BDS on TikTok: no Israel counter-memes and Israel’s digital abjection

This study examines how BDS activists use TikTok’s formats, memetic templates and affordances to construct Israel’s digital image. Analysing high-engagement videos from 2021–2022, we identify two strategic deployments: consumer-boycott tutorials and audio-based templates. Our analysis reveals how these clips function as ‘No-Israel’ counter-memes that leverage TikTok’s entertainment features to systematically undermine Israel’s symbolic value. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s politics of aesthetics and Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, we conceptualise how these counter-memes constitute an aesthetic regime in which Israel is figured as a contaminating presence around which BDS digital activism is articulated, performed and circulated. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for Palestinian digital activism and the prospects for more dialogic forms of political engagement on TikTok.