This Blog Harms » Conflict

Australia’s Middle East diaspora on the Palestine Boycott, Divestment & Sanction (BDS) campaign

NAJ Taylor — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:06:20 +0000

Following the reaction to my blog post on the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel campaign in October, I approached five members of the Middle East diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words, the following proposition:

“To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?”

Each discussant had only 1000 words to get their point across.

How did they respond? Click through to each of the five responses below:

Discussant 1 of 5: Amin Abbas is a diaspora Palestinian.

Discussant 2 of 5: Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based independent journalist and author who has written for The Guardian, Haaretz, The Nation, Sydney Morning Herald and many others. His two best-selling books are My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. He is currently working on many projects, including a book about vulture capitalism, a book on the Left in contemporary politics and another title on Israel/Palestine.

Discussant 3 of 5: Kim Bullimore is a long-time socialist, political activist and anti-racism campaigner. Kim is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS-Palestine), the only all women international peace team working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She also writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action and blogs at Live from Occupied Palestine. In 2010, Kim co-organised the first national Australian BDS Conference.

Discussant 4 of 5: Les Rosenblatt is a Melbourne writer and political activist with a strong interest in Middle-Eastern politics and history. He has written several book reviews and articles on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for Arena magazine and elsewhere. Les also promotes the science of climate change and is seeking to understand how best to respond to the GFC Mark 2. Les was active in the Australian Jewish Democratic society over many years and participated in a Middle East Dialogue project organised by La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue a couple of years ago.

Discussant 5 of 5: Moammar Mashni is the co-founder and manager of Australians for Palestine. He works to articulate the concerns of Australia’s Palestinian communities among politicians, churches, unions, universities and the media and to raise Australian public awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict’s dynamics. Moammar was born in Australia to a Palestinian refugee family.

Moammar Mashni on the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel (Discussant 5 of 5)

Moammar Mashni — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:05:10 +0000

Preamble by NAJ Taylor: Following the reaction to my blog post on the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel campaign in October, I decided to approach five members of the Middle East diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words, the following proposition:

“To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?”

Discussant 5 of 5 (below): Moammar Mashni is the co-founder and manager of Australians for Palestine. He works to articulate the concerns of Australia’s Palestinian communities among politicians, churches, unions, universities and the media and to raise Australian public awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict’s dynamics. Moammar was born in Australia to a Palestinian refugee family.

BDS – the only game in town

by Moammar Mashni

Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: When I first read that Palestinian Civil Society had called on the rest of the world to help it implement a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, I was elated by the fact that there was a new wave of vigour in support of Palestinian rights. For too long, the tit-for-tat cycle of violence had dominated the political landscape, but now there was a new kid on the block – BDS.

BDS has enjoyed an extremely successful track record in its short history. Artists such as Elvis Costello, Snoop Dogg, Meg Ryan and Roger Waters have all refused to perform in Israel. Companies such as Alstom, the French transport conglomerate recently lost a US$10 billion contract in Saudi Arabia. Unions across the world, including Australia, have passed resolutions in support of the Palestinian call for an Israeli boycott until the basic demands of the call are met.

In case you had not familiarised yourself with the tenets of BDS, here they are:

Recognise the inalienable rights of the Palestinian refugees;
End the illegal military occupation;
End the systematic discrimination of Palestinian citizens within Israel.

What should be made abundantly clear is that the BDS call is from Palestinian civil society. It is a direct request from hundreds of Palestinian unions, universities, refugee groups and human rights institutions amongst many others.

There are the detractors who say that BDS is about ‘wiping Israel off the map’ or that it’s a tool to ‘delegitimise’ Israel and it only foments ‘anti-Israel’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ sentiments. Here in Australia, the BDS campaign has mostly been centred on the Max Brenner Chocolate stores. Setting aside the fact that most of the journalists covering the story failed to discover that ‘Max Brenner’ the individual does not even exist, the coverage in the mainstream media was patently biased – as is often the case on the Israel/Palestine issue.

One of over 24,000 Palestinian homes demolished since 1967 by Israel. Source: Alternative Information Center

A case in point is a poll conducted by research company Roy Morgan – which received almost no coverage – found that 64% of Australian voters did not support the construction of settlements on Occupied Palestinian land. This construction necessarily means the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, whose greatest crime is that they were not born Jewish.

One of the most comical manifestations of the anti-BDS campaign was the debate in NSW parliament over the issue. So unfamiliar were these elected members with the information, some Legislative Councillors in the debate could not even recall correctly the name of the establishment they were so vigorously defending – parliamentarians simply regurgitated the lies and misinformation that the pro-Israel lobby had provided.

Once again, any reasonable person would find it difficult to find hate, violence or racism in any of this, surely? Yet when sycophants for the Israel cause make the hyperbolic claim that BDS is like 1930’s Nazi Germany, no one in the media holds these people to account for their fictitious claims.

In June, I was in Canberra meeting with MP’s, Senators and their staff. After meeting with the chief-of-staff of a very senior Coalition MP and detailing just how bad the situation on the ground was, their response, to put it mildly, was mind-blowing – “well , everyone should just have equal rights, that’s the only fair thing isn’t it?” they said. I’m sure it was only a couple of seconds before I spoke again, but it felt like an eternity had passed as I tried to fathom what had just been said. Mind you, I had not even broached the subject of BDS.

Human Rights are universal, yet it is patently obvious that their implementation is very selective. Why? It is a very interesting question that has some rather distasteful answers sadly. Whilst Israel claims to be a democracy, under any reasonable definition of what is happening in all of historic Palestine (i.e. all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea) more closely resembles apartheid.

This is a hotly contested term for those closely monitoring the intricacies of the conflict but recently the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, made a statement that those on my side of the debate have long advocated:

“The term “apartheid” refers to the undemocratic system of discriminating between the rights of the whites and the blacks, which once existed in South Africa. Even though there is a difference between the apartheid that was practiced there and what is happening in the territories, there are also some points of resemblance. There are two population groups in one region, one of which possesses all the rights and protections, while the other is deprived of rights and is ruled by the first group. This is a flagrantly undemocratic situation.”

Schocken’s epiphany, if that is what you can call it, merely adds to the long list of those who have already boldly made the apartheid assertion including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, David A. Kirshbaum from the Israel Law Centre and of late, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. And for those looking for more reasons why the term can be applied to Israel, the ever increasing racist laws that privilege Jews over Palestinians can be found here.

Sadly, Israel is hell-bent on a collision course with disaster; whether it is the Likud Charter, the continued construction of settlements and home demolitions or the ongoing occupation which has an enormously deleterious impact on the Palestinians, the future is indeed bleak.

I had a long discussion with Professor Avraham Sela (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) in June this year. He made it clear to me personally and to others more broadly, when he spoke at the La Trobe University forum, that Israel is, and will continue to be so politically instable that change will never come from within.

If that is the case then surely that change that is required will have to come from the outside, and hence BDS is likely the only effective tool to at least bring Israel to the table to discuss the issues in an honest and open manner as equals with the Palestinians.

Moammar Mashni is the co-founder and manager of Australians for Palestine. He works to articulate the concerns of Australia’s Palestinian communities among politicians, churches, unions, universities and the media and to raise Australian public awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict’s dynamics. Moammar was born in Australia to a Palestinian refugee family.

The other discussants:

Discussant 1 of 5: Amin Abbas is a Diaspora Palestinian.

Les Robenblatt on the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel (Discussant 4 of 5)

Les Rosenblatt — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:04:34 +0000

Preamble by NAJ Taylor: Following the reaction to my blog post on the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel campaign in October, I decided to approach five members of the Middle East diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words, the following proposition:

“To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?”

Discussant 4 of 5 (below): Les Rosenblatt is a Melbourne writer and political activist with a strong interest in Middle-Eastern politics and history. He has written several book reviews and articles on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for Arena magazine and elsewhere. Les also promotes the science of climate change and is seeking to understand how best to respond to the GFC Mark 2. Les was active in the Australian Jewish Democratic society over many years and participated in a Middle East Dialogue project organised by La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue a couple of years ago.

Harm’s way?

by Les Rosenblatt

Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: Logically, if logic, as I understand it, matters here, the concept of unbalanced ‘competing harms’, implying a prospective balancing device to achieve equivalence, would look something like this: A+a = B, where A = the use of ‘non-violent’ (and non-BDS) harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally (including perhaps the harm that Israel does to its own reputation) and militarily, B = the ‘violent harm’ endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and ‘a’ = BDS.

Even if one accepts that regardless of how they are defined, there is a significant non-quantifiable disproportionality between A and B such that B is greater in magnitude than A, the undecideability of the necessary magnitude of ‘a’ to achieve an effective balance between A+a and B becomes, in my view, an insurmountable impediment to the objective of equivalence, however desirable such an equivalence might be in principle.

Writing as an ethnically – or perhaps more accurately, culturally or historically – Jewish-Australian atheist critic of Zionism (which puts me somewhere in the spectrum of non-Zionist to anti-Zionist thinking and identification) I do not see myself as a member of a Jewish ‘diaspora’, nor do I see myself as belonging to any ‘wider Middle-East community’ however conceived.

Nonetheless, in my adult life, which has now spanned all the years since the 1967 Israel-Arab war and the 44.5 year old occupation by Israel of Palestinian territory and people beyond the 1967 Israeli borders, I have increasingly empathised with the enormity of the plight of the Palestinian people and their unrelieved and worsening suffering resultant upon that occupation. I also hasten to add that my sympathies and empathy extend as well to Israelis and any others killed, injured, and traumatised physically and psychologically by terrorist attacks on civilians in Israeli society. I am also sympathetic to and supportive of the would-be peacemakers, activists, and negotiators attempting to communicate across the spatial and temporal dimensions of this long and distressing conflict.

I accept that proportionality is an important notion in assessing levels of criminal culpability and victimisation where conflict is conducted using strategies and means of inflicting harm, and particularly where arms and violence are resorted to by either military or para-military contenders. This concept of ‘proportionality’ has significant meaning in current international law jurisdictions where an assessment of its ‘symmetry’ can determine the legality or otherwise of violence in war contexts, particularly where civilian populations are grievously effected. It presents enough challenges of complexity in its determination without further eroding its utility through expansion of its coverage to include an ahistorical concept of ‘harm’ which attempts to equilibrate violence with non-violence, while apparently ignoring long-established distinctions between civilian suffering and armed conflict.

Which brings me to the BDS campaign and its cost-benefit parameters. Let me be clear in saying that where this campaign non-violently alerts the world and the Israeli government and military to the unacceptability of most Israeli policies and practices directed against internationally lawful Palestinian claims, I accept its legitimacy. I do require however that it is as scrupulous as is reasonably possible in targeting the forces of occupation and repression and not those individuals, Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and non-Israelis, who are working towards a just peace with internationally acceptable historically-linked compensations to the primarily, but not only, Palestinian victims of the conflict.

I do think that the tactics of the BDS movement need careful calibration according to the demographics, culture, history and politics of the areas in which it seeks to establish its legitimacy.

I am pleased to see that the NSW Greens for example have now tempered their own statements of support for the BDS campaign to remedy their divisive recent divergence from National and other State Greens. Their crude and formulaic public statements of partisanship while demonising Israel in order to champion the BDS were avidly exploited by major party disinformation campaigns against Greens-leaning Jews in electorates such as Melbourne Ports where heroic and hagiographic perceptions of Israel are held as convictions by the vast majority of its well-organised community opinion-leaders.

I trust that when Sydney based activists seek to promote BDS in Melbourne that they will take careful account of the sensitivity of Melbourne’s Jewry to the many living 73 year-old recollections of post-Weimar and pre-Holocaust boycotts of Jewish (as opposed to Israeli) businesses, circa 1935-1938. Such account needs to consider what is to be gained or lost in Australian political development through the consequences of raising this living population’s post-traumatic anxieties and the reactive propensities of their spokespeople.

Mindful of such reactive propensities, when I served on the Executive of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society between 2009-2011, I drafted a statement for the AJDS which was adopted as its own policy commitment on BDS. It supported ‘selected BDS actions designed to bring about an end to the Israeli occupation, blockade and settlement on Palestinian lands lying outside of the June 1967 Israeli borders’ but agreed to make any decisions on BDS matters ‘on a case-by-case basis and exercise its judgement as to the political/social cost-benefits of any such action before granting specific endorsement or approval’.

If the aim of the BDS movement in Australia is to shift Australia’s political and economic expressions of commitment and engagement with the conflict towards a more judicious recognition of Palestinian needs and concerns than has hitherto been in evidence, adroit and sensitive strategic and tactical fidelity will assist it.

NAJ Taylor’s formulation to which I was invited to respond, although it seeks to express a new perspective on BDS legitimacy through the equilibration of commensurate ‘harms’, needs to take more account of the complexity of Australian community and institutional orientations. In my opinion, such a relatively static abstraction will not contribute effectively to Australian convergence of effort to find a pathway towards a just resolution of the conflict until it also incorporates historical and future projective ideation as part of its means/ends and intentions.

Les Rosenblatt is a Melbourne writer and political activist with a strong interest in Middle-Eastern politics and history. He has written several book reviews and articles on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for Arena magazine and elsewhere. Les also promotes the science of climate change and is seeking to understand how best to respond to the GFC Mark 2. Les was active in the Australian Jewish Democratic society over many years and participated in a Middle East Dialogue project organised by La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue a couple of years ago.

The other discussants:

Discussant 1 of 5: Amin Abbas is a Diaspora Palestinian.

Kim Bullimore on the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel (Discussant 3 of 5)

Kim Bullimore — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:03:59 +0000

Preamble by NAJ Taylor: Following the reaction to my blog post on the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel campaign in October, I decided to approach five members of the Middle East diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words, the following proposition:

“To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?”

Discussant 3 of 5 (below): Kim Bullimore is a long-time socialist, political activist and anti-racism campaigner. Kim is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS-Palestine), the only all women international peace team working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She also writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action and blogs at Live from Occupied Palestine. In 2010, Kim co-organised the first national Australian BDS Conference.

Choosing to do no harm

by Kim Bullimore

Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: In December 2008, the Popular Committee Against the Wall from the Palestinian village of Bil’in in the Occupied West Bank and the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall were jointly awarded the Carl Von Ossietzky Human Rights Medallion in Berlin. The Award, named for the 1935 German Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl Von Ossietzky – a journalist and pacifist – who died in a Nazi concentration camp, is awarded each year for “outstanding service in the realisation of basic and human rights”. The International League of Human Rights who awards the prize noted that the two groups were an exemplary example of non-violent grassroots resistance to Israel’s occupation polices.

In their speech at the award ceremony, a representative of Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) noted that as activists they were originally reluctant to accept a prize for political activism, saying “we would prefer not to be singled out for glory, and receive gratitude for what we feel is our duty”. The AATW representative, however, stated that despite this they would accept the award because:

“Here on this podium, just as in the olive groves of the West Bank, our primary moral duty is not to maintain ideological purity, but rather to stand with Palestinians in their resistance to oppression. We recognize the importance of garnering international support for the ongoing struggle … We believe that standing here, in the current state of affairs, is a direct continuation of the blocking of bulldozers, standing side by side with the stone throwers, or running away from teargas along with young and elderly protesters. Here, as in the olive groves, I would like to stress that we are not equal partners, but rather occupiers who join the occupied in THEIR struggle. We are aware of the fact that for many, the participation of Israelis in a Palestinian struggle serves as a stamp of approval, but in our eyes, this partnership is not about granting legitimacy. The Palestinian struggle is legitimate with or without us. Rather, the struggle is an opportunity for us to cross, in action rather than words, the barriers of national allegiance”.

For Palestine solidarity activists, such as myself, who have worked with Palestinian, Israeli and international activists campaigning in both Palestine and Australia against Israel’s occupation and apartheid practices, the Palestinian initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign is a similar continuation of the work done on the ground in Palestine: of blocking bulldozers and standing shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians struggling for freedom. The BDS campaign, like the struggle on the ground in Palestine, gives not only activists like myself but ordinary people across the world who believe in human rights and justice for all, the opportunity to cross in action rather than words, the barriers of national allegiance to stand with Palestinian society which since 1948 has suffered decades of human rights abuses and harm at the hands of the Israeli state.

The Palestinian BDS campaign initiated in 2005 by Palestinian civil society does not seek to “balance competing harms”. Instead its focus is on preventing further harm being done to an occupied and oppressed people. This is because the Israel-Palestine conflict isn’t a symmetrical struggle, played out on level playing field by two equal nations. Instead it’s an asymmetrical struggle, between a settler-colonial nation and a colonised, occupied, stateless Indigenous people. It is, therefore, a conflict marked by the dispossession of the Indigenous Palestinian people and their oppression by a stronger colonial entity, Israel.

As a result the Palestinian BDS campaign, which is conducted within the framework of international human rights law, is a non-violent punitive campaign launched by a colonised, oppressed people against the colonial state which is oppressing them. This is why at its heart; the BDS is an anti-colonial campaign which seeks to struggle against the “normalisation” of Palestinian dispossession via Israel’s occupation and apartheid practices, while also seeking to non-violently contribute to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and national liberation.

It is in this framework that the campaign calls for non-violent punitive measures to be maintained against Israel until it meets its international obligations to recognise the Palestinian peoples inalienable right to self-determination and until it complies with international law by (1) Ending its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; (2) Recognising the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and (3) Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Opponents of the BDS campaign, however, have sought to paint the campaign as anti-Semitic and/or harmful to Palestinians and any possible peace process. As BDS National Coordinator Hind Awwad notes, this second claim is not only patronising but it also paints Palestinians as immature children who don’t know what’s best. Similarly the argument that BDS is supposedly anti-Semitic doesn’t hold water. As the Palestinian BDS National Committee has repeatedly pointed out, not only does BDS actively oppose all forms of racism (including anti-Semitism), the campaign is aimed not at individuals but at businesses or institutions which directly contribute to the grave human rights abuses and international law violations of the Israeli state and military or to the rebranding campaigns that attempt to whitewash Israel’s crimes

Recently at a debate on the Palestinian cultural boycott in London, Omar Barghouti explained that the basic principle behind the campaign is ‘DO NO HARM”. Barghouti explained “all BDS asks you at the basic level is to refrain from undermining our struggle – from doing harm by abetting the cover-up of our oppressor’s crimes”, saying this is simply “a profound and basic moral obligation [of] refusing to be an accessory to a crime”.

Today, people of conscience around the world have a choice: do we choose to DO HARM and undermine the struggle of the Palestinian people for human rights and self-determination OR do we choose to DO NO HARM and refuse to be an accessory to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians? Today, which will you choose?

Kim Bullimore is a long-time socialist, political activist and anti-racism campaigner. Kim is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS-Palestine), the only all women international peace team working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She also writes regularly on the Palestine-Israel conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action and blogs at Live from Occupied Palestine. In 2010, Kim co-organised the first national Australian BDS Conference.

The other discussants:

Discussant 1 of 5: Amin Abbas is a Diaspora Palestinian.

Antony Loewenstein on the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel (Discussant 2 of 5)

Antony Loewenstein — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:02:23 +0000

Preamble by NAJ Taylor: Following the reaction to my blog post on the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel campaign in October, I decided to approach five members of the Middle East diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words, the following proposition:

“To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?”

Discussant 2 of 5 (below): Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based independent journalist and author who has written for The Guardian, Haaretz, The Nation, Sydney Morning Herald and many others. His two best-selling books are My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. He is currently working on many projects, including a book about vulture capitalism, a book on the Left in contemporary politics and another title on Israel/Palestine.

Supporting BDS and Palestinian rights as a Jew

by Antony Loewenstein

Sydney, AUSTRALIA: The logic of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) didn’t appear to me immediately. When my first book, My Israel Question, was released in 2006, the issue was barely raised, despite Palestinian civil society launching its call in 2005 “against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”

The vast majority of Israeli Jews claimed to be in constant fear of Palestinian terrorism despite living relatively free lives in a society that increasingly made Palestinians invisible. Palestinians under occupation were disillusioned with their leaders and after more than a decade of fruitless negotiations with Israel, the Oslo period, longed to be free.

But now, with Israel a state that even more brazenly boasts a fundamentalist Jewish minority as representing true Zionism, BDS is an essential tool to harm Israel’s economic and moral fibre. In the words of American Jewish dissident Philip Weiss, founder of the website Mondoweiss, “Israel isn’t good for the Jews anymore.” Most importantly, Palestinians under occupation are making this call, not a Diaspora attempting to impose a distorted vision onto them.

BDS is a key weapon to de-normalise the relationship between both the globalised economy and Israel and the constructed emotional ties that allegedly bond Israel and the West. Witness Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard recently tell an event sponsored by National Australia Bank that, “We are two countries separated by distance, but united by values. Liberal democracies that seek freedom and peace.”

An ever-expanding 44-year-old occupation is a strange way to crave freedom and peace.

It is the only the New South Wales Greens who are brave enough, despite a year of intense Murdoch media bullying and Jewish community pressure, to maintain in principle support for BDS and examine ways to “actively support the [Federal] Australian Greens position, including that the Australian government halt military cooperation and military trade with Israel.” This is a proudly BDS position, wherever the Greens call it this or not.

Israel/Palestine is not a balanced conflict, with two equal sides fighting over land, rights and dignity. It is, writes leading Israeli publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, “a strategy of territorial seizure and apartheid. It ignores judicial aspects of territorial ownership and shuns human rights and the guarantees of equality enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.”

Although he doesn’t mention BDS, it is impossible to undermine daily, creeping oppression with yet more “negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians while Washington remains Israel’s lawyer.

BDS is the non-violent weapon wielded to show Israel and its global backers that business as usual is unacceptable.

BDS makes many Jews distinctly uncomfortable, with wild claims that this is exactly the same tactics used by Nazis in Germany in the 1930s against Jewish businesses. It is nothing of the sort. Jews are not being targeted but businesses that directly support the Zionist state or receive funding from it. Israeli chocolate shop Max Brenner is a legitimate target because it proudly supports the IDF, an army complicit in daily human rights abuses.

Zionist cheapening of anti-Semitism has become endemic from seeing Nazis in inner Sydney protesting outside Max Brenner to American critics of neo-conservative plans to bomb Iran.

Despite these smears, BDS is growing globally because Israeli actions against Palestinians inside Israel proper and the occupied territories is becoming more repressive and outwardly racist. The litany of exclusionary legislation before the Israeli Knesset, some of which are being pushed by so-called “moderates”, rises weekly. BDS sends a message to these Israelis and Diaspora supporters who either remain silent or simply mouth platitudes about a two-state solution. It is designed to make blind backers uncomfortable and defensive.

It’s being grimly amusing to watch liberal Zionists in Australia and beyond express displeasure with BDS, arguing it is too inflammatory and extreme and ostracises potential allies inside Israel (namely Jews, as Palestinian allies are less important in their worldview). In fact, the opposite is true and BDS forces two-state advocates and fence-sitters to explain how their sclerotic process will do anything to advance peace in the Middle East.

BDS is the enemy of the status-quo and liberal Zionists in Australia, including Monash University’s Mark Baker and Philip Mendes, are paralysed in wishfully thinking the Israeli government will suddenly believe the Palestinians are worthy of being given a state. They recoil at BDS because they despise one part of an outcome that aims to bring true democracy for all citizens inside Israel and Palestine – the one-state solution – something a two-state result can never achieve. If not BDS to tell Israel that its Western-backed racism and occupation is illegal under international law, then what tactic? They have no answers, and desperately cling to an emotional claim as post-Holocaust children. This is no way to ensure rights in the 21^st century, if it ever was.

BDS isn’t the answer to all the Palestinian needs. It is one part of a bigger struggle currently underway inside Palestine itself and the Palestinian Diaspora; a worldwide campaign that doesn’t rely on leaders to beg Israel for scraps or a state or rights. Popular, non-violent resistance, BDS and readdress for Palestinian refugees are key initiatives that must be supported to liberate both Palestinians and Israelis.

BDS is causing economic and sociological harm to the Zionist state, and this is something to celebrate. Were enlightened citizens of the world during South African apartheid asked to feel sorry for whites that ruled the blacks with an iron fist? Of course not, and BDS doesn’t aim to comfort the jarred nerves of Israelis or Diaspora Zionists.

It is about addressing a decades-old matrix of control that has only survived because of Diaspora Jewry funding and morally arming the Zionist state.

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based independent journalist and author who has written for The Guardian, Haaretz, The Nation, Sydney Morning Herald and many others. His two best-selling books are My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. He is currently working on many projects, including a book about vulture capitalism, a book on the Left in contemporary politics and another title on Israel/Palestine.

Follow Antony Loewenstein on Twitter: @antloewenstein

The other discussants:

Discussant 1 of 5: Amin Abbas is a Diaspora Palestinian.

Amin Abbas on the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel (Discussant 1 of 5)

Amin Abbas — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:01:31 +0000

Preamble by NAJ Taylor: Following the reaction to my blog post on the application of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel campaign in October, I decided to approach five members of the Middle East diaspora and community in Australia to each discuss, in their own words, the following proposition:

“To what extent is the BDS effective at balancing competing “harms” – the use of ”non-violent” harm to injure Israel economically, politically, reputationally and militarily and the relief of the “violent harm” endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation? How useful is a campaign that “balances competing harms” for the Israeli and Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Muslim, diaspora – and wider Middle Eastern community – in Australia?”

Discussant 1 of 5 (below): Amin Abbas is a Diaspora Palestinian.

Does Einstein have the formula to solve the Palestine-Israel conflict?

by Amin Abbas

One country, two peoples and two worlds. The apartheid wall, (Photo: Joshua Hough) - and Tel-Aviv beach-, (Photo: Israel Ministry of Tourism)

Melbourne, AUSTRALIA: A Martian lands in the Holy land and asks this question: “what sin have the Palestinians committed to be locked up behind high walls and electrified fences, many living in miserable conditions and the majority displaced and not allowed back to their homes?”

A fellow Martian landing only a few kilometers away responds “you sure we landed in the same place? There are no Palestinians here!”

Israelis are apathetic to the injustice they brought about on another people for six long decades. The underpinning aim of their state is to privilege Jews everywhere, regardless of any harm, violent or otherwise, this inflicts on the indigenous inhabitants. The anomalous racial configuration endures in a world of diversity and fading bearing of borders. Unrelenting and systematic practices to exploit and isolate the Palestinians politically, economically and even physically behind concrete walls conveniently makes the entire Palestinian population invisible to Israelis.

This brief Martian chat echoes the shift of Israeli politics to the right, 20 years of futile negotiations, lack of impartial arbitrators, Israeli’ disregard for international Law, the worsening Palestinian living conditions and suffocating Israeli colonisation. The imposition of non-violent harm, the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), is the natural discourse the world must urgently endorse against Israel. BDS best explored from four perspectives; morality, balance, effectiveness and relevance to Australia and present-day norms.

Morality of BDS instinctively raises this question: is the Palestinian experience of apartheid a manifestation of South African apartheid? In 2009, The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) responded in the affirmative. Israeli policies exhibit the three ‘pillars’ of apartheid. The first being laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential status and benefits to Jews over non-Jews. The second is the policy to fragment the Palestinian territory and ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews enjoy freedom of movement. The third is Israel’s invocation of ‘security’ to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedoms.

In a recent interview, Reverend Allan Aubrey Boesak, a veteran of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, went even further; “It is worse, not in the sense that apartheid was not an absolutely terrifying system in South Africa, but in the ways in which the Israelis have taken the apartheid system and perfected it”.

Upon recent reconciliation between the Palestinian factions Fateh and Hamas, Israel penalised all Palestinians by denying them access to their own money, the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority crucial to the livelihood of thousands. Israel is also considering cutting power and water supplies to punish the Palestinians further. Such measures of collective punishment are matters of policy and Israelis are complicit tolerating them. BDS is moral and necessary to get Israelis to question their convenient and lofty configuration.

On the question of balance, some portray the conflict as one between two victims. This is false. We have the oppressor and the oppressed. One has excessive power and the other has none. No warring parties over contested land, just two peoples on the one land, one controlling the lives of the other pretending they don’t exist.

For decades, Israeli military excessive violence was justified in self defense. The perpetual existential threat to the makeup of the Jewish state is also the ultimate right to be protected as far as foreign policies of the West are concerned. Having been founded on the continual dispossession of three generations of Palestinians, the largest refugee population in the world today, is immaterial. Palestinians rights are mere clichés. BDS offers the non-violent alternative to counter the grave imbalance of power, diplomatically and militarily.

On the effectiveness of BDS, Israel fitting the image of the pariah state is owed to its own actions and policies. Cultural and academic boycott would hurt it further with growing global awareness of BDS. Furthermore, the troubled finances of the world exposed the volatility of politics against fragile economies, the theme of prevalence this year. Countries are viciously protecting their exports and trade as world economies contract and austerities swell. If boycotts scared Israel last year, it surely terrifies it today.

Finally, the world of the Arab spring, occupy Wall Street and the Spanish Indignados takes the other prevalence of contemporary world events. Individuals suddenly empowered by momentary communication and mobilisation along with eagerness for change.

Equally, the discrepancy between politics and democracy has never been more evident. World democracies influenced by strong lobbies and established power structures, not popular opinion. The recent Palestinian bid for a state is a case in point. The overwhelming international support has no value against an American veto. Popular support in Australia also deemed irrelevant by the Prime Minister pledging to oppose any such bid. Acts of political manipulation blatantly demonstrated when the American government penalised UNESCO financially upon Palestine’s membership admission. UNESCO’s reprehensible crime was allowing a democratic decision by its member states.

The function of global bodies like the UN makes one wonder; what is the purpose of international legal frameworks if they cannot protect the weak? Do they represent the International community? Would its decisions differ from the voice of the “people”? And can movements such as BDS bridge the likely divergence?

Naïve notions to withstand age old realities of power and international politics, perhaps, but the emergence of:

(a) rising super-powers;

(b) growing cause-driven networks;

(d) live news, reports and tweets weakening mainstream media control; are surely game changing. Individuals everywhere, including everyone here in Australia, are at the core of this evolution, bringing vigor to the power of collective action to bring about justice.

The imposition of BDS against Israel is moral, balanced, timely and the best strategy to repeal 60 years of injustice, in lieu of any other forms of resistance, including war and violence.

As for Einstein; “The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.”

Amin Abbas is a Diaspora Palestinian.

The other discussants: