The voices for the BDS campaign are now increasing even within Israel! Read the article by Michel Warschawsky against Uri Avneri:
Yes to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Against Israel: An Answer to Uri Avnery: Alternative Information Centre
Michael Warschawsky
The call for BDS—Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions—has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest from Israeli corporations involved in settlement building made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign. After having ignored the BDS campaign for several years, Uri Avnery finally felt obliged to react, twice, in his blog. Like Uri, I rarely react to other’s opinions and in my own blog, as he put it nicely, “I don’t want to impose my views, I just want to provide food for thought and leave it to the reader to form his or her opinion”. Some of the arguments put forward by Avnery, however, require an answer, because they may mislead his readers.
Despite the fact that I sometimes disagree with Avnery’s opinions—though much less than in the past—I have great respect for the man, the journalist, the activist and the analyst, and since the bankruptcy of Peace Now during the Oslo process, we have been closely active together, and I would dare say that we became friends. This is why I feel compelled to react to his criticism of the BDS campaign.
Let’s start with the obvious and with what I consider to be a false debate. “Hatred is a very bad advisor” writes Uri, and I will be the last to disagree with him. I know also that he will agree with me if I add that in our political context, hatred is understandable.
“Israel is not South Africa” says Uri. Of course it isn’t, and every concrete reality is different from every other. Nevertheless, these two countries have some similarities: both are racist states with (different kinds of) apartheid systems (the literal meaning of apartheid being “structural separation”). Both countries were established as “European states” in a national/ethnical environment composed of non-European who were considered a hostile environment, and rightly so. We do also agree—and this is even more important—that in order to achieve substantial results in our struggle, we need to build joint dynamics including the Palestinian national resistance, Israeli anti-occupation forces, and an international solidarity movement. Ten years ago, I call this the “winning triangle.”
We share a lot in common indeed, until the issue of Uri’s misrepresentation of his political opponents comes up. In his article debating Neve Gordon’s article in LA Times, Uri writes: “Neve Gordon and his partners in this (BDS) effort have despaired of the Israelis.” If this were true, why do Neve, myself and many other Israeli BDS campaigners devote so much of their time in building, together with Uri Avnery, an Israeli movement against war, occupation and colonization? The true question is not “changing Israeli society,” but how and for what.
The political goal of Uri Avnery is “an Israeli-Palestinian peace,” i.e., a compromise that should satisfy the majority of the two communities, on a symmetrical basis (in another important article, he called it “truth against truth”). Such symmetry is the result of another important political assumption by Avnery: the conflict in Palestine is a conflict between two national movements with equal legitimacy.
Neve and many supporters of the BDS campaign disagree on both assumptions: our goal is not peace as such, because “peace” in itself doesn’t mean anything (almost every war in modern history was initiated under the pretext of achieving peace). Peace is always the reflection of relation of forces in which one side cannot impose on the other all that it considers being its legitimate rights.
Unlike Uri, our goal is the fulfillment of certain values, like basic individual and collective rights, an end of domination and oppression, decolonization, equality, and as-much-justice-as-possible. In that framework, we obviously may support “peace initiatives” that can reduce the level of violence and/or achieve a certain amount of rights. In our strategy, however, this support for peace initiatives is not a goal in itself, but merely a means to achieve the above-mentioned values and rights.
That difference between “peace” and “justice” is connected to the divergence concerning the second assumption of Uri Avnery: the symmetry between two equally legitimate national movements and aspirations.
For us, Zionism is not a national liberation movement but a colonial movement, and the State of Israel is and has always been a settlers’ colonial state. Peace, or, better, justice, cannot be achieved without a total decolonization (one can say de-Zionisation) of the Israeli State; it is a precondition for the fulfillment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians—whether refugees, living under military occupation or second-class citizens of Israel. Whether the final result of that de-colonization will be a “one-state” solution, two democratic states (i.e., not a “Jewish State”), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary, and will ultimately be decided by the struggle itself and the level of participation of Israelis, if at all.
In that sense, Uri Avnery is wrong when he states that our divergences is about “one state” or “two states.” As explained above, the divergence is on rights, decolonization and the principle of full equality. The form of the solution is, in my opinion, irrelevant as long as we are speaking about a solution in which the two peoples are living in freedom (i.e., without colonial relationships) and equality.
Another important divergence with Uri Avnery concerns the dialectics between the Palestinian national liberation agenda and the role of the so-call Israeli peace camp. While it is obvious that the Palestinian national movement needs as many Israeli allies as possible to achieve liberation as quick as possible and with as little suffering as possible, one cannot expect the Palestinian movement to wait until Uri, Neve and the other Israeli anti-colonialists convince the majority of the Israeli public. For two reasons: first, because popular national movements do not wait to fight oppression and colonialism; second, because history has taught us that changes within the colonialist society have always been the result of the liberation struggle, and not the other way round: when the price of occupation becomes too high, more and more people understand that it is not worth continuing.
Yes, a hand extended for coexistence is needed, but together with an iron fist fighting for rights and freedom. The failure of the Oslo process confirms a very old lesson of history: any attempt for reconciliation before the fulfillment of rights strengthens the continuation of the colonial domination relationship. Without a price to be paid, why should the Israelis stop colonization, why should they risk a deep internal crisis?
This is where the BDS campaign is so relevant: it offers an international framework to act in order to help the Palestinian people achieve their legitimate rights, both on the institutional level (states and international institutions) and on that of civil society. On the one hand it addresses the international community, asking it to sanction a State that is systematically violating international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and signed agreements; on the other hand, it calls on international civil society to act, both as individuals as well as social movements (trade-unions, parties, local councils, popular associations etc) to boycott goods, official representatives, institutions etc. that represent the colonial State of Israel.
Both tasks (boycott and sanctions) will eventually be a pressure on the Israeli people, pushing them to understand that occupation and colonization have a price, that violating international rules will, sooner or later, make the State of Israel a pariah-country, not welcome in the civilized community of nations. Just like South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. In that sense, and unlike Uri’s claim, BDS is addressed to the Israeli public, and, right now, is the only way to provoke a change in Israeli attitudes towards occupation/colonization. If one compares this BDS to the anti-apartheid BDS campaign that took twenty years to start bearing real fruits, one cannot but be surprised at how efficient the anti-Israeli occupation campaign has already been, and even in Israel we already witness its first effects.
The BDS campaign was initiated by a broad coalition of Palestinian political and social movements. No Israeli who claims to support the national rights of the Palestinian people can, decently, turns his or her back to that campaign: after having claimed for years that “armed struggle is not the way,” it will be outrageous that this BDS strategy will too be disqualified by those Israeli activists. On the contrary, we must all together join to “Boycott from Within” in order to provide Israeli support to this Palestinian initiative. It is the minimum we can do, and it is the minimum we should do.
After Goldstone, Hamas faces fateful choice: The Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah, 8 October 2009
The uproar over the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices.
Abbas, accustomed to being surrounded by corrupt cronies, sycophants and yes-men, badly misjudged the impact of his decision — under Israeli and American instructions — to withdraw PA support for the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, forwarding the Goldstone report for further action. After all, the PA had actively sabotaged measures supporting Palestinian rights at the UN on at least two occasions in recent years without much reaction.
This time, torrents of protest and outrage flowed from almost every direction. It was as if all the suppressed anger and grief about PA collaboration with Israel during the massacres in Gaza last winter suddenly burst through a dam. “The crime at Geneva cannot pass without all those responsible being held accountable,” the widely-read London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi stated in its lead editorial on 8 October. The newspaper called for the removal of Abbas and his associates who betrayed the victims of Israel’s massacres and “saved Israel from the most serious moral, political and legal crisis it has faced since its establishment.”
Naming collaboration — even treason — for what it is has always been a painful taboo among Palestinians, as for all occupied peoples. It took the French decades after World War II to begin to speak openly about the extent of collaboration that took place with the Nazi-backed Vichy government. Abbas and his militias — who for a long time have been armed and trained by Israel, the United States and so-called “moderate” Arab states to wage war against the Palestinian resistance — have relied on this taboo to carry out their activities with increasing brazenness and brutality. But the taboo no longer affords protection, as calls for Abbas’ removal and even trial issued from Palestinian organizations all over the world.
Hamas too seems to have been taken by surprise at the strength of reaction. Hamas leaders were critical of Abbas’ withdrawal of the Goldstone resolution, but initially this was notably muted. Early on, Khaled Meshal, the movement’s overall leader, insisted that despite the Goldstone fiasco, Hamas would proceed with Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Fatah and smaller factions scheduled for later in the month, stating that reaching a power-sharing deal remained a “national interest.”
to read the whole article, use the link above.
Not all Israelis are servile in the face of militarism and the continued occupation, and the broad social support for brutalities in the service of the occupation. Some of the youngest Israelis are the most active; the High School movement is an amazing example of this courage to fly in the face of social passivity:
Israeli highschoolers choose jail over occupation army service: The Electronic Intifada
Nora Barrows-Friedman, 6 October 2009
As US-made Hellfire missiles and white phosphorus rained down on the entrapped people of the Gaza Strip earlier this year, a number of “refuseniks,” young Israeli men and women who refuse to serve mandatory military conscription after high school, along with anti-occupation activists attempted to shut down the Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv. It was from this base that airborne weapons of war, flown by their former classmates, took off to kill Palestinians just miles down the beach in Gaza.
From chronic checkpoint beatings, to the use of Palestinian children as human shields during invasions, to widespread use of torture and interrogation in detention camps, to the killing of unarmed civilians during incursions and wide-scale massacres that spur international condemnation, Israel’s soldiers are the face of the state’s expanding and illegal occupation and colonization of Palestine. And a new generation of conscripts have just finished boot camp, eager to carry on this vicious tradition of occupation.
Within mainstream Israeli Jewish society, mandatory conscription into the military is regarded as a rite of passage; a normalized violent adventure meant to codify nationalism and Zionist supremacy while carrying out Israel’s policies of aggression. (Paradoxically, a few thousand non-Jewish, “Arab-Israeli” citizens have also served in the army — see Jonathan Cook’s recent article “False promise of integration for Palestinian soldiers in Israel.”) Recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeated an oft-heard mantra as he attempted to defend the state’s criminal massacres in Gaza earlier this year. “Israel,” Lieberman claimed, “has the most moral army in the world.”
However, a growing number of Israeli Jewish youth facing mandatory military conscription — the Shministim — are breaking the chain of conventional cooperation with the occupation. Refusing to participate in a system they agree to be immoral as well as illegal, these young people exemplify complicity with their ethical values rather than their state’s colonialist policies.
The Shministim have also started linking up with American military resisters to strategize and build an international movement of opposition to the state-sponsored violence of occupation — from the West Bank and Gaza to Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, these young people are speaking directly to Jewish audiences across the US who may romanticize Israel’s perceived “need” for an aggressive military system, hoping to inspire critical thought centered on the actual reality for Palestinians affected by Israel’s actions.
Since 1970, groups of Shministim — Hebrew for 12th-graders — have emerged, turning against the overwhelming current of generational militarism. Writing public letters to Israeli heads of state, Shministim cohorts refuse to participate in the system of occupation, and, more broadly, vociferously challenge a national attitude of supremacy and racist entitlement over historic Palestine’s indigenous population.
Though personal stories of revelatory tenacity are wholly unique for each young person who stands up, the shock of collective reality and personal responsibility is a common theme. After witnessing brutal violence carried out by Israeli occupation soldiers against Palestinians in the West Bank village of Bilin, 19-year-old Shministim member Maya Wind says that “the only moral option for me was to refuse.”
Not surprisingly, the Israeli government does not concur with Wind’s revelation. Shministim refuseniks face draconian jail sentences in repeated cycles until they reach 21 years old or manage to secure a discharge on the basis of medical or mental health.
Israeli youth who refuse to cooperate with Israel’s military occupation are sent into a lengthy and relentless labyrinth of court martials and consecutive jail terms in what Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, representing Shministim, calls a “price tag” meant to deter other young Israelis from non-participation. “Otherwise,” he says, “[the Israeli government’s] argument says, everyone — of ideological or personal reasons — will refuse to serve.”
I recently interviewed Wind and her Shministim cohort, Netta Mishly, during their tour in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wind says that the political and ultra-religious environment in her high school led her to question the reality behind the ideologies of her government and her fellow students. “A lot of my classmates were settlers, including extremists from [settlements in] the West Bank … there were a lot of questions that surfaced for me. I didn’t even use the word ‘occupation’ back then.” Through a discussion group with Palestinians in Jerusalem, Wind says that she awakened to a different reality than the one offered to her inside Israeli-Jewish society. “I figured I needed to learn more. Through a conversation with a Palestinian girl, I started to question more. I started going to the West Bank.”
Wind was sent to jail during the third week of the Gaza massacres, and spent several weeks behind bars. Sentenced four times, she spent a cumulative two months in detention and another 42 days in a military prison altogether. She was subjected to a “humiliating” array of psychiatrists and psychologists sent by the military to determine her mental fitness, required to serve in the army. Wind says that all of the Shministim were labeled mentally unfit by these health professionals, therefore giving Israel the excuse that the problem was not with the policies or the morality of the military, but with the Shministim themselves.
Netta Mishly, also 19 years old and from Tel Aviv, was active in several political groups from early adolescence and supported by parents who encouraged her to think critically. She said that her decision to refuse was made clear during her activity against Israel’s wall in the West Bank. “After I was there, and I saw how the soldiers attack civilians without any security justification, after I saw how the state steals land from [Palestinians] … For me, not going to the army was a decision I came to after visiting the West Bank for the first time.”
She says that her life changed completely after returning to school. “I kept hearing the same line [in class] — that we need to defend ourselves, and we need to go to the army. I couldn’t believe this anymore because I saw how the soldiers act on the ground. I connected with other activists and we started thinking about how we were going to take this difficult step, and we decided to keep working in the same tradition that started before us. We drafted a letter to the government, saying that we wouldn’t take part in the terrible crimes that Israel is doing in our name. After that, one by one, each one of us went to jail.”
Mishly was sentenced to a week in detention at the military base because there was “no room” in the regular prison (during the December-January attacks on Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel who participated in protests were rounded up and thrown into Israeli jails, on charges of treason and incitement). After the trial, one of the highest-ranking Israeli military justices decided they could re-try Mishly and she received another 20 days. “When you make the decision not to go to the army, you don’t know where [the punishment] is going to end,” she says.
Meanwhile, as US President Barack Obama readies another “troop surge” to entrench the interminable American occupation of Afghanistan, Wind and Mishly are meeting with US military resisters in order, Wind says, to expand international rejection of militarism. “I think that’s why Netta and I have come to the US. It’s not just about the Israeli occupation. It’s not just an Israeli thing. The US is occupying. And there are all forms of racism, prejudice and violence … these are not just phenomenons particular to the Middle East, you have this in the US as well. It’s towards immigrants, Mexicans, towards Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we’re trying to show that these are global phenomenons and we all have to create a broader justice movement.”
Sarah Lazare of the Bay Area-based GI Resistance support organization Courage to Resist is helping to organize an upcoming delegation of US war resisters to Palestine-Israel, she says, to connect with Israeli refuseniks. Calling itself Dialogue Against Militarism, the group intends to discuss similar experiences and learn from each other’s strategies for confronting war and occupation, while engaging with the effects of militarism in their respective societies.
“It is extremely powerful that war resisters in Israel are connecting with war resisters in the US,” says Lazare. “Given the close relationship between the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the Israeli occupation, it is vital for resisters in these two countries to join forces, in order to build a movement strong enough to take on the forces we’re up against. Israeli and US war resisters are having exciting discussions, sharing experiences, and showing direct solidarity with each other, and I think this is a powerful step towards stopping US and Israeli-led occupations.”
In January, upon her sentencing, Maya Wind offered her declaration of conscience to the military court. “We can no longer term our military a ‘Defense Force,'” she asserted.
“A defense force does not conquer lands of another people. A defense force does not assist in the building of settlements on those lands. A defense force does not permit settlers to throw stones at Palestinian civilians, nor does it deny them access to their lands and source of livelihood. None of these are acts of a defense force.”
“The occupation has no defensive advantages. On the contrary, the pointless occupation of millions of people only leads to radicalization of opinions, hatred and the escalation of violence. Violence is a cycle that feeds into itself. This cycle will not stop until someone stands up and refuses uncompromisingly to take part in it. This is what I am doing today.”
Several other Shministim are gearing up for a similar speaking tour in South Africa during October.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio and travels several times a year to occupied Palestine to document the situation. She is also a freelance reporter for Inter Press Service. She can be reached at norabf AT gmail DOT com. Her website is www.norabf.com