The Boycott Israel campaign: A pro-Israel pro-peace perspective

Over the past several years, Meretz USA has consistently opposed the scattered efforts on the American and European left to promote Boycott of / Divestment from / and Sanctions against Israel.  Using the acronym "BDS" to refer to such measures collectively, the relatively amorphous Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions movement has been picking up speed and supporters over recent months and weeks.

Two developments in particular have caught the attention of the media and the blogosphere of late:

• On August 20, in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Neve Gordon - a Jewish-Israeli professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, announced his support for the BDS movement.
• On September 2, a group of filmmakers, actors, writers, musicians, academics and other public figures sent an open letter of protest to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).  The letter condemned TIFF's decision to focus its "City to City" program this year on Tel Aviv, which - according to the protest - made the Festival, "intentionally or not ... complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine".
  
  Although not technically a call to boycott the Festival, the anti-TIFF protest has been led by activists in the BDS movement.  It also bears the distinctive BDS characteristic of framing the Israel-Palestine conflict as a Manichean struggle between "Good" (the ‘indigenous Palestinians') and "Evil" (the ‘Western-imperialist Zionists').

Not every BDS initiative is identical of course; the movement is far from monolithic.  Prof. Gordon, for example, is an expert on the Israel-Palestine conflict; a man who cares deeply about his country; a true activist who has been engaged for decades in on-the-ground efforts to foster dialogue, reconciliation and peace, and who remains a supporter of the two-state solution.  The same cannot be said for many on the star-studded list of signatories on the TIFF protest letter.

Nonetheless, with the BDS campaign gaining prominence of late, it is important to restate five of the reasons behind Meretz USA's position that BDS is an incorrect approach to ending Israel's occupation.

1.      BDS is morally one-dimensional: The Israel-Palestine conflict is an immensely complex one in which rights and wrongs obtain on both sides.  Both sides have made tragic mistakes, which have placed tremendous barriers on the road to peace.  The BDS campaign plainly suggests that Israel must be singled out for blame.  In a corollary manner, this argument also nourishes the idea that Israel itself has no right to exist (see #3 below).

2.      BDS could prolong the conflict: Almost all would agree that the best way to resolve the conflict would be through negotiations and agreement.  Much less stressed is the fact that negotiations are also the fastest way to an agreement.  Even if a BDS campaign achieves its goals (and the goals of BDS supporters are far from unified - more on that below), this would likely take decades. 

Its first effect (already being felt) will be to further sabotage the struggling Israeli peace movement, reinforce the siege mentality amongst Israeli Jews, and drive the country even further into the arms of right-wing demagogues and ‘strong men'. 

3.      A slippery-slope to anti-Zionism:  A great many supporters of BDS are well-intentioned individuals who are frustrated over the inexorable conflict and merely want to ‘do something' to help achieve peace. 

But the Bilbao Initiative, that consolidated the BDS movement last year, is animated not by the results of 1967, but by its fundamental depiction of Israel as, "a state which is built on the massive ethnic cleansing of 1948 and which for six decades has systematically committed injustices against all segments of the Palestinian people".   

The BDS movement seems dominated by those whose end-game is one state, not two.  Neve Gordon, in that respect, seems atypical of the movement overall, which apparently wishes to build on legitimate international opposition to the 1967 occupation in order to undermine Israel's independent existence.

4.      BDS initiatives target the peacemakers:  Much of the BDS campaign focuses on efforts to impose a cultural and academic boycott of Israel.  In doing so, they end up targeting two groups - Israel's academics and literati - in which opposition to the occupation has been most widespread.  A campaign that would nullify the voices of David Grossman, Amos Oz, and Profs. Naomi Chazan and Galia Golan - to name but a few - seems antithetical to the cause of a just two-state solution.

5.      BDS arouses fears of anti-Semitism:  Although the BDS campaign is directed at Israel/Zionism, and not the Jewish people generally, it will come across as largely anti-Semitic.  As veteran Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, has recently commented, this is understandable: The Jewish people have experienced centuries of persecution, implanting a sense in the "deepest recesses of the Jewish soul" that "the whole world is out to get them".  An economic boycott, in particular, will play on the trauma left by the Nazi call not to buy from German Jews - "Kauft nicht bei Juden!".

Israel, which is now the stronger party to the conflict, is certainly obliged to take the initiative in moving toward its resolution.  But the BDS movement's disregard for the history that gave rise to the need for Jewish national liberation is both insensitive and misguided politically.  Although many BDS supporters moan and groan that they are unfairly depicted as anti-Semites, the reaction they produce is not surprising in light of the one-sided narrative that they generally posit.

Before concluding, it is interesting to point out that, although the BDS campaign has incrementally gained ground over the last few years, the selective boycott pioneered in 1998 by Avnery's Gush Shalom movement never did. 

The Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) formula was not to delegitimize Israel, but to drive a wedge between legitimate, sovereign Israel and the Occupied Territories.  The strategy was to boycott only the products and services generated by Israeli settlements over the Green Line.  Although the concept did garner a smattering of support among European governments (an echo of which is Norway's recent decision to divest from Elbit), it never managed to truly ignite the American or European left.  There was little stir in the media over calls to boycott Mitzpeh Shalem or the Barkan industrial zone.

Important insight could be gained from further analysis of the highly discrepant responses to the BDS and Gush Shalom campaigns.

Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom,

Ron Skolnik
Executive Director
Meretz USA