Meeting Omar Barghouti in New York

I missed Omar Barghouti’s debate with George Fletcher at Columbia Thursday night but Roane Carey of the Nation set it up to have coffee with him at a cafe downtown on Friday afternoon and he asked me along. They were sitting at a back table, and a half dozen others were crammed in to listen to Barghouti, who wore a red jersey and sat with his back to the wall. I recognized him at once as an international activist in a classic mold. He wore glasses and his posture was very erect, he might have been running a marathon. His hair was cut short on his large head. He is in his mid-40s but seems younger. He has a slightly beaklike nose and spoke in forceful long-considered paragraphs that he had surely said before. Around us was the glittering hubbub of downtown New York, attractive young people slouching onto couches or playing idly with their computers, but Barghouti was focused on one thing, the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

When I was at J Street the week before I saw a number of people who had demurred at the prospect of debating Barghouti, and now I understood why. What kind of argument can you make against such a calm and forceful intellectual/activist, who knows the issue backwards and forwards, and is himself a second-class citizen?

I had heard that he had polished off Fletcher the night before without much argument. Barghouti said that the debate was a farce. "I might have been talking to myself." An earlier debate had gone the same way. The hardcore Zionists are not coming forward. The mood in the U.S. has changed. The main question from the audience was not whether to boycott Israel, it how to do so. "The Zionist lobby" is showing signs of weakness.

“I’m very optimistic. On this tour, for the first time I did not meet any—how should I put it diplomatically—I did not meet any reasonable Zionist position.” No the Zionists were hunkered down, talking among themselves.  

Barghouti told stories meant to inspire. He said that Naomi Klein after touring the West Bank had been so devastated that she needed to delay her Ramallah speech, she needed to sit quietly for a half hour to deal with what she had seen.

And that was before she went to Gaza. Later Klein spoke in Haifa, in a Palestinian space, and even Israeli Jews were cheering her. In the middle of the speech Ilan Pappe texted Barghouti, "you would not believe what is happening here."

Some of these Jews want to save Israel. Many American Jews feel the same way. Israel is on a "fascist" path, Barghouti says, and BDS is all that will steer her back. I believe that some Jews at J Street secretly share some of this understanding, and in addition to their being intimidated, that may be why Barghouti didn’t get a debating partner from their ranks. Many J Street Jews secretly would support a targeted boycott against products of the West Bank. Barghouti says that is a compromise of traditional boycott principle (you don’t just boycott what China produces in Tibet, you go after China for occupying Tibet), but he doesn’t care about allies’ motivations or their half-measures. "You can just boycott Israeli eggs and we’re happy." In Stockholm when the city railroad contract was up with Veolia, which had contracted to build the West Bank colonists’ railway, thousands of Swedes wore BDS buttons and the Church of Sweden supported an end to Veolia in Stockholm, and the government in signing another company said it was about price but it wasn’t, Barghouti said, they didn’t want the headache of a company complicit in the occupation.

Gaza has accelerated the BDS campaign, but the urgency of the campaign is also growing. "The cancer rate in Gaza is skyrocketing." What a coup it was to get Jane Fonda and Danny Glover’s signature on the Toronto Declaration that used the word "apartheid." Yes there has been terrible pressure on Fonda from funders of her own nonprofit in Atlanta, but she did not remove her name.

Barghouti could not stay long. He had another appointment. His colleague Riham Barghouti kept telephoning ahead to say they would be an extra ten minutes.

The impression I carried away was a simple one. You don’t often meet such committed and articulate people. Barghouti personifies the idea that Ali Abunimah and Nadia Hijab have both expressed: BDS is essential because it is the most powerful weapon Palestinians have in seeking to fashion their destiny.

I’m stunned, too, by the fact that Barghouti has gotten so little media coverage here. As another friend told me, Barghouti is the future. He is intelligent, empowered and non-violent. He is completely impressive. It would help Americans to see such a picture of Palestinian political engagement, when they have such a distorted image of who Palestinians are. Some day they will know him.