A year since the assault on Gaza, Israel continues to evade accountability. The failure of the international community to use the Goldstone Report to address the war crimes committed during the fighting has been a boon to the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. This movement seeks to hold Israel accountable through non-violent means. From a United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel press release:
December 27, 2009 marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s 22-day assault on the captive population of Gaza, which killed 1400 people, one third of them children, and injured more than 5300. During this war on an impoverished, mostly refugee population, Israel targeted civilians, using internationally-proscribed white phosphorous bombs, deprived them of power, water and other essentials, and sought to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, including hospitals, administrative buildings and UN facilities. It targeted with peculiar consistency educational institutions of all kinds: the Islamic University of Gaza, the Ministry of Education, the American International School, at least ten UNRWA schools, one of which was sheltering internally displaced Palestinian civilians with nowhere to flee, and tens of other schools and educational facilities.
While world leaders have tragically failed to come to Gaza’s help, civilians everywhere are rallying to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with anniversary vigils taking place this week in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and many more cities and towns in the US and world-wide.
The United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed in the immediate aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, bringing together educators of conscience who were unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel’s indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions. Today, over 500 US-based academics, authors, artists, musicians, poets, and other arts professionals have endorsed our call. Our academic endorsers include postcolonial critics and transnational feminists Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Indigenous scholars J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Andrea Smith, philosopher Judith Butler , Black studies scholars Cedric Robinson, Fred Moten, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and intellectual historian Joseph Massad.
“Cultural workers” who have endorsed our call include well known author Barbara Ehrenreich, Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah, poets Adrienne Rich and Lisa Suhair Majjaj, ISM co-founder and documentary film-maker Adam Shapiro, Jordan Flaherty of Left Turn Magazine, and Adrienne Maree Brown, of the Ruckus Society.
Among the 34 organizations supporting our mission are and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Green Party, Code Pink, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, .Artists Against Apartheid, and Teachers Against the Occupation.
The Advisory Board of the United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has grown to include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Hamid Dabashi, Lawrence Davidson, Bill Fletcher Jr., Glen Ford, Mark Gonzales, Marilyn Hacker, Edward Herman, Annemarie Jacir, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Robin Kelley, Ilan Pappe, James Petras, Vijay Prashad, Andrenne Rich, Michel Shehadeh, and Lisa Taraki.
Israeli academics, listed among the organization’s International Endorsers, have also joined us, including Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University; Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University; Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University; Kobi Snitz, Technion; and Ilan Pappe now at Exeter.
The USACBI Mission Statement calls for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions in support of an appeal by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Individual Israelis are not targeted by the boycott.
Specifically, supporters are asked to:
(1) Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine;
(2) Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
(3) Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;
(4) Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;
(5) Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
This boycott, modeled upon the global BDS movement that put an end to South African apartheid, is to continue until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing 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.
A very thin list.
Yes it is very thin, and that should worry you. Because as I think you suspect full well an awful lot of the reason it is so thin is because of fear, Mr. Witty. Fear of the kind of actions Israel and its extreme partisans take against those who publicly object to anything Israel does. And fear breeds dislike and even hatred, and while fear is very tough to sustain the sour taste of being bullied lasts a lifetime.
So are you really really happy over this thinness, Mr. Witty? Do you really think that the kind of tactics that result in such thinness are in the interests of Israel or the jewish people? Because who you gonna call on when the worm turns—as it always does—and the fear can’t be sustained anymore and when Israel is really threatened or when real anti-semites come out and start calling you a “fucking jew” and yelling at you and your family to “go back to your own country”? All the people who were cowed into silence before and whose fear-induced silence you were then celebrating?
Or, in other words, do you really really think hatred is a wise plinth upon which to build Israel’s and jewry’s fortunes?
Mebbe so Richard, but just a few years ago this list would have been well-nigh impossible.
Well, as I recall, abolitionists were a minority that was constantly under attack by people like you who sought to mock and discredit them for sacrificing their selfish interests and seeking to fight against the status quo to aid others who were being oppressed and treated as less than human. It’s not exactly a rewarding task, Witty, having moral integrity, and it’s not something that puts you in the American mainstream.
“A very thin list.”
Yes, thin like a razor wire Witty :)
“The boycott is a blunt weapon, it does not discriminate, and its efficacy depends on factors well beyond its remit. Many people, while sympathising with the boycott as a strategy, are concerned that it will alienate potential supporters of Palestinian self-determination. They also have tactical quarrels with the organisers. But it’s a tactic, not a strategy, and one of its by-products is an increased awareness of Israeli behaviour. The onus is not on its proponents to defend it but on its opponents to offer an alternative.”
Diana Neslen, Jewish Socialist 47, Winter 2002/2003
Richard, your thoughts?
And here’s a link for you:
link to monabaker.com
Adam Shapiro, Ali Abunimah, Joseph Massad are on the list? It’s time to get really worried.
The weakness of this movement is startling. The BDS movement in the US has accomplished zero, nada. Now with giants like Adam Shapiro if they work really hard demonizing Israel day and night, this boycott should continue with the failure of BDS.
Too much talk, no action
Betting on war in the middle east in 2010–handicapping:
link to haaretz.com
I agree that five years ago it would have been difficult to collect 50 signatories. The crunch over academic boycott will probably come in the UK. The annual conference of the University and Colleges Union, of which I’m a retired member, repeatedly votes for it and is stymied by legal pressure organised from the United States and amplified by legal advice that the leadership finds rather too welcome. But sooner or later this will stop working. Even then it will be a slow process, since I think that even in the UK, with a weaker Zionist lobby, and even in left-wing circles, Israel still commands a certain moral reverence. So the first attempt at a boycott will be defeated in a referendum. But even that will be enough to shake many people out of their complacencies.
Just to admit that I am no hero of this struggle. Up to a few years ago I was all for constructive engagement with Israel.
Not that Mondoweiss isn’t all three, and just like Mother makes and all that, but I just want to mention that the UK academic boycott is closely covered at JSF, them being right there. In the UK, I mean.
Many people who have very positive view of Israel are coming across the word boycott and apartheid in relation to that country and are surprised.
So they google “Israel apartheid” or “Israel boycott” and small percentage of them learn about the awfulness of occupation and land theft. And they utter the words and new people come across it ….Its a one way street, a spiral of positive reinforcement fuelled by awful reality that cannot be buried by the hasbara.
The result will be censorship of Internet.
But it may come too late to save Israel from itself.
Oh I’m sure they’ll try to censor the Internet, but that’s one genie that’s not going back into the bottle. Just look at Iran — the harder you crack down against freedom of expression, the greater the resistance grows.
Israel thrived in an environment where they had total control over Palestinians — even information about them. That has been permanently broken, and Israel in the form it has existed for sixty-odd years cannot survive.
Does “culture” include sports? I’d sure like to see Israel banned from the Olympics and other international competitions.
Had to click a little box over at Daily Kos. A warning that my title “Rachel Maddow’s program Israeli Occupied Territory” was considered “anti-semitic” over there. My question my challenge is why is it that Rachel is so concerned about human rights in NIgeria, Iran (endless coverage of the protest) but has not covered the Gaza Freedom March, the Goldstone Report etc. The most serious conflict in the region, the one that we endlessly hear leaders from around the world say is the most critical conflict to resolve for the last five decades. How many times do we have to hear this?
And the alleged human rights journalist Rachel Maddow just ignores it. The conversation is rolling over here. After I clicked the little I understand box (I don’t) the conversation continues. Daily Kos’s censorship is odd and I know there has been a great deal of concern about there suspicious censorship. In fact they eliminated one of the most articulate responses because the person was questioning the censorship over there and said the word “obamabots” that is why they took this persons comment down.
Go check it out we are talking about the Gaza and the control of our MSM.
link to dailykos.com
I gave up on the Daily Kos after they banned Anna Baltzer.
“the same people” are definitely controlling the Daily Kos.
Kos is just a small taste of what happens in the editors rooms in the MSM
Yes. The stench of irony is thick over there as they prove the very point they are trying to censor.
You aren’t alone. link to dailykos.com
Seriously, Richard? I am extremely jaded after 30+ years of following events closely in I/P and in America regarding I/P, and even I was surprised who signed on, especially since it is specifically about an academic and cultural boycott, the third rail to even many people sympathetic to BDS.
You are just being disingenuous by saying that this list is “thin”, so you can discount its importance to yourself (or you really don’t know about many of the people who signed on, but ignorance is no excuse in the era of Google). Yes, too many people I know who should have did not sign on, but the fact over 500 did should have you sweating (people like Barbara Ehrenreich, her son (!), and Adolph Reed, who have never written about I/P). Just like with South Africa, the tipping point for a popular academic and cultural boycott of Israel will come.
I for one do not support boycotting individuals and groups that speak out and/or organize against the occupation and for a radical redefinition of democracy in Israel that is inclusive of ALL its citizens (hand-wringing liberal Zionists – Amos Oz, etc. – who never met a war they didn’t initially like need not apply). But for institutions and individuals who don’t, boycott away . It is a non-violent way to send a message protesting this unacceptable situation, one generously underwritten with our tax dollars. And lest you start throwing at us the “But, but, what about oppressive x,y,z country…!!11!”, I support boycotts wherever human rights are trampled upon and other efforts made toward redress have failed (and we are talking decades of failure here), including against American companies that exploit and dehumanize people. Cesar Chavez, anyone?
Your blithe dismissal says more about you and your intentions than the signatories.
It was an observation.
I looked for names from the very liberal academic community in which I live, and didn’t see many at all. I live near Amherst, MA, home of U of Massachusetts with its Union of Radical Economists and prominent Marxist economic department. Also home of Hampshire College, where I worked for two years in 99 and 2000.
I saw one name from U Mass, and none from Hampshire (maybe I missed some).
So, if the movement is gaining steam, I would have expected many more names in solidarity.
My impression is that the movement is rationally a third rail, because it is an unproductive approach. To boycott Amos Oz (who did courageously lead the formation and growth of Peace Now) or Nadine Gordimer (for going to a literature conference in “violation” of the boycott), or Richard Cohen, strikes me as literally silly.
And, to adopt “I like them” basis of organized cultural boycott strikes me as persecutorial and arbitrary.
If there is one effort that facilitates transformation of Israeli policies, its interaction, not isolation.
I would hope you would support a boycott of the boycott if you oppose political suppression in any form with any ethnic screen element.
A behavioral based boycott, specific, strategic, might be more effective, and less persecutorial in appearance and in fact.
I agree with you on a behavioral based boycott. That is exactly what these people are calling for. Boycotting institutions and individuals based on their “behavior” – support for an untenable status quo. Duh. You want to make it ethnic-based so as to discredit it.
And just because you didn’t see more names, doesn’t mean that there aren’t more people out there supporting it, but for various reasons have not signed the petition.
Finally, Amos Oz and co. deserve to be boycotted because of their unfailing support for every military action by Israel, until it gets “too messy”, and their utter refusal to do the hard work or use their privileged, powerful voice to speak out against the institutional and ideological underpinnings of what Israel has become (and this includes the socioeconomic inequalities, rampant political corruption, sexism, intra-Jewish racism, etc. in Israeli Jewish society). Peace Now has done some decent stuff (monitoring the growth of settlements, etc.), but have been totally ineffectual in implementing real change because of its inability to transcend the hand-wringing, shooting and crying ethos of liberal Zionists like yourself. You are all just a tad too comfortable with assuaging your guilt with the occasional criticism, congratulating yourselves and allowing this situation to fester until it will blow up in everyone’s faces (not just Palestinian ones). Will you take responsibility then? Will this boycott in retrospect suddenly seem like a pretty good idea?
Israeli Apartheid Video Contest:
link to antonyloewenstein.com
This is a good opportunity for Palestinian filmmakers