When journalist Ben White refers to 'Boycott: The Backlash' he's talking about Engage, which is very nice - particularly in the light of what he notes to be our relatively small pockets.

But it's not all good. According to White Engage misrepresents the boycott campaign, artfully diverts attention to the singling out of Israel, sidesteps the issue of colonisation in the occupied territories, conceals the power asymmetry between Israeli Jews and Palestinians and whitewashes Zionism. What he really objects to is Engage's call for dialogue when the situations of Palestinians and Israeli Jews are so asymmetric: "Can anyone seriously believe that 40 years of military occupation and rapacious Israeli colonialism will simply melt away, through the promotion of ‘dialogue and reconciliation’?"

In fact Engage came into existence to oppose the growing phenomenon of left antisemitism which, most notably in the case of the boycott campaigns, often takes the form of anti-Zionism. The boycott calls have aims that are utterly unrealistic. The 2007 academic boycott call lacked proper aims or endpoints and in their absence the campaign was obliged to rely heavily on depicting Israel only as an atrocity. And if Israel is beyond redemption then people who oppose its frenzied condemnation must be reprehensible people. And if most Jews are in the ranks of those reprehensible people, then watch out Jews. Engage, which is left-wing, against the occupation and skeptical about nationalism, exists primarily to make and illustrate these points. And much as Palestinian Solidarity Campaigners would like every organisation from War on Want to RIBA to subordinate its aims to the fight for Palestinian liberation, that's pretty much all there is to Engage.