Mr. Sherman’s candor is welcome. Recent studies have demonstrated that the B.D.S. movement has had no discernible impact on Israel’s economy. And while stories continue to pop up of troublesome student protests and faculty members who refuse to write recommendations for study in Israel, hardly any significant American institution — government, corporate or academic — has actually signed onto the boycott. Were I a bookie, I would offer better odds on the folks waging the War on Christmas.

Supporters of B.D.S. are no less slippery. Representative Omar says, “We must support an end of the occupation and seek to achieve a two-state solution.” The movement she supports, however, does not. Nowhere in the movement’s official documents is there any recognition of Israel’s right to exist within in its pre-1967 borders. Mr. McConnell and Mr. McCarthy are not wrong to remind us that “Omar Barghouti, one of the movement’s co-founders, proclaimed in 2013 that ‘no Palestinian — rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian — will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.’”

If you ask even the most prominent B.D.S. supporters and leaders about their strategic vision for victory, they inevitably start talking about South Africa and the need to be “on the right side of history.” What they cannot offer is a remotely practical theory of how their movement will somehow lead to a better life for Palestinians, much less their “free Palestine, from the River to the Sea” pipe dream.

Instead, B.D.S. has become a purity test of sorts for progressives in certain corners of American society — a defining part of what it means to be woke. I see it every day, in my triple role as a college professor, columnist for a left-liberal magazine and father of a college-age daughter who gives me regular reports about her school’s “Israel Apartheid Day.” From all three, I get a regular earful about the importance of B.D.S. — but I’ve learned over time that actually boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel could not be further from most anyone ’s mind, either as a threat or a goal.

Like vegetarian diets and carbon-neutral living, it has become something that is vital to espouse, but much less important to explain, let alone carry out.

So why are so many people worried about B.D.S.? Partly, concern over the movement is driven by parents — with whom I can relate — who fear that their children are being permanently turned against Israel by their professors and fellow students. The rapid growth of anti-Zionist organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, along with calls I get from my daughter, tells me that these fears are not entirely unfounded.

In turn, “pro-Israel” groups and cynical politicians exploit these fears largely for fund-raising purposes by pretending that the threat of a genuine boycott of Israel is real. Some even engage in McCarthyistic attacks on pro-Palestinian faculty members. Even among the more honest opponents of the movement, there are so many Jewish groups tripping over one another to “help” students oppose B.D.S. on campus these days that I would not be surprised if they were driving up the price of kosher catering.