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Boycott, the sane response to Israeli Apartheid
The movement to boycott Israelis becoming respectable. In Europe and America as well as in the Middle East and many parts of the developing world, people of conscience –
including many Jews - are rejecting anti-Arab prejudice and Zionist mythology and seeing Israel for what it is – an ethnocentric state which deserves to be ostracised.
Just as South Africa was ostracised during the apartheid era. Groups like mine –
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods – support the call made by nearly 200 Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005 for a broad campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions,including an institutional academic and cultural boycott, until Israel respects Palestinian human rights and abides by international
law.
Four years on, reports of boycott activities are appearing in mainstream media and
the internet is buzzing with film, photos and text reports of inventive, non-violent
and increasingly effective campaigns. These take many different forms.
Just this week, a worldwide campaign of letter writing resulted in the human rights
organisation Amnesty International withdrawing from a scheme to manage the proceeds
from a concert in Israelnext month by American singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.
Cohen has been touring the globe for many weeks now, everywhere encountering
musicians, artists and other campaigners pleading with him not to ignore the
Palestinian boycott call. They argue that to go ahead with a concert in Israelis to
reward Israelis for the murderous assault on Gazalast winter which killed 1,500
Palestinians and devastated a community of 1.5 million. Cohen tried to persuade
Amnesty to give his planned concert credibility by distributing funds to
organisations he said work for reconciliation, tolerance and peace. But his argument
was rejected by Palestinian groups which said the plan would only enhance Israeli
legitimacy without restoring justice to Palestinians. Amnesty bowed out, but the
campaign to halt Leonard Cohen’s concert in Israelcontinues as part of the cultural
boycott movement to persuade all international performers to stay away.
Artists and performers representing the Israeli state are also coming up against
boycott actions when they travel abroad. Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
(SPSC) activists, protesting at the Israeli siege of Gaza which was in force long
before the all-out military assault began in December 2008, disrupted a concert in
Edinburgh last year by the Jerusalem Quartet, an Israeli musical ensemble
designated ‘Cultural Ambassadors’ of the State of Israel and ‘Distinguished IDF
(Israeli Army) Musicians’
Five activists were arrested and are facing charges for ‘racially aggravated
conduct’. The SPSC websitehttp://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/ said these were “ trumped
up charges based on the British Government’s response to rising support among the
public for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeland the wave of
anger at British complicity in Israeli crimes.” They indicate official endorsement
of “the tired Zionist strategy” of trying to intimidate Israel’s opponents by
accusing them of anti-Jewish racism, the campaign group said.
The Zionist habit of accusing Israel’s critics of anti-semitism is losing its
potency as more and more Jews, including some Israelis, recognise the powerful
arguments for boycotting Israel. Scottish PSC has received vocal support from the
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), a Jewish organisation committed to
justice and full recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people. IJAN gave the
Scottish activists its “unwavering support” and said “we reject the false premise
that a challenge to the injustice of Israeli apartheid is a ‘racially motivated’ act
targeting Jewish people.”
The network said it fully endorsed such actions undertaken in support of the call
from Palestinian civil society for full boycott, divestment and sanctions against
Israel.
Further Jewish endorsement of the boycott movement came this week from Neve Gordon
who teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. Writing in the Los
Angeles Times, Gordon said he had reluctantly concluded that calling on foreign
governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based
organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israelwas “the only
way that Israelcan be saved from itself”.
He stated, “Israel today is . . . an apartheid state” in which the 3.5 million
Palestinians and half a million Jews living in areas Israelcaptured in 1967 are
“subjected to totally different legal systems.” Gordon said Jerusalem has become “an apartheid city where Palestinians aren't citizens and lack basic services”. The Israeli peace camp is almost nonexistent and
politics has moved far to the right. “It is therefore clear to me that the only way
to counter the apartheid trend in Israelis through massive international pressure.”
If words and condemnation from the Obama administration and the European Union
produce no moves towards Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) become the only option, Gordon said.
He referred to a gathering in Bilbao, Spain, last year when a coalition of
organisations from all over the world resolved to campaign for “sanctions on and
divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by
actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible
manner.
“Artists who come to Israelin order to draw attention to the occupation are welcome,
while those who just want to perform are not,” Gordon added.
As part of the wide-ranging BDS movement, women in France, America and within Israel
itself, have daubed themselves with mud and declared that they will not use Dead Sea
beauty products from the Ahava company which bases its operations in the illegal
West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Shalem.
YouTube videos show them chanting:
“Ahava, you can’t hide, we will show your dirty side,
We’re here to show your dirty hands, products made in stolen lands.”
UKactivists hold regular pickets outside a depot near Londonowned by Carmel Agrexco,
the partly state-owned Israeli firm responsible for the bulk of fresh produce –
flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables - exported to Europe. Much of it comes from
illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land and depends on exploiting
Palestinian water, labour and other resources, contravening the Fourth Geneva
Convention regarding the responsibilities of an occupying power.
Boycott campaigners bombard supermarkets with complaints about this and regularly
distribute thousands of leaflets explaining to shoppers why they should avoid goods
from Israeland the occupied territories. Two leading supermarkets have entered into
high-level discussions with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) on the subject,
Cooperative stores and Marks & Spencer have stated that they will not stock
settlement goods and Sainsbury’s and the Cooperative have started to give shelf
space to Palestinian olive oil.
The stores and the solidarity movement are awaiting new guidelines from the British
government’s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) which are
supposed to clarify how goods are labelled, so that consumers can choose not to buy
produce from stolen Palestinian land. Ultimately boycott campaigners want to see
trade in all such goods banned.
To press home the point, inspired by supermarket actions in France, UKcampaigners
have recently begun to stage sit-down demonstrations in stores stocking Israeli and
settlement goods. Film of their actions is accessible via the internet.
Campaigns to expose the complicity of some companies in the illegal occupation is
another important element in the BDS movement. Following one such campaign, French
company Veolia is reported to have pulled out of a consortium set to build a
controversial rail project linking East Jerusalemand settlements in the occupied
West Bank. Israeli-owned water cooler firm Eden Springs, which in Israel markets water from the
occupied Syrian Golan Heights, is facing repeated challenges to its contracts with
public bodies in the UK.
US firm Caterpillar, which sells Israel the bulldozers it uses to demolish
Palestinian homes, is the subject of a long-running international campaign
pressuring it to stop selling heavy equipment to Israel. Four activists were
arrested in March 2006 when, in front of CAT’s main USoffice, they re-enacted the
death three years earlier of peace activist Rachel Corrie, killed by a CAT bulldozer
as she tried to stop it destroying a Palestinian house. Campaigning website
www.catdestroyshomes.org says activists have targeted CAT merchandise in stores,
investments in church and union funds, and declared "CAT-Free Zones" boycotting all
CAT products. CAT distributors have seen protests from Belfastto Bil'in, Detroitto
Denmark, San Franciscoto Stockholm.
Support for boycott actions is growing within the trade union movement in Britainand
Ireland. The Electronic Intifada reported on 14 August that although the British
union federation the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has not yet passed a BDS motion, the
public sector union PCS, the University and College Union UCU and the Fire Brigades
Union have all passed strong motions explicitly calling for a general policy of
boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from Israeli companies and government sanctions
against the state. Others have called for elements of BDS such as a boycott of
settlement goods, or for the government to suspend arms sales to Israel.
In April, the independent Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) for the first time
voted to endorse a report recommending "boycott and disinvest from Israeli
companies".
The boycott movement faces constant attempts by Zionists to roll back its successes,
usually deploying charges of discrimination. Campaigners were somewhat alarmed in
July when the Council of Europe's European Court of Human Rights upheld a French
ruling that it was illegal and discriminatory to boycott Israeli goods. According to
a report in the Jerusalem Post on July 20, the Court also said that making it
illegal to call for a boycott of Israeli goods did not constitute a violation of
one's freedom of expression.
However, boycott campaigners believe the court’s ruling probably has very limited
application across Europesince it is based on a specific case under French law.
Whatever their ethnicity, religious or political affiliation, human rights and peace
campaigners are taking up the Boycott Israel call in growing numbers.