Israel’s Anti-BDS Law: Proving the Effectiveness of the Boycott

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Aug 3, 2011 Palestine-Israel
[image from pacbi.org] [image from pacbi.org]

Israel’s Anti-BDS Law: Proving the Effectiveness of the Boycott

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) on July 31, 2011.]

Israel’s Anti-BDS Law: Proving the Effectiveness of the Boycott

This last month has seen the Israeli government reach an unprecedented level of desperation in its attempt to counter the spread of international solidarity with Palestinian rights.  Early in the month, Israel employed the embattled Greek government to act as a proxy force to stop the Gaza-bound flotilla before it could even take off into international waters.  Israel also outsourced its repression against human rights activists to some western states, especially France, which colluded in thwarting the planned fly-in of hundreds of solidarity activists.  Finally, there was the new anti-BDS law, another seemingly futile attempt to counter the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement which Israel views as a "strategic threat" to its system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid. 

The fact that the BDS movement is today the main international challenge to Israel`s impunity and exceptional status as a state above the law, and that it has effectively exposed international state and non-state complicity in maintaining Israel`s multi-tiered system of oppression has made the movement the target of Israel`s rage.  On 11 July, the Israeli parliament passed a law that would ban support for BDS as well as for partial boycotts targeting Israel or any of its complicit institutions.  This recently passed draconian anti-BDS law deems it a civil wrong to call for a boycott of the State of Israel and any area under its control.  Under this law, boycott advocates may be subjected to significant financial penalties without the plaintiffs, whether individuals or institutions, having to prove that the call for boycott in question resulted in any real damages.

We in the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) strongly condemn this anti-BDS law as the latest indicator of Israel`s decades-old repression and apartheid policies.  We firmly stand in solidarity with our principled Israeli partners, such as the Coalition of Women for Peace, Boycott from Within, Alternative Information Center, and Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions, who may, as a result of this law, face punitive measures for supporting the Palestinian-led BDS campaign. 

Far from being deterred by such cynical attempts to instill fear in the movement, we shall carry on and intensify our civil resistance to Israeli apartheid and colonial oppression with unprecedented resolve and determination.  We see the passing of the anti-BDS law as a clear sign of the irrefutable effectiveness of the BDS movement, both internationally and within Israel, and of the failure of Israel`s other potent weapons, such as intimidation, bullying and smear campaigns, to counter the movement.  The BDS movement`s slogan, “Freedom, Justice, Equality,” its creative and de-centralized global tactics, the Palestinian consensus around it, and its foundation in respect for international law and universal human rights, have all made BDS a formidable strategy of resistance that has rendered much of Israel`s might, with all its nuclear weapons, largely ineffective.   

The anti-BDS law is first and foremost an attack on the rights of Palestinians and meant as a repressively blunt measure against Palestinian nonviolent resistance and effective solidarity with it.  It prevents all Israeli citizens and permanent residents, regardless of background, which is an ironic exception in a state with apartheid laws, from standing in solidarity with Palestinians, whether in the occupied Palestinian territories, in Israel, or in the diaspora.  While clearly eroding whatever free speech Jewish Israelis once had, the primary and ultimate targets of this law, then, are not Jewish Israelis, who have the privilege to not engage in boycotts and resistance if they so choose, but Palestinians, who must resist to exist in the face of Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid.  

PACBI is troubled, therefore, by biased media representations of the impact of this law as merely infringing on the rights of Israelis and as eroding the supposed "democratic nature" of the Israeli state.  Focusing on the infringement of freedom of speech of Israelis, while ignoring Israel`s ongoing grave violations of international law and Palestinian rights, fits well with the typically racist attitude in the Israeli mainstream media towards Palestinians, and fails to consider the reasons for the passing of this law in the first place. 

Moreover, a state that is built on apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing and denial of basic human rights cannot and should not be considered a democracy by any fair standard.  Israel`s self-definition as a "Jewish and democratic state" is an obvious oxymoron.  Israeli "democracy" has always been a myth since it only applies to Jewish citizens, excluding undesirable "others" – the indigenous Palestinians.  In this sense, Israel has always been a “democracy” only for a privileged part of its population, just as apartheid South Africa.

The reason this law has become controversial is precisely because it encroaches on the taken for granted rights of Jewish Israelis.  Had this law targeted the Palestinian citizens of Israel alone, as dozens of apartheid laws in Israel actually do, it would have hardly caught media attention, not to mention a dedicated New York Times editorial on the issue.  After all, the rights of those Palestinians are violated persistently and systematically through dozens of racist Israeli laws that span marriage, land and nationality, and that are condemned even by the US Department of State which sees them as constituting "institutional, legal, and societal discrimination." With this in mind, all what has been eroded is the façade of democracy enjoyed by Israeli Jewish citizens.  And if the Israeli courts decide to nullify this law it would only be for the purpose of protecting this fraudulent façade and maintaining the overall system of oppression and racial discrimination.

Perhaps this anti-BDS law will show many Israelis that under circumstances of occupation and apartheid, to co-exist is to “co-resist” this oppressive system.  Perhaps it will help them recognize and motivate them to act to end the profound injustices and utter lack of freedoms Palestinians have been subjected to for 63 years, and in doing so, to broaden their scope of boycotts and demand more than just an end to the occupation, but also equal rights for all and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Only then can comprehensive and sustainable peace be reached, on a solid foundation of freedom, justice and equality.

PACBI

 
Tags

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      Long Form Podcast Episode 7: Think Tanks and Manufactuing Consent with Mandy Turner (4 June)

      In this episode, Mandy Turner discusses the vital role think tanks play in the policy process, and in manufacturing consent for government policy. Turner recently published a landmark study of leading Western think tanks and their positions on Israel and Palestine, tracing pronounced pro-Israel bias, where the the key role is primarily the work of senior staff within these institutions, the so-called “gatekeepers.”

    • Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes

      Long Form Podcast: Our Next Three Episodes
      Long Form Podcast(Episodes 7, 8, & 9) Upcoming Guests:Mandy TurnerHala RharritHatem Bazian Hosts:Mouin RabbaniBassam Haddad   Watch Here:Youtube.com/JadaliyyaX.com/Jadaliyya There can be
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412