... The boycott campaign tolerated incidents of open anti-Semitism in its midst. Some activists referred to “rich and powerful Zionists” who would stand in the way of their campaign. The General Union of Palestinian Students allowed a leaflet to be circulated from its stall at a student conference that peddled the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

These manifestations can’t be unexpected. We argued for an analogy with institutional racism. Just as an institutionally racist police force does not necessarily contain racist officers, so parts of the left are politically hostile to Jews even if their activists do not feel anti-Semitic. But if you build a movement that is effectively if unconsciously anti-Semitic, then you cannot be surprised when it breeds and licenses hostility to Jews. Parts of the left in the United Kingdom are now allied with overt anti-Semitism, some of it Islamist, some of it native to its own ranks...

...The weekend before the Special Council, there was a very small demonstration in London for Palestinian freedom. Why is there no mass movement for this cause—in support, also, of the Israeli peace movement? The chief reason for this is that the existing Palestine Solidarity Campaign smells of anti-Semitism. Most people do not want to be involved with such a movement. In this way, the politics of Palestine solidarity does tremendous harm to Palestinians. Its unremitting hatred of Israel, its calls for divisive boycotts, its libeling of Jews as racists, and the crassness and one-sidedness of the stories it tells—none of this serves its ostensible cause.

The boycotters learned nothing from their defeat. They reacted with a new barrage of anti-Semitic rhetoric, insisting that they were defeated by a well-funded global Zionist lobby that pressured the AUT...