BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights

321 Pages·2011·1.102 MB·English

by  Omar Barghouti

BDS cover 12:Layout 1 1/27/11 11:45 AM Page 1
“Omar Barghouti’s lucid and morally compelling book is perfectly timed to make a major
International boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) efforts helped topple South TB
H contribution to this urgently needed global campaign for justice, freedom, and peace.”
Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. In this urgent book, Omar Barghouti makes the case EO
for a rights-based BDS campaign to stop Israel’s rapacious occupation, colonization, GY —Archbishop Desmond Tutu
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and apartheid against the Palestinian people. This considered, convincing collection OC
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contributes to the growing debate on Israel’s violations of international law and points A
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the way forward to a united global civil society movement for freedom, justice, self- ST
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determination, and equality for all. R
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“No one has done more to build the intel - “For the first time, we have in front of us a RT

lectual, legal, and moral case for BDS than succinct and poignant case made for the PAM
Omar Barghouti. The global Palestinian BDS strategy vis-à-vis Israel. There is no LEE
solidarity movement has been transformed one better placed to make this case than SN
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and is on the cusp of major breakthroughs.” Omar Barghouti, as this book shows INT
(cid:0) Naomi Klein, author of clearly.... This is a must read for anyone in - IA
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The Shock Doctrine terested in, and committed to, the Palestine
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cause, regardless of their particular stance IGN
“Those who think they are free to disregard on the BDS strategy.” H
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international law because they are powerful… (cid:0) Ilan Pappé, University of Exeter, S
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are dead wrong. At the same time it is the and coauthor of Gaza in Crisis I
tolerance of such behavior that has led Israel O
to believe that they can literally get away “Barghouti reminds us what public respon - N
with murder.… Omar Barghouti’s book…is sibility entails, and we are lucky to have S
timely and responsibly written by a man his re lentless and intelligent analysis and
who understands that creative and relentless argument. There is no more compre hensive
nonviolence is the only way out of the dire and persuasive case than his for boycott,
situation in which Palestine, and our entire divestment, and sanctions to end the Israeli
world for that matter, finds itself.” occupation and establish the ethical claim O
of Palestinian rights.” M
(cid:0)Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann,
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M.M., former president of (cid:0) Judith Butler, University of
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the UN General Assembly California at Berkeley

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Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian commentator and human rights activist. He G
is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott H
of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) O
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campaign against Israel.
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Current Affairs / Middle East
ISBN: 978-1-60846-114-1 $16
www.haymarketbooks.org
PRAISE FOR BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS
“I have been to Palestine where I’ve witnessed the racially segregated
housing and the humiliation of Palestinians at military roadblocks. I
can’t help but remember the conditions we experienced in South
Africa under apartheid. We could not have achieved our freedom with-
out the help of people around the world using the nonviolent means of
boycotts and divestment to compel governments and institutions to
withdraw their support for the apartheid regime. Omar Barghouti’s
lucid and morally compelling book is perfectly timed to make a major
contribution to this urgently needed global campaign for justice, free-
dom, and peace.”
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“I commend this excellent book by Omar Barghouti.… It challenges the
international community to support the BDS campaign until the entire
Palestinian people can exercise their inalienable rights to freedom and
self-determination and until Israel fully complies with its obligations
under international law. BDS is a call to refuse to be silent in the face of
military occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli regime,
apartheid, and colonialism. BDS is a nonviolent way in which each of us
and our governments can follow our conscience and rightful moral and
legal responsibility and act now to save Palestinian lives by demanding
that the Israeli apartheid regime give justice and equality to all.”
—Mairead Maguire, 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate
“This is a book about the political actions necessary to hinder and finally
to stop the Israeli state machine that is operating every day to eliminate
the Palestinian people. It is like an engineer’s report, not a sermon. Read
it, decide, and then act.”
—John Berger, author
“When powerful governments will not act, ordinary people must take
the lead…. Essential reading for all who care about justice and the
plight of an oppressed people.”
—Ken Loach, filmmaker
“The ABC for internationalist support for Palestine is BDS. And the
boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign against Israeli cruelty and
injustice is gaining in significance and scope. Like the anti-apartheid
movement against racist South Africa, BDS is helping to make a tremen-
dous difference in what has been a most difficult struggle for human
rights and the right of a colonized and dispossessed people to national
self-determination. This inspiring book is a weapon in a noble struggle
in which all right-thinking people can play a part.”
—Ronnie Kasrils, author, activist, and
former South African government minister
"Once again Omar Barghouti delivers a conceptually lucid argument
for the BDS movement that is difficult to refute. He offers a principled
position accompanied by nuanced and thorough analyses, and
though one may not agree with all of his claims, one is fully persuaded
by the passionate clarity of his appeal. Barghouti reminds us what
public responsibility entails, and we are lucky to have his relentless
and intelligent analysis and argument. There is no more comprehen-
sive and persuasive case than his for boycott, divestment, and sanc-
tions to end the Israeli occupation and establish the ethical claim of
Palestinian rights."
-Judith Butler, University of California at Berkeley
“Barghouti explains with lucidity, passion, and unrivaled intelligence...
that bringing an end to apartheid in Palestine and seeing justice and
equality for all the people who live there is not a distant dream but a
reality we can bring about in the next few years using BDS.”
—Ali Abunimah, author of One Countryand cofounder of Electronic Intifada
“Barghouti is the future. He is intelligent, empowered, and nonviolent.
He is completely impressive. It would help Americans to see such a pic-
ture of Palestinian political engagement when they have such a dis-
torted image of who Palestinians are. Some day they will know him.”
—Phillip Weiss, cofounder of Mondoweiss:
The War of Ideas in the Middle East
BDS: BOYCOTT,
DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS
THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR
PALESTINIAN RIGHTS
OMAR BARGHOUTI
Haymarket Books
Chicago, Illinois
© 2011 Omar Barghouti
First published by Haymarket Books in 2011
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
[email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-60846-114-1
Trade distribution:
In the US, Consortium Book Sales, www.cbsd.com
In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com
In Australia, Palgrave MacMillan, www.palgravemacmillan.com.au
All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com
Cover design by Eric Ruder.
All the author’s proceeds from this book will be donated to the Palestinian
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, pacbi.org.
This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and
the Wallace Global Fund.
Printed in Canada by union labor on recycled paper containing 100 percent post-
consumer waste, in accordance with the guidelines of the Green Press Initiative,
www.greenpressinitiative.org.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data is available.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Recycle logo Union bug
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1. Why Now? 35
2. Why BDS? 49
3. The South Africa Strategy for Palestine 63
4. Academic Boycott: Moral Responsibility and
the Struggle Against Colonial Oppression 85
5. Just Intellectuals? Oppression, Resistance,
and the Public Role of Intellectuals 99
6. Freedom versus “Academic Freedom”:
Debating the British Academic Boycott 105
7. Reflecting on the Cultural Boycott 117
8. Fighting Apartheid in South Africa,
Celebrating Apartheid in Israel:
Open Letter to Nadine Gordimer 135
9. Between South Africa and Israel:
UNESCO’s Double Standards 139
10. What We Really Need!
A Response to Anti-boycott Arguments 143
11. Derailing Injustice: Palestinian Civil
Resistance to the “Jerusalem Light Rail” 151
12. “Boycotts Work”: Omar Barghouti
Interviewed by Ali Mustafa 167
13. Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products:
Tactic versus Strategy 183
14. Our South Africa Moment Has Arrived 191
15. After the Freedom FlotillaAtrocity:
BDS Takes Off 205
16. Leadership, Reference, and the Role of
Israeli AntiColonialists: Omar Barghouti
Interviewed by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta 217
Conclusion: If Not Now, When? 225
Appendixes
1. Call for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel (2004) 235
2. BDS Call (2005): Palestinian Civil Society
Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
against Israel Until It Complies with
International Law and Universal Principles
of Human Rights 239
3. PACBI Guidelines for the International
Academic Boycott of Israel 249
4. PACBI Guidelines for the International
Cultural Boycott of Israel 257
Notes 263
Acknowledgments/Sources 304
Index 306
INTRODUCTION
Besiege your siege . . . there is no other way.
—Mahmoud Darwish
Since it is in a concrete situation that the oppressor-oppressed
contradiction is established, the resolution of this contradic-
tion must be objectively verifiable. Hence, the radical require-
ment—both for the individual who discovers himself or herself
to be an oppressor and for the oppressed—that the concrete sit-
uation which begets oppression must be transformed.1
—Paulo Freire
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they
fight you, then you win.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Almost every day, the pale, slender woman complains to the ruthless,
self-righteous ruffian about the miserable little shack she is confined to,
not to mention the daily abuse she has to put up with. Sick of her end-
less whining, one day he brings in a goat to stay with them. Her com-
plaints turn into desperate sobbing, quite expectedly, so he punches her
1
2 BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS
until she bleeds. She cries in silence, mourning for the day when she had
more space, without the goat crowding the miserable shack.
After weeks of her begging, he gets rid of the goat. Now she feels she
has her space again. Everything is finally back to normal—just the
usual dose of abuse and exploitation. For a day she is content with her
accomplishment, but the next morning she wakes up with an erup-
tion of long-suppressed memories, erasing her forgetfulness and dis-
turbing her “peace.” She remembers when he first abducted her and
forced her into slavery. She realizes how she has rationalized and in-
ternalized the battering as part of surviving, as the lesser evil. She
could no longer care less about an extra few square feet here or there.
She wants to feel whole again, and nothing less than her freedom—
unmitigated, unconditional—would do. So she sets out to resist and
calls out for support.2
For more than six decades Israel has enjoyed the best of both worlds,
a free hand to implement its extremist colonial agenda of ethnically
cleansing as many indigenous Palestinians from their homeland and
grabbing as much of their land as possible and, simultaneously, a de-
ceptive, mythical reputation for democracy and enlightenment. It has
effectively succeeded in cynically exploiting the Nazi genocide of Euro-
pean Jewish communities, transforming the pain and guilt felt across
the West into an almost invincible shield from censure and accounta-
bility. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “I think the West, quite
rightly, is feeling contrite, penitent, for its awful connivance with the
Holocaust. The penance is being paid by the Palestinians. I just hope
again that ordinary citizens in the West will wake up and say ‘we refuse
to be part of this.’ ”3
The collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of the United
States as the sole superpower, and the ascension in Washington of a
militarist neoconservative self-described “cabal” with uniquely
strong ties to Israel4—and to warmongering Israeli leader Benjamin
INTRODUCTION 3
Netanyahuin particular—all allowed Israel to maximize its gains and
influence over decision-making processes in the United States.5 Is-
rael’s power in the US Congress had been established for quite some
time;6during the George W. Bushera the White House was subject to
many of the same influences. The criminal attacks of September 11,
2001, created what Netanyahusaw as a golden opportunity to further
consolidate Israel’s already great influence over policy setting in
Washington.7And starting a decade earlier, the sham “peace process”
launched by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
in Oslo in 1993 had rehabilitated Israel’s diplomatic and, crucially,
economic ties with dozens of countries across the world,8opening up
badly needed markets for the state’s expanding industrial, particu-
larly military manufacturing, prowess.
Ironically, at the peak of its military, nuclear, economic, and politi-
cal power, Israel started becoming more vulnerable.
The fact that the United States got mired in a seemingly indefinite
“war on terror” (which should aptly be called “the mother of all ter-
ror,” as it is the most egregious and immoral form of state terror, shed-
ding any veneer of respect for international law, and simultaneously a
causeof much terror by fanatic groups in many countries), causing
death and destruction in Iraqand Afghanistanof genocidal propor-
tions9and a significant loss of US soldiers’ lives, has started to open
some cracks in the otherwise iron wall of support for Israel in the US
establishment. The 2008 defeat and democratic purge of the neocons
helped widen those cracks.
John Mearsheimer, expert on the Israel lobby in the United States,
describes the process of change, which has accelerated recently:
The combination of Israel’s strategic incompetence and its gradual
transformation into an apartheid state creates significant problems for
the United States. There is growing recognition in both countries that