Shopping at Target "Do I want a Sodastream? ...Nah, I don't need one."
SWAT Team runs over "YOU WILL BUY THE SODASTREAM OR WE WILL SHOOT! PUT THE SODASTREAM IN YOUR CART AND KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!"
You can quietly participate, but if you openly promote it to other people you'll get fired or whatever
Start a group of "People who will not buy Sodastreams because we do not want Sodastreams." And we keep talking about how we simply do not want Sodastreams. If anyone brings up Israel and Palestine, we simply say "this group has no opinion on that, we're just simply a group of people who do not want Sodastreams".
"This is a list of products that we won't buy for no specific political reason"
I'll see that and raise you one:
Make an explicitly pro-IDF warcrime space online and then associate brands and celebrities who would be a part of an Israel boycott and make posts about why we need to support x in order to support the continued displacement of Palestinians and to get the Jabalia refugee camp bombed a third time etc.
Make it the most morally-detestable space to be in and make it unabashedly pro-Israel lobby/business to associate the most negative aspects of Israel with brands.
Also spend a reasonable of time denouncing BDS too.
This is how you run a grassroots counter-COINTELPRO op. Turnabout play is fair.
I don’t think I have the stomach for that. You just know some weird asshats would join unironically.
That's fair enough. I can understand why.
But it's worth mentioning that this is the end-goal of a COINTELPRO op of this nature.
You are going to attract the most unhinged types to that space. In fact, this is exactly what you want to happen.
It should become like a rogue's gallery of the absolute worst of the worst. It should be like Black Hammerification or the MAGA Communismification of pro-Israel discourse.
Once it has legs you can just let it run loose and you can even start using it to pick out the worst of the lowlights to showcase just how atrocious the anti-BDS movement is, MEMRI TV-style.
The NAFO movement is also ripe for the same sort of counter-COINTELPRO op imo.
You call them weird asshats. I call them people who will help the counter-COINTELPRO cause for free.
It's more along the lines of preventing and punishing collective action
If you tried to organize BDS actions at your workplace or tried to set up a protest at a business that works with Israel, that's when those laws would come into play
Basically, they're just trying to preempt known effective strategies
Your receive government funding/contracts - get fucked. You are elected - get fucked.
Entrapment by leaving an option of store-brand hummus next to Sabra
This is my understanding:
If an individual wants to boycott Israel or promote boycotting Israel, they can. The anti-BDS laws don’t apply.
If you run a business or an org and you want to boycott Israel, you can do that too.
Where the anti-BDS laws come in, is if your business or org is engaging in a boycott of Israel, then the government that has passed anti-BDS laws cannot work with you, buy your products, etc. Most businesses engage with the government in some way, so they don’t bother (not that most businesses would, anyway). Kinda how the Cuban blockade works - you can trade with Cuba, but if you do you can’t trade with the US and virtually no one is gonna pick Cuba over the US.
Also, if your state passes a law that bans BDS, and say your city or county council wants to boycott Israeli products, that would be against the law.
To my knowledge no one - even a government employee - can be jailed for personally boycotting Israel or advocating for a boycott.
yeah, this is mostly right. however there have been cases where these laws were applied to an individual who was supposed to, say, receive reimbursement or speaking fees from a public university. And under the legal argument most of these laws are based on/making, they assert that the boycott itself is not speech (though speech advocating for a boycott is), and therefore not constitutionally protected, so future iterations of these laws could conceivably make it illegal to boycott israel as an individual.
also iirc some cases have happened where state employees were required to sign a loyalty pledge, but maybe they were technically contractors
Ben and Jerry's stopped selling in occupied Palestine a while back. It was then sold to an Israeli company after the state of NJ pulled almost $200 million worth of shares from B&J's parent company.
As others have said it's more for preventing collective action, thought this was a good example of exactly how.
Some states maintain a black list of companies or individuals who boycott Israel. The government refuses any funding or contracts to companies on the blacklist.
