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The Case for Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) against Israelby Nasser Barghouti |
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The nagging question that must confront us is this: What can we do as individuals or as groups to end the horrible injustice that exists in Palestine while remaining true to our principles of non-violence and equality for all, which I presume guides all of us. I have just the answer for you. In July 2005 a coalition that represents the entire spectrum of Palestinian Civil Society laid out plans to launch a global movement to put an end to Israel’s increasingly bloody policies and racist structure. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- BDS for short -- was born. The Palestinian appeal explained how: 1. Israel was built in 1948, from the very beginning, mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, who have become stateless refugees. 2. Israel has refused to allow those Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in defiance of United Nations resolution 194. 3. Israel has built a complicated legal system that racially discriminates against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens. 4. Israel has annexed the Syrian Golan heights and East Jerusalem, which it occupied militarily in 1967, in direct defiance of the UN Security Council that considers these annexations illegal. 5. Israel continues to illegally occupy the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 in spite of dozens of UN resolutions condemning the occupation and calling on Israel to withdraw to 1967 borders. The Palestinian BDS appeal then alluded to the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions It then concluded: “We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace. These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
This appeal represents a very clear idea of what the majority of Palestinians want the rest of the world to do to help them. To many in the US, supporting this appeal represents a huge emotional, political and economic step. So let’s go through the most important objections that someone may raise and try to make a convincing argument against those objects.
Objection 1: Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.This argument of course was famously made by Ronald Reagan to delay sanctions against South Africa. He called his policy "constructive engagement." That policy failed miserably and in the end the US joined the international movement of sanctions against South Africa. The world has been trying the same failed policy of constructive engagement with Israel. It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its aggression: expanding illegal settlements, launching a war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures -- quite the opposite. The sophisticated weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non-Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem. It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war on Gaza, confident they would face no meaningful costs in alienating the international community. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.
Objection 2: Israel is not South Africa.Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza in 2007 was "infinitely worse than apartheid."
Objection 3: Why single out Israel when the United States, Britian, and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country as small as Israel and as trade-dependent, it could actually work to force Israel to end its illegal policies. This is not to say that many other countries have not violated international law.
Objection 4: Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.In a strange way, the reality is that as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically rather than diminish. As many people have pointed out, the fear of collapse focuses the mind. If Israelis truly start fearing their isolation they will be much more open to real dialogue. Building a movement requires intense communicating, as many in the anti-apartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.
Objection 5: Boycotting Israeli companies and companies that support Israel is extremely difficult because of the prominent role that Israel plays in the High-Tech industry.Israel’s role in technology is exaggerated. Israel has intentionally built a cloud of overachievement around it to make itself “too big to fail”. Now we all know what that means…it means that the fall will be even more dramatic, that’s all. But it must start with a break in the wall. No one is too big to fail if they screw up. The criminal war on Gaza, which followed another criminal war on Lebanon, represents a departing point. 2009 will go down in history as the juncture where the world started realizing that Israel is a rogue state that represents an imminent danger to peace in the World and the beginning of an international movement to impose sanctions on Israel to force it to abide with international law. |