CreativeDominant
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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Omar Bhagouti is widely identified as one of the founders and leaders of the BDS movement. In a interview he explains the movement's goals and strategies:'
"Q.A common accusation against the international BDS campaign is that it feeds on anti-Semitism. What do you say to that?
A. BDS is a non-violent human rights movement that seeks freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian people, based on international law and universal principles of human rights. As such, BDS has consistently and categorically rejected all forms of discrimination and racism, including anti-Semitism as well as dozens of racist laws in Israel.
“Our non-violent struggle has never been against Jews or Israelis as Jews, but against an unjust regime that enslaves our people with occupation, apartheid and denial of the refugees’ UN-stipulated rights. We are proud of the disproportionately high number of Jewish activists in the BDS movement, especially in the U.S.
“Conflating time-honored, human-rights-based boycotts of Israel’s violations of international law with anti-Jewish racism is not only false, it is a racist attempt to put all Jews into one basket and to implicate them in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.
“Israel’s charge of racism against the BDS movement is akin to the Ku Klux Klan accusing Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks of racism! It is so blatantly propagandistic.”
http://972mag.com/interview-the-man-behind-the-bds-movement/107771/
Read the full interview at the link to hear the BDS movement explain itself, its goals and strategies. The magazine/site ( http://972mag.com ) that published the interview is a good source for independent human rights based analysis of the broader Palestine/Israel conflict. There is an in-depth section on the BDS movement that contains news, perspectives and information most people are unlikely to encounter in the mainstream media, that will help enormously in understanding the reasons why BDS is needed and the movement's aims and strategies.
Thank God there is mainstream coverage of BDS:
There is considerable debate about the scope, efficacy, and morality of the BDS movement. Critics argue that the BDS movement promotes the delegitimization of Israel.[5][6] BDS supporters argue that both the movement (and criticism of the movement) are similar to the earlier boycotts of South Africa during its apartheid era,[7][8][9] a comparison that the critics categorically reject on the grounds of dissimilarity of the regimes in almost every aspect.[10]
The effectiveness of the movement has been questioned. Reports from both in and outside of Israel has indicated that the movement has had very little impact on the Israeli economy, and won't for the foreseeable future...[11][12][13][14][15]
...The Economist in 2007 called the boycott "flimsy" and ineffective, noted that "blaming Israel alone for the impasse in the occupied territories will continue to strike many outsiders as unfair," and pointed out that the Palestinian leadership did not support the boycott.[185] By early 2014, however, they noted that the campaign, "[o]nce derided as the scheming of crackpots", was "turning mainstream" in the eyes of many Israelis...[186]
...In July 2014, Noam Chomsky warns that the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign could end up harming the Palestinian cause since the demand for a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees has failed to muster significant international support. He also said "if we boycott Tel Aviv University because Israel violates human rights at home, then why not boycott Harvard because of far greater violations by the United States?".[190]
In September 2014, over 620 academics, most of whom are based in North America and Israel, signed an online petition which states that the undersigned "vigorously support free speech and free debate but we oppose faculty or student boycotts of Israel’s academic institutions, scholars and students." The petition states that the BDS movement "violates the very principle of academic freedom" and charges that it engages in "accusations and narratives" that are derived from "overstatements, cherry picked evidence, outright falsehood" or "disputed or highly biased data." Academics who have signed the petition include Alan Dershowitz, Eric Alterman, Judea Pearl and Deborah Dash Moore.[191][192]
Effect on Palestinians
Some critics note that the Palestinian economy is heavily dependent on Israel. While the BDS movement is having very limited impact on the Israeli economy, Palestinians are being hit harder. Israeli companies employ over 110,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whom make three to five times the wages than they would locally. The BDS movement has caused Palestinians to lose their jobs working for Israeli companies...[15]
...The Palestinian Authority officially supports "a boycott only against products made in West Bank settlements". Although the authority rejects Israeli occupation and settlements in the West Bank, an advisor to Abbas said, "We are neighbors with Israel, we have agreements with Israel, we recognize Israel, we are not asking anyone to boycott products of Israel."[195]
The long-standing pro-Palestinian activist and political scientist Norman Finkelstein deemed the BDS movement a "cult". He argued that the worldwide movement was overly controlled by the Ramallah headquarters, made irrealistic claims so as to hide a wish to destroy Israel, and accused the movement of exaggerating its achievements and its capacity, most notably by maintaining that it represents the entire pro-Palestine movement. Finkelstein also asserted that the movement misrepresented and misinterpreted Israel's obligation under international law as defined by the International Court of Justice.[196][197][198][199]
For more, see this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions

“Many of the contributors here have criticized Israeli government policy themselves and recommended basic changes in it,” writes Nelson, the former president of the AAUP. “That, however, leaves unanswered a series of more vexing questions: Does anti-Semitism help explain why Israel is singled out for especially severe international criticism when other states have much worse human rights records? Does anti-Semitism help underwrite demands that Israel literally be eliminated as a Jewish state and be absorbed into a larger Arab-dominated nation? Is the BDS movement as a whole contaminated by clearly anti-Semitic statements by some of its advocates?
Are idealistic BDS advocates responsible for unintended anti-Semitic political and social consequences of the movement?”
“At issue, we should emphasize, is not whether individual BDS advocates are anti-Semitic, though some surely are, but whether the history of anti-Semitic discourse informs BDS reasoning even if supporters are unaware of that,” Nelson writes.
Pertinent to this question are the specifics of the BDS platform, which, opponents point out, doesn’t limit itself to calling for an end of the occupation of the West Bank but rather goes much further to demand the right of Palestinian refugees from 1948 to return to their homes -- a demand that Israel’s advocates argue would result in an Arab-dominated country and the end of Israel as a Jewish state. While Omar Barghouti, a key BDS activist, has emphasized in his writings that the movement is “neutral” on the issue of a one-state versus a two-state political solution, some of BDS’s leading thinkers (including Barghouti and the philosopher Judith Butler) have personally advocated for a one-state solution that Nelson argues would be disastrous and even deadly for a minority Jewish population.
In his essay, “The Problem with Judith Butler” (who is among the BDS movement’s most prominent proponents in American academe), Nelson argues that any solution that involves dissolving the Jewish state is “anti-Semitic in effect” and fueled, “at least obliquely,” by an anti-Semitic legacy that views Jews as "secondary or expendable."
For more:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/03/new-book-questions-link-between-israel-boycott-movement-and-anti-semitism
This is not to say that the BDS campaign is necessarily anti-Semitic. Opponents of the boycott need to make a better case than that. But to sanction Israeli companies and universities until Israel agrees to implode is not quite kosher, either. The boycott movement springs from a noble motive of advocating for a long-suffering underdog. [But the positions BDS pushes are non-starters for Middle East peace negotiations. They can only inspire resentment and retrenchment, not constructive dialogue, among students on college campuses.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/05/campus-politics
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RE: Netanyahoo labels BDS a "strategic threat" - 
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