Dear Uri,
If one’s stand on the boycott is issue is a critical moment of truth, and I believe that it is, I am sorry to say that you have come up wanting in your latest column. That you base your opposition to the boycott on a Jewish history that the vast majority of Israelis have never experienced, but on which they have justified their dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians (whose personal history is far worse) and that 99.9% of those same Jews oppose such a boycott (which I suspect is an exaggeration) is to make a mockery of everything that you have been doing and writing for decades.
By what right have you and the 94% of your fellow Israelis who supported the onslaught on Gaza, and with whom you now stand on the boycott issue, to make any claim on those who believe that the only way to bring about a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is to make Israel a political and economic pariah? Do you really think that the majority of Israeli Jews living within the Green Line are any less responsible for the present situation than those in the settlements, and if you do, pray explain who was responsible for electing the likes of Begin, Shamir and Sharon as their prime ministers, not that Rabin or Peres were a whit better? Can you honestly make a case that Israel has not merited a pariah status many times over?
And what do you offer in its stead? You write that when Archbishop Tutu asked what the dwindling lot of Israeli peace activists, are hoping for, you told him:
We hope for Barack Obama to publish a comprehensive and detailed peace plan and to use the full persuasive power of the United States to convince the parties to accept it. We hope that the entire world will rally behind this endeavor. And we hope that this will help to set the Israeli peace movement back on its feet and convince our public that it is both possible and worthwhile to follow the path of peace with Palestine.
Let’s be honest. You know that it not going to happen when the majority of both houses of the US Congress have already sent the president a letter warning him not to put pressure on Israel and a record number of congressmen and women from both parties, more than a tenth of the House show up in Jerusalem over their summer break to express their solidarity with Netanyahu.
You already anticipated that when on February 21st you wrote:
Obama has not yet passed a real test on any issue. It is already clear that there is a marked difference between what he promised in the election campaign and what he is doing in practice. In several matters he is continuing the policies of George Bush with slight alterations. That was, of course, to be expected. But Obama has not yet shown how he would act under real pressure. When Netanyahu mobilizes the full might of the pro-Israel lobby, will Obama surrender, like all preceding presidents?
When Obama bends on this issue as he has become adept in doing on all the others, will you then be ready to support the boycott or will you still be asking the world to continue deferring to Jewish sensibilities and become, in practice, an apologist for the status quo? Believe me, your ads in Ha’aretz and your weekly demonstrations protesting the occupation do not speak nearly as loudly as do your words in this essay.
Jeff Blankfort
Petulant comments, Jeff.
You ignored the information that he was providing you.
The information element of it, is “if you construct a boycott proposal that is concise, I and others might rationally support it.”
No, you ignored the information provided to you by Jeff. The information that is
reality now. Given that information, you are the unreasonably irritable or ill-tempered, peevish commenter. You are contemptuous of Jeff’s insights and of everyone who comes to this blog suffocating from the thick hasbara blanket over
our land.
As someone who’s spent many years out in the streets protesting and online writing, and taking all the unpleasantness and heat that comes with that, I’ve watched Jews by the thousands playing the same game. They’ll insist they are leftists, deeply committed to human rights, etc. And yet rather than take a stand, they’ll stand on the sidelines waiting and watching. I can say 200,000,000 words that they believed in, but that’s irrelevant, because what they are waiting for is the one word that they cannot tolerate, whatever that might be – they’re watching for the trivial ideological discrepancy that for whatever profound moral reason prevents them from standing up in support. They can’t take a stand, because they don’t like this word or that phrase. They can’t support or defend people who are criticizing Israel because there is always some bullshit they have to hone in on and get irate about – how dare you use the phrase “ethnic cleansing” to describe what happened to Paletsinians in 1948! How dare you use the word “genocidal” to characterize Israel’s sanctions on Gaza! How dare you say that zionism is racism! How dare you blah blah blah. It’s all crap, this nit-picking and stone-walling and hemming and hawing. They know it’s wrong, they know there is a hole in their hearts where compassion for someone who is non-Jewish should be, but instead of doing what everyone on earth can see is right, they choose to quibble and argue and write a hundred thousand outraged letters to the editor over the hair-thin differences they have with whoever it is they have decided to denounce for their lack of whatever.
This is all just Jewish exceptionalism: dirty, old-fashioned racism, and nothing more.
I completely disagree with Richard, Jeff. There was nothing petulant, whatsoever, in your comments to Mr. Avnery. There was cold clear observing. Great post!
And you, too, anomalous.
Just to restate my position.
I regard BDS as a boycott of respectful but assertive educational efforts, a choice to NOT undertake persuasion, instead to use some punitive force.
I regard BDS as a last desperate attempt to effectively recognize without brute force the decades old plight of the Palestinian community; if we go on with the status quo
then Allied losses and Jewish civilian losses during WW2 mean all those people died for nothing at all in terms of a world consensus to end the long history of might makes right.
Of course, Mister Blankfort favors BDS, for he favors the collapse of Israel. Of course Mister Avneri maintains hope that Obama will lead the way to a two state solution, for hope keeps him going.
Neither one appears to have much hope in Israel, just as Neve Gordon has hope for change to come about internally. Blankfort and Gordon are putting their hope in BDS, Avnery is relying on the US and Obama.
Uri Avnery can write and do what he pleases, but what he cannot do is gain credibility after the stand he has now taken. That is because if you make a comparison, both he and Neve have written on the current condition of Israel and have even participated in the same events, but now it is clear who really believed what they said and did and who was just playing a tune and singing a song. As I said before, when the rubber meets the road is when you have to leave some behind, and this is now what must be done with Uri Avenery, all high sayings and previous actions considered.
Sergeiy, all right, lets not leave Avnery behind, it does not matter – he left himself behind. You go ahead and get him to move, see if it works.
I find this post (and some of the comments) to be quite disingenuous. I’m a supporter of BDS myself, but I don’t think that anyone who reasons against it (and Avnery IS reasoning, not just shouting slogans) should be ousted from the anti-Occupation movement or whatever, even if I think ultimately that he is wrong.
BDS is a tactic of struggle, one of many. Making support for this particular tactic the sin qua non for the entire struggle, the one issue that decides if you’re with us or against us is plain stupid. It’s a sure way to be left alone, and fail, at the end of the day.
Avnery represents living a life in Israel.
The young turks among Israelis and Palestinians are “free” from having lived a life in their analysis.
Again, the investment in BDS, is a divestment in reform. And, as the investment in BDS is unlikely to succeed, the effort represents a divestment of change.
The apartheid whites living there and then represented living a life in S Africa.
The young turks among them and the reform-minded blacks were “free” from having lived a life in their analysis.
Again, the investment in BDS is the last attempt at reform rather than revolution.
If BDS does not succeed eventually the world will have WW3.
Global Boycott-Divestment-Sanction movement brings needed change:
link to richardsilverstein.com
Witty: “The use of force is itself designed to coerce, to eliminate free choice. Not to persuade…”
(wiki) Persuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding people and oneself toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not always logical) means. It is a strategy of problem-solving relying on “appeals” rather than coercion.
Seems to be confusion hidden in Richard Witty’s rhetoric; BDS is not a use of coercive force. It is withdrawal of support, a form of persuasion.
The attention of dissenters is what I was referring to as a boycott of reform, a boycott of change.
Boycott from a distance is an arm-chair approach, an abdication of responsibility, an example of limited commitment.
What are your goals of boycott? What are your fears? (Do you have any? Or, is “by any means necessary”, your prescription?)
Did you support the cultural and economic boycott of apartheid of S Africa, Mister Witty? Be honest. Do you honor the USA’s grass roots civil rights workers that
went to Dixie back in the day? Be honest.
No comment on goals?
I supported the boycott of South Africa. I met South African white authors that encouraged the support of the boycott partially on their personal experience with the ANC leadership and their confidence that they fully respected and humanized their opponents.
I very much honor the thousands of grass roots civil rights activists that went door to door inspite of insult and harrassment for voting rights for example.
How about you? Did you honor them? Do you?
You supported the boycott of S Africa but you do not support the boycott of Israel.
Gee, what a surprise. And you hold the civil rights folks who went down to old Dixie in high regard. What’s wrong with this picture of righteousness? No proponents of a boycott
of Israel culture and products are worthy of equal respect, none fully respect and humanize their opponents? That’s your line on this blog. How convenient a belief you beat out in your brain out of nothing to justify your moral and ethical inconsistency.
I supported BDS against apartheid S Africa; and I supported the civil rights workers
back in the day–and I did both while working and living in white blue collar areas.
So, what convinced you to join the boycott of South Africa.
It was pretty easy to. The only thing that I ever bought that originated in South Africa was raisins.
Maybe I blew it and bought a gold ring with gold from South Africa. I’ve never bought diamonds.
I’m sure that you are using a computer that has chips made in Israel, and likely recently. You certainly use something made by Cisco, maybe your wireless router, or the switch that linked your web access to your ISP.
How serious are you? Are you willing to sacrifice for your message?
Re Witty:
“So, what convinced you to join the boycott of South Africa.”
What convinced me was that when I was a teen soldier my bunk mates, my tent mates, my trench mates, and my off barracks running mates were often African Americans. I got to know them as individuals. That put real meat on the justice plate, a plate I always search for.
“It was pretty easy to. The only thing that I ever bought that originated in South Africa was raisins.” Well, obviously you never worked in the steel mills of South Chicago, and you never were a US Army grunt.
“Maybe I blew it and bought a gold ring with gold from South Africa. I’ve never bought diamonds.”
I never bought a ring in my life, oh yeah–I did get a few when I was a kid, the plastic ones in the gum ball machine.
“I’m sure that you are using a computer that has chips made in Israel, and likely recently. You certainly use something made by Cisco, maybe your wireless router, or the switch that linked your web access to your ISP.”
Why do you bring this subject up in this thread context? There’s plenty of information available on how Israel ignores foreign patent laws and reverse-engineers dupes.
“How serious are you? Are you willing to sacrifice for your message?”
What do you sacrifice for your message, Witty? I’ve sacrificed years of my life
for my message. I know what it’s like to try to get your own books published “over the transom” before the age of the internet. I have personal experience with the
politics of fiction products, but in terms of networks and content. I learned the hard way. And I paid for my own education all the way. And you?
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I linked that in a comment to Avnery’s piece, so add that here as well:
link to israelpalestineblog.com
A slightly different take on the issue.
The Masters Of War; something’s blowin’ in the wind–Ike sniffed it way back when and it’s only gotten worse. Too bad Ike’s not around now to take a tour of Gaza and make
the Israelis bury the Palestinian dead and take photo ops for the world to see–Never Again, Again, Again…. I wanna puke.
Go ahead and puke. Get it out of your system.
Why not address Avnery’s points, rather than dismiss his views.
It seems that you are indulging in the “I hate Bennie Morris dance” all over again.
“I thought that he was a hero, but he’s a shlump like all the rest of them.”
Avnery’s argument would have stopped the collapse of apartheid S Africa.
Citizen,
I’ve got to tell you that I’m a bit angry at you for expropriating the name “citizen”.
I wrote a blogpost today on my own blog on the theme of “Libraries and citizens”.
Its a tragedy when names or brands or web identities expropriate meaning. Why not just use your name?
Because when I did my computer was hacked. It was a lot of trouble, believe me.
I like your name; you give new meaning to the adjective witty.
I’ve had my computer attacked, too. It was a wretched, wretched experience. My incident was surely a random opportunity attack, but I now diligently maintain maximum security.