Blog For Palestine

In this article on Counterpunch Virginia Tilley tells why it’s now time to make the boycott of Israel a reality.  She lays out the primary reasons, the strategies and the real goals.  I cannot agree more with everything that she says.

Until recently I have completely ignored the varying Boycott calls; for example to my own shame and to that of my family, I was seldom seen without a Starbucks cup.  This has ended there is no more Starbucks for me, besides Seattle has much better coffee than Starbucks, Cafe Vita absolutely rocks.  But beyond my relationship with Starbucks, there needs to be a serious effort around mobilizing people to join the Boycott campaign against all Israeli goods, and US companies that support Israel.  There also need to be efforts around Academic and Tourism Boycotts.  Finally Divestment needs to be worked into this whole thing.

Is everyone on board?

-Tineen

I just wanted to link to a couple of articles that were on EI about the boycott campaign.

• Palestinians welcome UK vote for Israel academic boycott
• CUPE Ontario votes in Support of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Against Israeli Apartheid

I especially liked a portion of the first article regarding the ‘academic freedom’ argument made by those opposing academic boycott. ‘The persistence of academic boycott efforts proves that many academics in the UK and beyond do not buy the disingenuous claim that boycott of Israeli academic institutions conflicts with “academic freedom” … The … claim is at best hypocritical as it is based on the premise that only Israeli academic freedom counts. The fact that Israeli academic institutions themselves collude in various ways in their government’s grave violations of Palestinian human and political rights, which include the right to education, is lost on those making this claim.’

-Tineen

So the Academic Boycott against Israel that was being debated in Britain has been voted on and passed. A number of British ministers were quick to express dismay over the vote, but that’s expected. I am very happy about this vote. The boycott efforts, whether they be academic, economic, cutural, or anything else, are greatly important. Israel is a moral anomaly, and as such it needs to be isolated from the rest of the world in every possible fashion. Good job guys.

There is a mini-storm in Israel happening around some efforts in Britian to organize a very limited boycott of Israeli educational institutions who do not publicly renounce “apartheid and discrimination in education”. There is tremendous mobilization in Israel, in Britain, across Europe and in the US by all those that support Israel to stop the boycott from being voted on. Letters are flying all over the place, pressure is being applied, outrage is being expressed, and suprise suprise the anti-semitism card has been brought out in full force.

There are a few important lessons here that we need to take note of. First there is the very healthy Israeli attitude that there is no issue that is too small to fight. Looking at the limited scope of the boycott being planned, the Israeli reaction might seem completely out of proportion. The fact is they are right to react so fiercely. A boycott such as this sets a precedent, no matter how small, and that represents a slipperly slope. Once one group is willing to express their moral outrage at the occupation, racism, oppression of the Zionist state, then other might be empowered to do the same. When I was reading about this I thought back to the law suit that was brought in American courts against the Palestinian Authority by victims of suicide bombings in Israel. The dumbasses at the Palestinian Authority didn’t even bother to send a defense lawyer.

The second lesson lies in the sheer scale of the mobilization. As much as we would like to hope that the justice of our cause will enable individuals of conscious to hold their ground in the face of such opposition, as some point the stakes become too high. If the boycott doesn’t make it through, I don’t think it will be because those professors will have changed their minds and believed that the arguments being made by the pro-Israel camp are right. It will because they will have been cowed by the sheer mass of opposition. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t blame them, I’m not sure if I were in their shoes I would be able to deal with all that hate being spewed at me for a cause that doesn’t affect me directly.

The third lesson lies in the approach taken by the Israelis to argue against the boycott. It isn’t just a single refrain by everyone saying ‘this is wrong in principle’. There are a dozen arguments on the table. Some people are talking about why aren’t the boycotts being imposed on other countries, some people are saying that politics should be separate from academics, other are doing the anti-semitism thing, etc, etc… The point is that by diversify the arguments they are appealing to people with completely different sensibilities and more important they’re appealing to the differing sensibilities that we each have.

I really hope that the boycott makes it through. I really hope that despite all this effort that the pro-Zionist forces are going though that they fall flat on their face. But more than anything I hope that in the future there will be a lot of pro-Zionist blogs out there enumerating the lessons that can be extracted from the work that the pro-Palestinian activist are doing to push boycotts against Israel forward. That would be sweet…

-Tineen