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This Canadian-Jewish Activist Wants to Boycott Israel; Here’s What She Gets Wrong
In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Canadian-Jewish public personality Naomi Klein advocates for the strengthening of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
According to Klein, Israel’s current war against Hamas in Gaza is further evidence of the Jewish state’s acting with “impunity,” and it is only by widening the influence of the BDS movement that the international community can rein in what she perceives to be Israel’s wrongdoings.
However, to make her case, Klein relies on a whitewashing of the BDS movement, misrepresentations of Israel’s military activities, and false allegations of Israeli apartheid.
Naomi Klein presents BDS as a Palestinian-led movement that seeks to isolate Israel until it “complies with international law and universal principle of human rights.”
For Klein and other proponents of BDS, the movement’s damaging boycotts of the Jewish state and international corporations that do business with it will ultimately force foreign governments to sanction Israel, similar to the campaign against Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.
However, while Klein seeks to present BDS as this virtuous movement seeking only to bring Israel into lockstep with the international community, the reality is much more sinister.
Several BDS leaders have been unabashedly quoted as stating the ultimate end goal of the movement is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the BDS movement, who is presented in Klein’s piece as a moral voice against injustice, has been recorded in the past saying, “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine” and even going so far as to claim that Palestinians have a right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance.”
Thus, it’s clear that it’s not trumped-up charges of Israeli violations of international law that BDS opposes. It’s Israel’s existence as a Jewish state that drives BDS’s international campaigns.
Klein also makes several misleading statements that serve to glorify the boycott movement.
For example, in touting the movement’s righteousness, she claims that BDS is “very clear that it is not calling for individual Israelis to be boycotted because they are Israeli…,” creating the impression that BDS is only focused on boycotting Israeli institutions.
However, a closer look at the movement’s boycott guidelines shows that the BDS National Committee allows for “common sense” boycotts of Israeli individuals that go beyond the scope of its boycott criteria. According to these guidelines, more or less any Israeli individual who has not actively denounced the Jewish state can be rightfully boycotted.
Similarly, Klein seeks to raise the image of the BDS movement by highlighting some of its latest “wins,” pointing to the termination of Puma sportswear’s sponsorship of the Israeli national soccer team, an “exodus of artists” from an Italian comics festival that was co-sponsored by the Israeli embassy, and the impact of a boycott against McDonald’s on the fast food giant’s revenue.
However, the fly in the ointment for these “wins” is that Puma announced its decision had nothing to do with BDS; the “exodus” from the Lucca comics festival was limited to eight artists and organizations (including Amnesty International); and the McDonald’s boycott mostly affected countries which have no relations with Israel.
For Naomi Klein, the BDS movement is necessary to stop Israel’s “reign of impunity,” which allows it to act without restraint against the Palestinian people.
However, Klein’s skewed portrait of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is only made possible by her complete revision of history, which finds Israel guilty of all sins while removing all agency from the Palestinians and absolving them of all misconduct.
Klein writes that her support for BDS began after Operation Cast Lead in late 2008, when “Israel had unleashed a shocking new stage of mass killing in the Gaza Strip … It killed 1,400 Palestinians in 22 days; the number of casualties on the Israeli side was 13.”
What’s missing from this account is the fact that the operation began when Hamas unleashed rocket salvos aimed at the Jewish state and refused to heed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s call for a cessation of this escalation in hostilities.
As opposed to Klein’s characterization, Operation Cast Lead was not a “shocking new stage of mass killing,” but was rather a defensive war launched against a genocidal terror organization that had embedded itself within civilian areas.
Similarly, Naomi Klein describes Israel’s military strategy following 2008 as a “murderous new policy that Israeli military officials casually referred to as ‘mowing the grass’: every couple of years brought a fresh bombing campaign, killing hundreds of Palestinians or, in the case of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, more than 2,000, including 526 children.”
Once again, this characterization can only be made by completely ignoring Hamas’ activities during that time.
“Mowing the grass” does not refer to the casual indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians, but rather an Israeli strategy of periodically reducing Hamas’ potential to harm Israelis while not engaging in an extended war to uproot the terror organization entirely.
Like Operation Cast Lead, Operation Protective Edge was a defensive war in response to Hamas’ murder of three Israeli teens and an increase in rocket fire directed at Israeli civilians.
The only time that Naomi Klein gives any agency to Hamas in her piece is in reference to its atrocities on October 7.
However, this is only mentioned so she can make her real point: Israel is exploiting Hamas’ attack in order to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Despite Israel’s being forced into this war by Hamas’ unprecedented atrocities, despite the IDF’s continued attempts to lessen Palestinian civilian casualties, and despite Hamas’ cynical exploitation of Gazans’ civilian infrastructure, the only things that Naomi Klein sees are Israeli “transgressions” of international law.
It is these transgressions that must be punished by international sanctions driven by the BDS movement.
Along with Israel’s military activities, another crime that Naomi Klein accuses the Jewish state of is “apartheid.”
Klein points to studies conducted in the last few years by B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, all of which accuse Israel of implementing an apartheid regime in the West Bank.
However, as pointed out by NGO Monitor, these claims are based on a re-definition of the term “apartheid,” on zero appreciation for the complexities of the Israeli security context, and on a misrepresentation of Israeli policies.
Klein even goes so far as to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid in its pre-1967 borders, basing itself on the controversial Palestinian NGO Al-Haq.
Perhaps no rebuttal of this ludicrous claim is better made than by Mansour Abbas, an Arab-Israeli politician who, in 2022, while sitting in the previous Israeli government coalition, vocally opposed the use of the “apartheid” moniker in relation to Israel.
In 2010, roughly a year after Naomi Klein first came out in support of BDS, Eran Shayshon coined the term “Kleinism” in a column for the Israel newspaper Haaretz.
According to Shayshon, “Kleinism” is:
a simplistic, artificial view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has led many who consider themselves human-rights activists to focus their criticism nearly exclusively on Israel. It brands Israel as the new apartheid state, so it can do no right and its adversaries no wrong. It frames Israel as uninterested in peace or in ending the occupation. It ignores any structural obstacles to peace unrelated to Israel, the most obvious being the sharp divisions among the Palestinians.
Thus, “Kleinists” seem to have concluded that one-sided criticism of Israel is the best way to promote peace, and that pressurizing the state with all available means, including BDS, is both legitimate and effective.
In the almost 14 years since the term was first coined, it appears that the overly simplistic and, quite frankly, dangerous “Kleinist” point of view still has an audience in certain Western circles, including The Guardian.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post This Canadian-Jewish Activist Wants to Boycott Israel; Here’s What She Gets Wrong first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.