Haaretz reports on a campaign to expose BDS activists with a view to jeopardising their employment prospects.
“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a female narrator intones in a slick video posted to the website’s YouTube account.
Opponents of the BDS movement are divided about this initiative. Daniel Pipes is enthusiastic:
“Factually documenting who one’s adversaries are and making this information available is a perfectly legitimate undertaking,” Pipes wrote in an email. “Collecting information on students has particular value because it signals them that attacking Israel is serious business, not some inconsequential game, and that their actions can damage both Israel and their future careers.”
Rebecca, over on Mystical Politics, opposes such a move:
In almost all cases, people’s political views and activism are totally irrelevant to their employment. For example, if a Ph.D. student in chemistry supports BDS, is that a reason that he or she should be turned down for a job in a chemistry lab?
Those of us who oppose BDS should not engage in McCarthyite tactics against those we disagree with politically. We should take on BDS as a political movement, and argue against it and organize against it based on why we think BDS proposals are wrong. We should never engage in ad hominem attacks on individuals, nor should we threaten people who advocate BDS in any way. The United States is a democratic country, and we should seek to defeat political ideas and actions that we disagree with through democratic means.
And I can’t disagree with Max Geller, one of the site’s targets:
I think it’s creepy and I think it’s McCarthyist.
Also of interest is this article on Spiked, urging people not to boycott the boycotters.
Hat Tip: Aloevera
