The “Legal Scholars Against BDS” conference at the UN headquarters in New York City on Wednesday. Photo: Israel at the UN Facebook page.

While BDS activists have failed to get American educational institutions to boycott the Jewish state, they are succeeding in “miseducating a generation of future leaders” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, legal expert Alan Dershowitz warned on Wednesday.

“Lawsuits and legislation are not enough,” Dershowitz said, during an anti-BDS conference hosted by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon at the global intergovernmental organization’s New York City headquarters. “We have to increase our advocacy in the court of public opinion. We have to make sure that on every college campus, every claim made by BDS is refuted — on social media and by professors…We are losing the campaign for the minds and hearts of the college students today, while winning the campaign against the actual BDS program.”

Dershowitz made the comments during a discussion moderated by Dovid Efune — editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner — at the “Legal Scholars Against BDS” event.

“It will not be enough to win our war against BDS in the courts of law; we must also win it in the courts of public opinion,” Dershowitz emphasized.

Students, Dershowitz stated, should not be confused about the ultimate objective of the BDS movement.

“Their slogan is, ‘Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,’” he said. “They want to see an end to the nation-state of the Jewish people. They will be satisfied with nothing less. They fool students on college campuses often by pretending that it’s an anti-occupation movement or an anti-settlement movement, but when you ask them the hard questions, they acknowledge that their goal is an end to the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

Referring to a potential Obama administration end-of-term Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic initiative, Dershowitz said, “No president has the right to make a change in longstanding foreign policy during the lame-duck period when he has no political accountability…I would strongly and publicly oppose any effort to tie the hands of the incoming president.”

Earlier at Wednesday’s conference, Danon said, “We are here…[to] tell BDS activists, ‘See you in court!’”

“To the activists who are conducting this illegal and unjust campaign of hate, your time is over,” he continued. “Your movement is based on pure lying…We will use every tool and every legal measure to stop the hate…We will not stop until we expose every lie and unmask the antisemitism at the heart of the movement…That’s why we will win, because truth is on our side, history is on our side and justice is on our side.”