The BDS movement

What it is

BDS stands for boycott, divestment and sanctions. It began with a document. On July 9, 2005, more than 170 Palestinian organizations, including unions, professional associations and refugee-rights groups, signed a call asking people around the world to apply those three pressures to Israel. ¹

The call sets three conditions for stopping. It asks Israel to end "its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands" and dismantle the separation barrier, to recognize "the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality," and to respect the right of Palestinian refugees "to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194." ¹

The first two demands are recognizable political demands. Plenty of Israelis argue for both, in those words. The third is the one the fight is actually about. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 is the 1948 text the call invokes for refugee return, and BDS applies it to refugees and their descendants. ¹ The ADL's objection is that a full right of return so defined would end Israel as a Jewish-majority state, which is why it reads the movement's goal as dismantling that state rather than creating a Palestinian one alongside it. ² The call itself is silent on what the final arrangement looks like. It names no borders and no number of states. ¹

That silence is deliberate. Supporters read it as principled refusal to prejudge a negotiation. Critics read it as a plan with the ending left off the page.

Why it still matters

Israel's exports hit a record $169 billion in 2025, past the previous high of just over $166 billion set in 2022, and they got there despite boycotts by several countries. ⁹ If the goal was to make Israel poor enough to change, it did not work.

The clearest corporate case ran the other way. Ben & Jerry's board announced in July 2021 that it would stop selling ice cream in what it called the occupied Palestinian territories. ⁸ On June 29, 2022, its parent company Unilever sold the Israeli business to American Quality Products, the Israeli licensee owned by Avi Zinger that had made and distributed the brand there since 1987, which let sales continue across Israel and the West Bank. ⁸ In between, Colorado invoked its anti-BDS law to divest its state pension fund from Unilever, and a Michigan pension fund sued the company over the same policy. ⁸

Arkansas required companies contracting with the state to certify they would not boycott Israel. ⁵ The Arkansas Times, a newspaper that took advertising from a state college, refused to sign and sued. ⁵ A three-judge panel ruled for the paper in February 2021, the full Eighth Circuit reheard the case and upheld the law on June 22, 2022, and the Supreme Court declined to take it on February 21, 2023. ⁵ The Eighth Circuit's reasoning, in the ACLU's summary, was that "the First Amendment does not protect the right to participate in a boycott." ⁶ Federal courts in Kansas, Arizona, Texas and Georgia had struck down similar laws. ⁶ The split is unresolved, which means whether refusing to buy Israeli goods is protected speech currently depends on which federal circuit you live in.

Israel legislated too. On March 7, 2017, the Knesset voted 46 to 28 to bar entry to foreigners who publicly call for boycotting Israel, its institutions or its settlements, where the call could reasonably lead to a boycott. ⁷ The ADL, which spends considerable effort opposing BDS, opposed this law as well, posting that Israel's open society is its best defense against BDS and that the law "harms rather than helps." ⁷

The line between criticism and delegitimization gets drawn in two different places by two documents.

The IHRA working definition of antisemitism, adopted in 2016 and used by the US State Department since 2010, comes with examples of when hostility to Israel crosses over. ⁴ It also says plainly that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." ⁴ The word doing the work is similar. Singling out the one Jewish state for treatment no other state gets is the tell.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, launched March 25, 2021 by 210 scholars and since signed by more than 400, was written partly as a corrective. ³ Its guideline 14 says boycott, divestment and sanctions "are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic." ³

Both can be true, depending on what a campaign asks for and who it applies that standard to. The ADL's position is that many of the movement's founding goals are antisemitic because they reject the Jewish people's right of self-determination while asserting the same right for Palestinians, and it separates that judgment from criticism of Israeli policy, which it does not call antisemitic. ²

Our view: the second demand is a demand a decent person can make. The third, as written, asks Israel to agree in advance to stop being the thing it was founded to be, and no country negotiates that. The movement wrote that demand in 2005 and has never taken it back. ¹

The words you'll hear

The 2005 call. The founding document, signed July 9, 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, laying out the three demands. ¹

Right of return. The third demand, framed as the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties under UN Resolution 194. ¹ The ADL argues that applying it to refugees and their descendants would end Israel as a Jewish state. ²

Anti-BDS law. A US state statute conditioning government contracts or pension investments on not boycotting Israel. Arkansas's version survived the Eighth Circuit and a Supreme Court cert denial in February 2023. ⁵

IHRA definition. The 2016 working definition of antisemitism with examples covering Israel-related hostility, which also states that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country is not antisemitic. ⁴

Jerusalem Declaration. A 2021 alternative definition signed by hundreds of scholars, whose guideline 14 holds that BDS is not in itself antisemitic. ³

Entry ban law. Israel's March 2017 amendment barring entry to foreigners who publicly call for boycotting Israel or its settlements, passed 46 to 28. ⁷