Cary Nelson
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > May 2019

From ‘intersectionality’ to the exclusion of Jewish students: BDS makes a worrying turn on US campuses

By Kenneth Waltzer
Kenneth Waltzer is the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, a national US faculty organisation committed to... Read more > July 2018

Book Review | Why Palestine Matters: The struggle to end colonialism

By Cary Nelson
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has published an ideological and political manual for anti-Israel organising ahead of its bi-annual... Read more > May 2018

Book Review | Boycott! The Academy and Justice for Palestine

By Cary Nelson
Sunaina Maira’s book Boycott! The Academy and Justice for Palestine would not ordinarily be a publication of special... Read more > May 2018

Israel70 | Diaspora70: Reflections of an Old Zionist

By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is one of America's foremost political thinkers. To mark Israel’s 70th birthday he urges the embrace... Read more > April 2018

Anti-Zionism and the Humanities: A response to Saree Makdisi

By Cary Nelson and Russell Berman
This lengthy essay by two leading US professors challenges the world of academic publishing. They identify the symptoms... Read more > April 2018

BDS and DSA: the American Left loses its way

By Jo-Ann Mort
Dissent editorial board member Jo-Ann Mort, a cofounder of the Democratic Socialists of America and former vice-chair (and... Read more > Autumn 2017

The Israeli visa law and other own goals in the BDS wars

By Gerald M. Steinberg
It’s time to press reset on Israel’s confused response to the genuine threat of BDS and demonisation. A... Read more > Autumn 2017

A question of moral responsibility: an interview with Hagai El-Ad of B’Tselem

By Hagai El-Ad
Hagai El-Ad is the Executive Director of B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the... Read more > Autumn 2017

The BDS Disinformation Campaign in the Modern Language Association

By Cary Nelson
In this comprehensive essay, Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and co-editor... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Tragic Encounters and Ordinary Ethics: Palestine-Israel in British Universities

By Keith Kahn-Harris
The publication of this book could hardly be better timed. The disturbance at a Friends of Israel Society... Read more > Winter 2016

Lies, Damned Lies and the Academic Boycott of Israel

By Michael Yudkin
Oxford University academic Michael Yudkin critiques the ‘Academic boycott’ promoted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and... Read more > Summer 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | Einat Wilf

By Einat Wilf
Anderson’s One-State Solution ignores the certain fate of the Jews Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s long... Read more > Spring 2016

Two-state solution 2.0: New Israeli thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Toby Greene
A number of proposals for how Israel can act to change the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian arena... Read more > Spring 2016

First Industrial Nation Meets Start-Up Nation

By Alex Brummer
Beyond the headlines, Britain and Israel – the First Industrial Nation’ and the ‘Start-Up Nation’ – are drawing... Read more > Spring 2016

What does the ‘Corbyn Revolution’ mean for the UK Left and Israel?

By Luke Akehurst
Veteran activist and former UK Labour Party National Executive Committee member Luke Akehurst offers an in-depth look at... Read more > Autumn 2015

Book Review│Australia & Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship

By Philip Mendes
Australia and Israel are superficially the oddest of couples. They are geographically distant, and massively different in size.... Read more > Autumn 2015

The Left and the Jews: Time for a Rethink

By Alan Johnson
A shorter version of this talk was delivered as a contribution to a panel discussion on ‘The Left... Read more > Autumn 2015

Building Peace from the Grassroots

By Joel Braunold
On 30 June 2015, Joel Braunold, US Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) spoke to... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review |Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis

By Luke Akehurst
Boycotting Israel is Wrong is a timely short book on the BDS phenomenon by Australian academics Philip Mendes... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: A speech by Shaul Mofaz

By Shaul Mofaz
A speech by former IDF Chief of Staff and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz at the the BICOM-Jewish News ‘UK/Israel... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Yair Lapid in conversation with Bronwen Maddox

By Yair Lapid
Leader of the Yesh Atid party Yair Lapid speaking to Prospect editor Bronwen Maddox the BICOM-Jewish News ‘UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference’. Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review | Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel

By Michael Allen
700 British artists have announced that they are boycotting Israel until the ‘colonial oppression of Palestinians’ ends. In... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism

By Dave Rich
First, the disclosure: Ben Cohen is a friend and comrade who was kind enough to invite me to... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel

By Andrei S. Markovits
The editors deserve major kudos for having compiled an impressive anthology featuring contributions in opposition to the deeply... Read more > Autumn 2014

BDS vs. conflict-resolution

By Sapan Maini-Thompson
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement ignores a key principle of conflict-resolution: severing economic ties risks perpetuating... Read more > Autumn 2014

Britain’s reaction to Operation Protective Edge

By Toby Greene
The UK’s response to the recent Gaza conflict demonstrates, not for the first time, the role that domestic... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel

By Robert Fine
It is a feature of our times that certain aspects of what Israel has become – notably its... Read more > Autumn 2014

The Philosophy behind ‘BDS’: a review of ‘Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics’

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
What is one to make of a volume of specialised essays in contemporary philosophy – a compilation including... Read more > Spring 2014