JVP Academic Council: Affirming our Commitment to BDS

The Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), is one that must be honored by all those committed to acting in opposition to state oppression and in solidarity with Palestinian struggles. BDS involves engaging in boycotts, that is, refusing to collaborate with, and support, Israeli cultural and educational institutions that are complicit with the State of Israel on the grounds that participating normalizes the systematic displacement, subordination, and imprisonment of the Palestinian people and, above all, the ongoing genocidal project against their lives. BDS is a call from the Palestinian people, and in responding to that call, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has taken a stand of solidarity that affirms the lives and the freedoms of the Palestinian people. To do otherwise is to accept the status quo of state violence and ongoing annihilation and to further normalize this continuing destruction. To refuse to be complicit with Israeli institutions, cultural and educational, that are themselves complicit with Israeli state violence is to refuse the normalization of genocide and to stand with, and for, Palestinian lives and their struggle for emancipation.

Deciding as an individual to violate the boycott is an error of hyper-individualism, a break with a form of solidarity that defines the resistance to genocidal practices. That is the lesson we draw from musician-composer Paul Simon’s trampling of the ANC boycott in 1986, but also again the lesson we learn in the wake of author-commentator Peter Beinart’s decision to speak in November 2025, at Tel Aviv University, an institution complicit with the Israeli military. Beinart said he wanted to speak to Zionist Israelis to persuade them to see the truth of the Israeli state’s ongoing genocide. But as the Palestinian-led BDS movement has made clear for decades now, it is not possible to communicate with Zionist Israelis at their complicit institutions without normalizing state violence and betraying the Palestinian people, refusing to heed their call.

Although we appreciate Beinart’s belated recognition of his error, we wonder why his insights into his break with Palestinian solidarity did not come sooner. An apology is always welcome, but to be genuine, it must be followed up with a commitment to repair.  We call upon him now to act in a sustained way to remedy the harms he has done by shifting away from the liberal individualist framework to become a member of a movement that, whatever its internal differences, accepts solidarity with the Palestinian struggle as one of the highest ethical imperatives of our time. So when Palestinian civil society asks us not to normalize relations with the state that over decades has denied them freedom and life itself, we have every reason to heed that call. Declining those invitations to speak at complicit institutions is the least we can do to affirm Palestinian lives and their call to action.

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  We defend employment rights, academic freedom, and rights of association within higher education and confirm the core values of Jewish Voice for Peace.