Post 10/7, BDS Activists Are Refocused on Attacking Israeli, Jewish Businesses and Individuals 

Since the Hamas-led terror massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns directly targeting “Zionist” institutions, businesses or individuals, have persisted in response to Israel’s operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

BDS is a component of a long history of campaigns and efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel. In recent years, this has explicitly focused on the rejection, isolation and marginalization of Zionists and institutions that “platform” Zionists or people supportive of Israel.

The campaigns attack institutions, businesses or individuals that BDS activists believe are somehow complicit in Israel’s military response to the mass terror operation. Most, but not all of the targeted business owners and individuals are Jewish, underscoring the antisemitic impact of these campaigns, which at times discriminate along religious, ethnic and national lines.

Some of these campaigns have been around for years. Many campus groups have demanded divestment from weapons companies and other businesses that contract with Israel. In the 2023-2024 academic school year, at least 86 BDS resolutions were considered across undergraduate, graduate and professional student organizations and faculty/staff unions. Seventy-seven passed and nine were voted down. Additionally, since the October 7 attack, at least nine cities or counties voted to divest from companies doing business with Israel and/or adjusted investment policies that were hailed as victories by anti-Israel advocates.

Since October 2023, BDS activists have also targeted companies not on the formal BDS boycott list, including McDonald’s, Disney and Starbucks. Some have engaged in vandalism of these businesses. Simultaneously, a pattern has emerged in which anti-Israel activists have attempted to corral support for boycotts of “Zionist” healthcare providers, academic institutions and professional and cultural associations. Perhaps most disturbingly, there has been a spate of vandalism against Jewish-owned businesses, restaurants and even homes.

Vandalism of Jewish or  “Zionist” businesses has increased in the wake of October 7. For example: 

• In February 2025, an inverted red triangle, a symbol Hamas has used to indicate targets, was placed atop the subway plaque for Yeshiva University, a Jewish Modern Orthodox university.

The Yeshiva University subway sign in New York with the "a" covered by a Hamas-affiliated inverted red triangle, February 2025. (Courtesy)

• Throughout 2024, University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker (who is Jewish) has had his business and home vandalized several times.
• In October 2024, Hillel at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts was vandalized by anti-Israel individuals to read “Gaza Liberation Sukkah”
• In September 2024, Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County had flyers put on its main sign reading, “Israel is a rapist colony”, “Israel rapes” and “Israel <3’s rape”.
• In July 2024, Graffiti of the slogan “Jews 4 Palestine” and an inverted red triangle were left on Chabad of Squirrel Hill. A sign for the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh was spray painted to say that the group “funds genocide.” Vandals graffitied the phrase “[heart emoji] Jews, hate Zionist.” One of the people arrested in connection with the vandalism is alleged to have referred to himself as a “Hamas operative”.
• In March 2024, the University of Texas Hillel in Austin was vandalized with graffiti that included the messages, “Israel commits genocide” and “Free Palestine.”
• In March 2024, in New York, NY, Effi’s Kosher Café, a Jewish-owned kosher restaurant on NYC’s Upper West Side, was vandalized with red paint splattered on the building and graffiti drawn on the sidewalk that read, “Form line here to support genocide” and “Free Gaza.”
• In March 2024, Nana's Kitchen and Catering, a Jewish-owned kosher restaurant in Narberth, PA, was vandalized with graffiti that read, “Free Gaza.”
• On November 1, 2023, in Los Angeles, California, Cantor’s Deli, a Jewish-owned business, was spray-painted with: "Israel's only religion is capitalism," "How many dead in the name of greed" and "Free gaza[sic].”
• On October 25, 2023, the Jewish-owned ice creamery Smitten in San Francisco, California, was vandalized with graffiti that read, "FREE PALESTIEN [sic]." A window of the business was also smashed.

In addition, boycotts of Israeli or Jewish individuals or institutions that support Zionism or “platform” Zionists have emerged. For example:

• In February 2025, a group of organizations that included Writers Against the War on Gaza, NYC Alliance for Advancing Disruptive Activities, Arts & Culture Workers Coalition for Palestine, Art Against Displacement and Workshops4Gaza released the “NYC Cultural Institution Index,” a list of New York City-based cultural institutions and their “stance on Palestine.”  Information about these institutions includes whether or not the institution has “Zionist funders,” any available information about said "Zionist funders,” and its general position on Palestine (support, "pro Zionist [sic]", silent, censorship, normalizing").
• In August 2024, the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA), an organization that represents 133 student medical associations worldwide, voted for a two-year suspension of the Federation of Israeli Medical Students (FIMS) membership amid unsubstantiated claims that the Israeli group lacks “morals and humanitarian values.” The evidence provided was IFIMS’ disagreement with the IFMSA that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide.
• In late August 2024, Jewish author Joshua Leifer, who published a new book about the history of American Jewish identity, had his speaking event canceled at a Brooklyn bookstore after an employee (since fired) objected to the “Zionist” moderator, Rabbi Andy Bachman. Leifer, a progressive, wrote: “My biggest worry was about synagogues not wanting to host me. I didn’t think it would be bookstores in Brooklyn that would be closing their doors.”
• In the summer of 2024, Israeli camp counselor Adam Flam was not invited back to Jam Camp West 2024, which Flam had alleged is because of his service in the IDF, though camp representatives say it was due to administrative reasons. Jam Camp is a Bay Area music camp for children ages 10-17.
• In April 2024, a group of reproductive justice organizations organized and disseminated an open letter demanding organizations “reject all forms of imperialism, settler colonialism, and zionism [sic] as fundamentally in conflict with the four pillars of reproductive justice” and not “invite, welcome or platform zionist [sic] speakers," as well as to boycott and divest themselves from any organization, business or funder that “directly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
• In March 2024, Guernica magazine published then unpublished an essay by Joanna Chen, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World” after multiple members of the journal’s volunteer staff resigned publicly over the essay – for not being inclusive of Palestinian perspectives and for not adhering to the cultural boycott of Israel. The essay goes through Chen’s feelings as an Israeli peace activist who was deeply impacted by October 7, and her desires and attempts to refrain from dehumanizing anyone as a result of the attack.
• In March 2024, Heba Ibrahim-Joudeh, a member of “Chicago Anti-Racist Therapists”, collated a list of therapists who identified as Zionist, and wrote “I’ve put together a list of therapists/practices with Zionist affiliations that we should avoid referring clients to… Please feel free to contribute additional names as I’m certain there are more out there”.
• Since October 2023, antisemites and others have frequently targeted members of the Hillel community or Hillel property. For example, in September 2024, as Jewish students dined at a kosher restaurant in midtown Manhattan as part of a Baruch College Hillel-organized back-to-school event, they were protested by Baruch SJP and others. Participants stood outside the restaurant and chanted “Ilya Bratman [the Executive Director at the Hillel at Baruch College] what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?” Someone shouted, “Where’s Hersh, you ugly ass b–ch? Go bring them home,” referencing murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American killed by Hamas in August.

Several boycotts of “Zionist” businesses have emerged or been reintroduced. For example:

• In November 2024, Rice University SJP called for a boycott of a new Local Foods restaurant location on the campus because Benjy Levit, a Houston area restaurateur, "participated his hospitality group in a fundraiser for families of IOF soldiers actively committing genocide in Gaza" and they raised these concerns with the administration.
• In October 2024, a New York City restaurant boycott list was seen by internet sleuths and also promptly removed from Google Maps. Its title included the inverted red triangle, which has come to represent a threat to some in the Jewish community.

A screenshot from a since-deleted New York City restaurant boycott list on Google Maps, October 2024. (Screenshot/Google Maps)

• On December 3, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, protestors organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition gathered outside Goldie, a popular Philadelphia falafel shop owned by Michael Solomonov, shouting “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” The protestors were upset that Solomonov had donated a considerable sum to United Hatzalah, a free emergency ambulance service that operates in Israel and the West Bank. On November 17, 2023, a small group of protestors gathered outside Laser Wolf, another Michael Solomonov restaurant in the city.
• On November 28, 2023, Moderators at Archive of Their Own (Ao3), a popular fan fiction site, asked a volunteer to remove “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” from their status and suggested replacing it with language such as “I stand with Palestine” if they wanted to show support for Palestine. The volunteer did not, which prompted a short-lived call for a boycott of AO3’s parent company, Organization of Transformative Works.

• On November 14, 2023, in New York, New York, a Google user released a map of “Zionist restaurants [sic]” in New York City, which Google quickly removed, though not before users in the popular kosher Facebook group Great Kosher Restaurants Foodies noted its existence

• On November 2, 2023, in Houston, Texas, Moon Mehmood, a social media influencer, disseminated a list of businesses to boycott in the Houston area on her Instagram. Many but not all of these restaurants are owned by Jews or Israelis or even oriented towards those communities, though all participated in the "Mitzvah Meals" event on November 1, a fundraiser for “people who have been displaced by the fighting along Israel’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon as well as the reservists who have been called up to defend Israel after the terrorist attacks by Hamas.”   

• On October 30, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Philly Palestine Coalition began circulating a list of “’Israeli’ [quotation marks sic] Food & Zionist Businesses in Philly” to boycott and protest, charging that the restaurants are “appropriating” Palestinian culture and, more importantly, owned by Zionists.

Calls to boycott “Zionist actors” – which includes singers, producers and other performers – have also persisted. Many, but not all, targets of these boycotts are Jewish and/or Israeli; they are accused of “supporting Zionist discourse” by expressing anger at the October 7 attacks or not publicly sharing “sufficient” outrage at the Israeli counteroffensive.

• In January 2025, nearly 1,000 people signed a petition demanding Brooklyn’s Alamo Drafthouse stop showing the film “Sept 5” about the 1972 Munich massacre, referring to the movie depicting the killings and hostage-taking of Israeli athletes and coaches as “Zionist propaganda” and objecting to the references of the Black September Palestinian attackers as “terrorists.”
• Throughout 2024, singer Matisyahu has faced numerous boycotts and protests of his shows around the United States for his “Zionist” views. For example, in December 2024 at a protest against the singer, participants chanted “Al Qassam make us proud, shoot another soldier down,” and a sign was seen reading, “fuck Israel” with an inverted red triangle placed on a hand of someone giving the middle finger.
• In October 2024, Lithub, a website that aggregates and shares material from across the literary world, published an open letter supporting BDS that goes far beyond the demands of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel ( PACBI). It demands a boycott of anyone that is “complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide” or “have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.”
• In July 2024, a letter was circulated demanding that Newport Festivals Foundation, which is based in Rhode Island and produces the Newport Folk & Jazz Festivals in the city, remove its openly Zionist board members, and any performing artists who are "complicit in the genocide of Palestinians through support for the Israeli state.” It also demanded that the foundation “commit to not booking Zionist artists in future festivals” and “acknowledge and apologize publicly for all harm caused, especially by its Zionist founders in leadership.”
• In May 2024, a spreadsheet rating authors based on how “Zionist” they are circulated online, encouraging people to boycott the alleged “Zionist” authors. 
• Israeli-American actor Natalie Portman posted to Instagram on October 8, 2023, expressing her grief over the October 7 attacks. Several months later, some activists found the post and called for a boycott of Portman and her work.   

• “Stranger Things” star Noah Schnapp, who is Jewish, appeared in a video where others held stickers reading "Zionism Is Sexy" and “Hamas Is Isis.” He also “liked” a video from the Israeli iteration of Saturday Night Live (SNL) that mocked American college students and their apparent support for Hamas. Some fans of “Stranger Things” called for Schnapp to be removed from the cast and for a boycott of the final season.

• Tomer Capone, Israeli and star of hit Amazon Prime show The Boys, was “discovered” in late 2023 to be Israeli and supportive of Israel by some fans -- and they demanded a boycott of the show.