Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement

The last meeting of our trip was with Omar Barghouti regarding the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS). The BDS call was initiated on July 9, 2005. This was the first anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion against the Wall. As became clear to us, the international community has completely failed the Palestinians in that it grants Israel such impunity that Israel is literally getting away with murder. Even the highest Israeli court has ruled that the wall is illegal and yet, the wall remains. Highest court on land said wall illegal and no one did anything. Instead, Israel continues to confiscate or destroy Palestinian homes, lands, trees, and property. Moreover, the oppression, harassment, attacks and apartheid system still remains. So the Palestinian civil society came together and realized that if world cannot stop the wall, or Israel’s other blatant violation of international law, they needed to resort to civil society as the South African black community did.

Here, Omar took the time to stress what we had learned in the past two weeks of traveling throughout Palestine: in the west, people mostly talk about Palestinians armed resistance, ignoring the fact that most Palestinian resistance has been nonviolent, civil resistance. Nor did the Palestinian learn nonviolent civil resistance from Ghandi. And while Mandela was a big inspiration, the Palestinians have their own long history of nonviolence from which to draw. Throughout the past 100 years, Palestinians have held many boycotts, divestments demonstrations, tax revolts (using the “no taxation without representation slogan) etc.

Omar also addressed one of the most difficult parts of BDS: the Palestinian campaign for cultural and academic boycott. He told us that, unlike in S. Africa, Israel’s academic institutions are an indispensable part of the regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid. Without its academy, Israel cannot survive as an apartheid, occupier, oppressive state. In South Africa, this most sacred part of society was sports. For Israel, it is the academy: the most sacred structure in Israel. And academy has played a key role in the oppression/occupation/apartheid with such deep complicity that the military and academia are one and the same. (I believe it is also Shlomo Sands who discusses the complicity of academia with respect to archeology in his new book “The Invention of the Jewish People.”)

Omar also told us that, to the Palestinians’ surprise, BDS was successful from the beginning. Today, he believes it is because they hit just the right combination of elements:
1. BDS addresses basic rights of Palestinians everywhere. BDS does not address political solutions (1 v 2 state solution). Instead, it looks at 3 basic rights:
• The refugees: right of return per Resolution 194. This is largest group of Palestinians, constituting 60%. (Even in Gaza, 80% of Gazans are refugees).
• The Palestinians in the ’67 Occupied Territories: ending the occupation and colonization, including in the Golan Heights.
• The Palestinians in ’48 Israel: they have been deleted out of definition of Palestinians, especially in western world. Here, BDS aims to end the system of discrimination in Israel against Israeli Palestinians, including against the internal refugee population who cannot go back to their villages.
2. BDS is a nonviolent civil form of resistance.
3. It addresses Israelis directly in that it calls on conscientious Israelis to join Palestinians in this campaign. This is a form of recognition so that whatever the political solution is, it future includes conscientious Israelis.

This combination is the reason for BDS success. BDS now has the support of major trade unions around the world (including Irish, British, Scottish, Canadian, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy, and South Africa). And after the Israeli massacre in Gaza, those international unions who were hesitant to join did join. BDS also has the support of many groups in civil society internationally, including in the west.

One important thing about Israel, is that Israel has not invented the weapons to combat BDS. They have tried everything but nothing is defeating BDS. Israel knows how to deal with confrontational nonviolence resistance, i.e. Bil’in (the refugee camp in which there is an anti-wall demonstration every Friday, to which Israel responds via tear gas canisters and detentions). But with BDS, the Israelis are completely lost. They have tried the cry of anti-Semitism charge but this has not stuck because there is a disproportionately high number of western Jews joining BDS plus the campaign is based on Israel’s violation of international law and basic human rights. Plus, there is no duplicity here, in other words, whatever languages are used, whatever groups sign on, there is one set of BDS guidelines.

Also, after the Gaza massacre, BDS took off even faster. In 2009, BDS reached new circles and media, the US being most important example. Omar reported that at the AIPAC conference in May, 2009, the director said that while everyone talking about Iran, we have threat at home, BDS and this is beginning of the end unless we do something about it. In addition, before the national J-Street conference, student conferences were held at which students dropped the “pro-Israel” from their slogans, saying such slogans are not popular on campus and so they would lose many supporters if they continued using them. Also, at the J-Street conference, there was a panel/workshop on how to counter BDS on campus. Instead of coming up with ways to counter, however, J-Street adopted part of BDS, thinking that if they pushed for the boycott of certain domestic products, they would circumvent the entire boycott. Finally, the NY Times published Mustafa Barghouti’s article defending BDS. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/opinion/17iht-edbarghouthi.html). In addition, Mr. Barghouti and Anna Baltzer were both on the Daily Show with John Stewart. The times they are a changing.

Now Omar also pointed out that the BDS movement distinguishes between universities or other institutions and individuals. The boycott call is against institutions (whereas in South Africa, it was against everyone and everything.) The Palestinians do not believe in blacklists because they smack of McCarthyism. Nor are they out to make judgments about good versus bad Israelis. Instead, BDS’ main point is to target Israeli institutions due to their complicity in maintaining racist, apartheid system in Israel. (this despite the fact that out of 9,000 academics, only 407 have ever even come out with a statement remotely opposing the occupation, without using the word.)

For those interested in learning more about the complicity of Israeli institutions, I would direct you to the following websites:

http://www.bdsmovement.net/; http://www.pacbi.org/.

Suffice it to say here that in addition to being built on top of destroyed Palestinians villages, at some Israeli universities, only those who serve in the army get dorm rooms. Of course, few Palestinians serve, so these students are SOL. Further, the universities have been instrumental in developing tactics of “war” (read: terrorism) inflicted on the Palestinians.

Of course, inevitably BDS activists get asked the question of “why single out Israel?” But the real question is why is the west singling out Israel. The Palestinians are simply demanding that Israel be treated like any other country, no better and no worse. Instead, today, Israel is the only colonial state that gets billions of US aid (Sudan, for example, doesn’t get any). Moreover, there are many other human rights violators that are worse but they are not US allies that get aid. In other words, western governments must stop supporting Israel in its oppressive, occupying regime.

And for you lawyers out there, Omar stressed that a boycott campaign must first be based on thorough research. BDS is meticulous in its research on who/what to boycott. To date, the Israeli lobby has not found ONE ERRONEOUS FACT in BDS campaigns. For information on what products to boycott, see http://www.whoprofits.org.