[30][29] Colin Shindler argues that the Oslo peace process's failure created a political void that allowed what had been a marginal rejectionist attitude to Israel to enter the European far-left mainstream in the form of proposals for a boycott.

She argues that BDS represents a rejection of the peace process paradigm of equalizing both sides in favor of seeing the situation as a colonial conflict between a native population and a settler-colonial state supported by Western powers.

[33][34][35] According to the archaeologist and ancient historian Alex Joffe, BDS is merely the spearhead of a larger anti-Western juggernaut in which the dialectic between communism and Islam remains unresolved, and has antecedents in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Muslim Brotherhood.

[40] Co-founder of the movement Omar Barghouti, citing South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has written: "I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master.

The entire spectrum of Zionist parties in Israel and their supporters in the West, with few exceptions, ostensibly accept this unjust and illegal formula as the "only offer" on the table for the Palestinians—or else the menacing Israeli bludgeon.BDS sees itself as a movement for all Palestinians, whether they live in the diaspora or in historical Palestine.

[50] To support that view, they cite prominent anti-apartheid activists such as Desmond Tutu and South African politician Ronnie Kasrils, who both have said that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is "worse" than apartheid.

Accepting modern-day Jewish-Israelis as equal citizens and full partners in building and developing a new shared society, free from all colonial subjugation and discrimination, as called for in the democratic state model, is the most magnanimous, rational offer any oppressed indigenous population can present to its oppressors.

[76] Barghouti contends that the "peace industry", the many dialogue initiatives launched in the 1990s in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, has not helped the Palestinians at all because they are based on the idea that the conflict is between two equals, rather than about one group oppressing another.

[98] The BNC encourages supporters to select targets based on their complicity in Israel's human rights violations, potential for cross-movement solidarity, media appeal, and likelihood of success.

BDS attributed the sell-off to its campaign, but Richard Dujardin, a member of Transdev's executive committee, said: "I will not say that it is pleasant to be chased by people saying we are not good guys all the time but really it was a business decision.

[121] BDS runs a boycott campaign against the multinational information technology company Hewlett-Packard's two successors, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which it says are complicit in "Israel's occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid regime".

[150] Universities have been primary targets of the BDS movement, according to English professor Cary Nelson, "because faculty and students can become passionate about justice, sometimes without adequate knowledge about the facts and consequences.

"[166] Nevertheless, on 9 March 2020, the university Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies confirmed an official recommendation to Paxson and the corporation, the university's highest governing body, to divest from "any company that profits from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land" and referred to the United Nations Human Rights Council's list of possible criteria for divestment contained in a report on the List of companies operating in West Bank settlements.

[169] Judea Pearl believes that to BDS supporters it is irrelevant whether a particular resolution passes or not because the real goal is to keep the debate alive and influence future policymakers to find fault with Israel.

Now we are saying, in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ashkelon or Ariel, we won't play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians.

[208] According to Haaretz columnist and Brown University student Jared Samilow, BDS's most significant impact is the social cost it puts upon Jews living outside Israel.

[227] On 23 March 2022, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) voted 768 to 167 to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli institutions for their "complicity in Israel's violations of human rights and international law through their provision of direct assistance to the military and intelligence establishments."

[233] The organizers of the weeklong Rototom Sunsplash music festival held in Spain in 2015 canceled the scheduled appearance of Jewish American rapper Matisyahu after he refused to sign a statement supporting a Palestinian state.

Citing the surge in foreign trade and relations Israel experienced since 2005, including the normalization agreements with Arab Gulf countries, Pfeffer called BDS "the most failed, overhyped and exaggerated campaign of the first two decades of the 21st century" and a "minor creed in the cultural and identity shadow wars on the Internet and a tiny handful of campuses in the west", writing that it "failed on every front with the minor exception of bullying a handful of singers and academics not to take part in concerts or conferences in Israel."

[293] On 17 May 2017, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged Danish minister of foreign affairs Anders Samuelsen to stop funding Palestinian organizations supporting the BDS movement.

[299] On 7 February 2019, Copenhagen mayor of technical and environmental affairs Ninna Hedeager Olsen of the Danish party Enhedslisten gave three BDS activists known as the Humboldt 3 an award for their work "to reveal the Apartheid-like nature of the Israeli regime and its systematic violation of international law.

[309] In April 2015, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, Quebec, Canada, representing 325,000 workers in nearly 2,000 unions, voted to join the campaign for BDS and support a military embargo against Israel.

[314] The same year, the Maccabee Task Force was set up, led by David Brog, with the mission "to ensure that those who seek to delegitimize Israel and demonize the Jewish people are confronted, combatted and defeated".

[324] David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has said that boycotts have long been regarded as a legitimate form of expression, that such legislation against BDS appears to "repress a particular political viewpoint" while failing international legal criteria for "permissible restraints on speech" insofar as these laws contradict Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a covenant to which the United States is a signatory.

The agency, dedicated to fighting neo-Nazi and domestic extremist threats, investigated BDS after Hamas's 7 October attacks on Israel, after which BDS-affiliated groups intensified anti-Israel protests.

[333][334] Peace researcher Gert Krell has called this comparison "highly questionable, if not pure demagogy", highlighting the difference between objecting to a military occupation and targeting a powerless minority in a totalitarian state.

The instigators should be "handled uncompromisingly, publicly or covertly", the report stated, but the long tail should be won over by persuasion, as a heavy-handed approach would risk driving them closer to the "anti-Israel camp".

"Despite receiving expanded authority in 2013 to run the government's campaign against the delegitimization and boycott efforts against Israel, the Strategic Affairs Ministry did not make full use of its budget and had no significant achievements in this area," Haaretz quotes the report as saying.

[374] Maia Hallward attributes BDS's Jewish support to two factors: the long history of social justice activism among Jews and the desire among activists to defuse allegations of antisemitism.

Anti-boycott legislation is, in this view, tantamount to punishing companies that follow their international legal responsibilities by complying with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that require them to stop operating in settlements.