BDS Israel

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction

By Naomi Klein

January 7, 2009

Joel Beinin on BDS:

The tactic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has much to recommend it as a strategy for confronting the consolidation of Israeli apartheid. Aside from its positive association with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, it is undeniably a non-violent tactic that can be used by large numbers of people and adapted to many different situations. The Palestinian people certainly have every right to choose whatever method they decide is most effective to achieve their national rights,

It is precisely the flexibility of the BDS campaign that has aroused concern among some who have long supported Palestinian rights. The original 2005 call for BDS advocates applying these measures until Israel recognizes the Palestinian right to self- determination and complies with international law by

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

These goals leave open the question: Is BDS directed against the occupation? Or is BDS directed against the existence of the state of Israel (because, in fact, the entire state is built on occupied and colonized lands)? Some, who either do not care about this distinction or who express their political activism in intentionally provocative ways, may actually be weakening the BDS movement. It is impossible and undemocratic to suppress any of the voices in the emerging BDS movement. Mass movements usually contain many currents of opinion (as was the case in both the anti-apartheid struggle and the US Black freedom movement), and this is entirely legitimate. The best way to ensure that BDS is seen as a reasonable and effective strategy is if those who have carefully explained their approach to BDS (Neve Gordon or John Greyson or Udi Aloni’s very carefully argued statements) emerge as the dominant force in the movement. The renowned author, John Berger, initiated a practice of specifying carefully what he did and did not mean by a cultural boycott in the letter he appended to the December 2005 statement of 94 authors, film-makers and others who advocated a cultural boycott of Israel. Naomi Klein has said that her own approach to the cultural boycott was influenced by John Berger.

One thing we should be clear about: BDS will not disrupt the momentum for a political resolution to the conflict. There is no such momentum. There is momentum for more process. The Israeli press seems to have concluded that Obama is no longer a problem and that Bibi has outsmarted him. It’s not a question of intelligence, but rather that the Obama administration is not prepared to go as far as is necessary to compel even a full settlement freeze. But, if they had threatened to withdraw aid or even announced it was a possibility, i.e. a form of BDS, more progress might have been made. Governments will only take such measures when it is clear that there is popular support for them, and the BDS campaign is one way to establish that.

From JFJFP, Jewish Peace News "What kind of BDS campaign?"

Audio: Ali Abunimah & Jeff Blankfort Challenge Noam Chomsky's opposition to boycotting Israel

Building a Different Middle East

By Joel Beinin

The Nation, Jan 2010

The mobilizations are rooted in the particular dynamics of each village and depend on the balance of local political forces, family dynamics and economic factors like the possibility of obtaining permits to work in Israel. Together they form a peasant-based social movement that is becoming increasingly conscious of its political significance and filling the void in Palestinian leadership created by the futile struggle between the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Is this movement likely to contribute to a resolution of the conflict anytime soon? 'Ayid Mrar is doubtful. "I don't know when the occupation will end," he says. "Not in one or two years. Maybe in a hundred. If the Palestinian people achieve their freedom, we don't want relations of enmity with Israel. We want to build a different Middle East."

Signs of Liberal Dimensia

Frank Rich in the NYT: "Last year the president pointedly studied J.F.K.’s decision-making process on Vietnam while seeking the way forward in Afghanistan. In the end, he didn’t emulate his predecessor and escalated the war."

Don't Look Back
Just Walk Away From the Democrats

By RON JACOBS

"The left needs to organize the unorganized. The working people, the unemployed, the young, and the restless. The right wing has their core group of supporters who organize around fear of the other. The liberals have those who believe in the myth of American equality because they have no class analysis. The Left needs to organize the rest and they need to do so without the Democratic Party. It should be quite clear to almost every left-leaning American by now that the Democrats are nothing more than another wing of the party that works for Wall Street and the Pentagon. To continue to work for and elect their candidates is self-defeating. As the first year of the Obama presidency has clearly shown, not only do the Democrats support the right wing agenda, that support makes it easier for the right wing to put their candidates into power. Why? Because after promising progressive reforms and then failing to deliver, voters tend to either not vote or vote for the right wing candidates out of anger and frustration."

The Great Leap Sideways

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"It’s actually some 30 years ago, but to me seems only yesterday that we were howling for Paul Volcker’s blood. As Fed chairman back in Carter-Reagan time he was the great deflator, ratcheting up interest rates and hurling widows and orphans out into the snow. And here he is now, the shining knight of the left, for months languishing in obscurity as head of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, now mustered to Obama’s side to preside over the White House’s Great Leap Sideways into economic populism."

"Can Obama recover the initiative? This leap sideways in the direction of the left comes eleven months behind schedule, and politics is an unforgiving time-keeper. He should have been holding that Thursday press conference last February, when he still had favorable winds in his sails. Instead he wasted most of the year destroying all prospects for decent health reform. The best we can hope for now is rejection by the House of the Senate’s bill, with the whole awful package dumped in the shredder. Maybe the White House should try some new imaginative approach, like combining preventive health care with airline security. All people going through the TSA’s full body scans would get, gratis, a full diagnostic printout, from teeth to tumors and the right to free consultations at health clinics run by the Department of Homeland Security."

Robert Kuttner
A Wake Up Call

"But as I wrote in Obama's Challenge, in August 2008, it would be a huge mistake to try to get health care done right out of the box. Obama first needed to get his sea-legs, and focus like a laser on economic recovery. If he got the economy back on track, he would then have earned the chops to undertake more difficult structural reforms like health care."
….

"This battle should have been the president and the people versus the interests. Instead more and more voters concluded that it was the president and the interests versus the people."

Björn Kumm: The Tragedy of Toussaint L'Ouverture

C.L.R. James in his marvellous The Black Jacobins, published in 1938, suggests that Toussaint L´Ouverture in fact remained too much of a loyal French citizen. He wanted the formerly enslaved Haitians to become exemplary Frenchmen. He wanted to show the world that black men could build a civilized state. French should be spoken as correctly in Port au Prince as in Paris.