Israel’s Securitization Dilemma: BDS and the Battle for the Legitimacy of the Jewish State
In 2015, the Palestinian Soccer Association campaigned to ban Israel from FIFA (the international soccer federation) for its mistreatment of Palestinians. Israeli politicians referred to the move as “diplomatic terrorism” akin to the massacre of the 11 Israeli athletes in Munich Olympics in 1972, even when it was clear that the campaign would fail. This past summer, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company decided to stop selling its ice cream in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Israel’s president, a moderate, referred to the decision as “a new form of terrorism.” These and many other peculiar responses by the Israelis led me to embark on what became my book, Israel’s Securitization Dilemma: BDS and the Battle for the Legitimacy of the Jewish State. In this book, I explore how Israel has constructed its Jewish identity as a matter of national security and how legitimacy became a national security asset. Such constructions resulted in the common use of securitization to respond to any challenges to Israel’s Jewish identity through security discourse and action. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which emerged against Israel in the early 2000s, directly challenges the legitimacy of Israel’s Jewish identity and its continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. This book carefully traces how Israel has constructed BDS as an existential threat to state security, which has led to policies that often further contribute to, rather than mitigate, the state’s delegitimization.