With the US presidential elections still 16 months away and the campaigns just beginning, almost none of the Republican or Democratic candidates have yet to touch on foreign policy, limiting their campaign speeches to domestic affairs. But Hillary Clinton has started to delve into foreign waters, taking particular aim at the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), expressing her "alarm" over the growth of the movement. On July 2, Clinton sent a letter to Haim Saban, a major Clinton donor and fundraiser, in which she criticized the "global effort to isolate the state of Israel by ending commercial and academic exchanges" and asserted that "we need to make countering BDS a priority". Clinton then lays out a plan to defeat the movement, by explaining to just about everybody why the BDS campaign is “counterproductive to the pursuit of peace and harmful to Israelis and Palestinians alike”. The opposition shown by Clinton to BDS is of concern because Clinton is favored to not only win the Democratic Party nomination but has a better than average chance of going all the way to the White House. If so, then it is worrying that America's possible future president will stand so steadfastly against this movement. It is actually strange that Clinton opposes BDS with such vigor. She appears to be out of touch with many of her constituents who, several surveys suggest, are avid opponents of Israel. A survey commissioned by a Jewish organization found that nearly half of Democrats view Israel as a racist country. Less than half of Democrats think Israel is interested in achieving peace with its neighbors. Nearly one-third of Democrats are less likely to vote for a politician who supports Israel, while nearly half would be more likely to vote for one who critiques it. And close to one in three Democrats support the BDS movement against Israel and against corporations that profit from human rights abuses of Palestinians. These findings follow opinion polls last year commissioned by CNN showing Democrats evenly split over Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip and by researchers at the University of Maryland revealing a "wide gap" between the parties. A majority of Republicans want the United States to favor Israel, but only 17 percent of Democrats agree. According to the university researchers, this gap will widen further as youth, African-American and Hispanic voters —constituencies who traditionally demonstrate a higher tendency to support minority rights like that of the Palestinians — take up increasingly prominent positions in the Democratic Party. Then there was a recent study that found that 45 percent of Democratic “opinion leaders” said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who criticized the Israeli occupation and mistreatment of Palestinians, while only 23 percent said they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate. Clinton's campaign battle plan is to paint her opponents as being out of touch with America when if anything Clinton is out of touch not just with her constituents but the world. BDS is a nonviolent movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality. It has nothing to do with taking up arms. Inspired by the anti-apartheid movement, a small group of Palestinian activists had this novel idea of calling for a global boycott movement against Israel as a nonviolent method to promote the Palestinian struggle for independence. In just 10 years what began as an idea by 170 Palestinian civil society groups has grown into a global network of thousands of volunteers lobbying corporations, artists and academic institutions, all disillusioned by Israeli policies. At a time when peace efforts are frozen and show no sign of getting back on track and under a new hard-line Israeli government, BDS should be supported by freedom seekers and those against oppressive regimes.
