The current obsession with BDS reflects a changing political environment for Israel. Concealment at source of damning information is no longer easy, so the battle must be taken to those who disseminate this information. The urgency has grown as artists refuse to visit, universities sever ties, churches pull their investments and companies back out of deals.
Israel's far-right culture minister, Miri Regev, scored a significant victory last month in her self-declared war on the country's cultural establishment. Israel's national theatre company, Habima, it was revealed, had agreed to perform for the first time in Kiryat Arba, a notoriously violent settlement next to the Palestinian city of Hebron.
Israel’s large Palestinian minority held its first-ever conference on BDS in defiance of anti-boycott legislation introduced five years ago that exposes activists to harsh financial penalties. One participant called it a sign that the Palestinian minority was slowly emerging from the law’s “reign of terror”. The question of how feasible it is for Israel’s 1.6 million Palestinian citizens to promote BDS was high on the conference agenda.
