I wrote recently about events like the BDS conference at Hampshire College being primarily about the BDSers themselves, an event adding up to little more than a group hug during which the divestment crowd could sing their own praises and crow about their unquestionable virtue. While I've grown used to the self-important bombast that turns up whenever I give folks like Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine a gentle ribbing (especially one that ends up taking up the bulk of the first page of Google search results for "Hampshire BDS"), nothing I could ever write would rival the near parody level self-congratulations of this piece.

A few Divest This operatives attended the Hampshire event last weekend (they were the girls wearing fake beards if anyone who attended is reading this) and gave me the skinny on what went on. Naturally, I was most curious about how the BDSers managed to spend an entire weekend ginning up the troops while having to work around the little detail that their Pinky and the Brain-type schemes have met with nothing but failure over the last eight years.

With zero colleges choosing to divest after all that time (and Hampshire providing an abject lesson to college administrators nationwide on what can happen if you give the BDS crowd the time of day), with churches running from their program, with "right wing" groups like J Street abandoning their squalid little project, how would they apply their innovative imaginations into spinning excrement into gold?

Envelope please!

It turns out that the utter lack of real BDS victories is more than made up for by the fact that AIPAC, J-Street, et al have been forced to react to their activities! In other words, condemnation from their enemies is proof positive of not just relevance, but unstoppable political momentum!

Come again? Can anyone play this game? Does the divestnista's endless harping on Israel and its supporters mean our success if finally getting to them? That we're now too unstoppable to ignore? Or is it only the BDSniks who get to demand we agree to the endlessly changing terms by which the success of their "movement" is to be judged?

In the past, I described BDS as resembling a lame pickup artist that highlights the sheer number of their unsuccessful advances as proof of their sexual prowess. But their latest interpretation take the metaphor one step further, whereby everyone in the bar asking them to keep their hands to themselves or get out is further proof that they must really be getting somewhere!

I'll return tomorrow with a description of some real heroes of the Happy Valley, not self-important, self-described "Giants," but simple happy warriors with their hearts in the right place.