It's more complicated than that because of the regional politics- Bernie and I actually are on the same "Sanctions a la South Africa are good, but need to be done independently of the BDS framework" page here. When Israel was originally attempting to form, the Arab League put in place a boycott aimed at preventing that from happening. (It obviously didn't succeed.) The BDS movement involves many of those same countries that originally participated in the original Arab League boycotts. And so some view the current BDS stuff as an spiritual successor of those original anti-Israel-existing boycotts, which is why some who would support action don't support those specific ones, because they don't want to give that impression to people inadvertently.
BDS is not ran by countries, it has some support in Muslim countries, but I'm really not sure I understand why that should be disqualifying.
Also, this is not the first time I see people saying the BDS is continuation of the Arab League boycott, but I never seen any compelling evidence for that. I mean, the Arab Boycott was a collection of Arab League council decisions and government actions,
BDS started mostly in the US and Europe by Palestinians.
But like, why would that matter?
Like, let's say that BDS is indeed a secret astroturf operation that is started by..... who? Syria? Iraq? KSA? maaaan, there aren't really good candidates for that in the Arab League. But whatever, let's say that they did and they covered their way so good that there isn't definitive evidence for that, how would you imagine things play out?
Like, BDS will achieve its
fake stated goals and the Palestinians gets equal rights, and then they say "hahahaha, tricked you liberals, we really want to kill all the jews, and you must continue to boycott Israel now because you promised!"
I mean, how would that work?
What the actual fear here?
p.s.
I always hear people "I'm for totally for sanctions against Israel, just not with BDS", but I never hear which other boycott campaign they will participate.
So come on, pick one, it's not hard, I mean, it's just a fucking list of products made in Israel, you can google it yourself and start right now boycott movement, one that is 100% clear of the influence of the Arab league.