In response to the recent debate regarding the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, we offer a view from a Jewish anti-Zionist perspective. We welcome debate as a part of the growth and success of an international movement deploying BDS against Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonization.
A claim has been made by Dr. Norman Finkelstein (known for his condemnation of Israel’s use of the Holocaust to justify and perpetuate Israeli atrocities both historic and current) that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign will not win over public opinion towards support of Palestinian rights because its goals imply destruction of Israel. This claim contradicts his own eloquent evocation of humanitarian and human rights law – which is precisely the basis for the Palestinian call for BDS.
South Africa was not ‘destroyed’ or ‘dismantled’ when apartheid ended; rather, the illegal nature of the state was transformed. BDS does not call for the ‘destruction of Israel’; it calls for the enforcement of international law.
Meanwhile, a call has been made to Zionist American Jews to implement a “Zionist BDS” that isolates and condemns Israeli expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to “save Israel.” The Zionist “left” argues that Israel is a “flawed but genuine democracy” with an “ethnically-based non-democracy” beyond the green line (the land occupied in 1967), and that the latter threatens the existence of the former.
This is the fundamental contradiction of Zionism: If the occupied territories are not a democracy due to “ethnically-based” oppression, how can a Jewish state – defined by its sectarian identity – possibly be democratic? Too many defenses of unjust Israeli policy rest on a refusal to recognize that a state organized on privileging one sectarian identity is, by definition, anti-democratic.
We all share a responsibility to reject unjust laws and practices – including discrimination, exclusion and ethnic cleansing – and to insist that the guidelines by which we live are those which maintain the rights and dignity of all people. In the United States, many believed that an economy built on slavery was compatible with democracy; that wasn’t true. We reject the Zionist assertion that a Jewish settler-colonial state can be democratic.
The international call for boycott, divestment and sanctions to end the occupation challenges individuals who profess to respect principles of human rights and dignity to question and rescind their support for an apartheid State of Israel. Supporting the Palestinian call for BDS of Israel is one way to stand on the right side of history.
Many divergent visions of the future of Palestine exist. We can agree and disagree. Nevertheless, we welcome and encourage all initiatives, particularly from among Jews, that genuinely seek to challenge existing oppression in Palestine. We remind all participants in these debates that it is not the role of people in the US to determine the future of another people, and call for respect for the fundamental Palestinian demand for self-determination.
History has taught us that no oppression can be challenged effectively except through the participation and active leadership of those who are principally affected. We are therefore particularly alarmed by suggested campaigns that seem to seek to remove Palestinian demands from the center of the struggle against the occupation. Such campaigns, even if they outwardly challenge the occupation, will, at best, result in a less explicit apartheid and a less recognized occupation. A just resolution needs to include, at minimum, the three stated rights of the Palestinian civil society call: 1) Ending the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the apartheid 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.
I like this group, they don’t mince words and ‘pretend” there is an excuse for what Israel is doing.
Newspaper Article in Response to Never Again Tour: “Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/auschwitz-survivor-israel-acts-like-nazis-1.1000918
Sunday, January 24, 2010 Scotland
Exclusive: Graeme Murray and Chris Watt
One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.
Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.
Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.
Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.
He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.
“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”
Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld , Germany . He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands , alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland .
He now lives in the Netherlands , and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.
Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”
A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.
Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.
“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.
“Especially since Gaza , people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”
Dr Meyer’s claims met with a furious reaction from pro-Israel groups, who branded him “a disgrace”.
Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I shall be telling him he is abusing his status as a survivor, and I shall be telling him that if Israel had been created 10 years earlier, millions of lives might have been saved.
“Whether he is a survivor or not, to use Nazi comparisons in relation to Israel ‘s policies is anti-Semitic, unquestionably.”
The tour was cynically timed, Mr Hoffman added, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.
Dr Ezra Golombok, Scottish spokesman for the Israel Information Office, accused the anti-zionist lobby of “exploiting” Dr Meyer, who he described as someone “who’s got into a situation he doesn’t understand”.
“This is a propaganda exercise by Mick Napier and his friends, and nothing more. It’s preposterous to compare Israel with Nazi tactics.”
The lecture series, entitled Never Again – For Anyone, continues until January 30
Nice to hear from IJAZ here.
What’s in a name? Right now, “Zionism” doesn’t smell as sweet as a “rose”.
However, I don’t like predicting future events based on labels. Will “Zionism” (or will Israel or Israeli Jews) ever act democratically? I don’t know. I would say that they fail miserably to act democratically today and have failed to do so since 1948. They discriminate in favor (as they would say) of one of my peoples, Jews, but against another of my peoples, Palestinian Arabs. Could they do otherwise? Of course. Will they? Who knows?
Until they allow every person to live as a full, voting, resident citizen in Israel (i.e., pre-1967) who arguably would have lived there had the exiles and refugees been allowed to return during or soon after the war of 1948, then they are not, as I see it, democratic.
But every people deserves a chance to reform itself. So, for me, BDS and so forth are tools to persuade (the Jewish people within) Israel to reform itself. If they do so, then I’d be the very last to deny them the right to describe their reformed system as “Zionism.” It’s not the name that matters, but the doings.
I don’t how the difference between a holocaust survivor who says Never Again FOR ANYONE and those who call him an anti semite for pointing out the similarities of Israeli zionisim mentality to the nazis mentality could possibility be any clearer. A holocaust camp survivor sure as h*** knows a nazi like dehumanizing of others mentality when he sees it.
the dismantling of israeli apartheid, the return of palestinian refugees, the ending of israeli colonization of historic palestine and respect for the fundamental palestinian demand for self-determination?
yes!