MESA and BDS: Why I voted for the resolution

The general membership of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is voting on a resolution that would align it with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.  That movement has been catalyzed by a Palestinian civil society call for international support against systematic Israeli discrimination against Palestinians, political disenfranchisement of Palestinians, and the prolongation of the consequences of the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.  An overwhelming majority of attending members at MESA’s recent annual meeting voted to hold the referendum and put the issue before the broader MESA membership. 

The resolution endorses the BDS call for sanctions “against Israel.”  While it avoids  making a direct call for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, it does draw explicit attention to the role that Israeli universities play in the network of institutions that sustains oppressive policies.  Unsurprisingly, many Israeli scholars at these universities, including many who count themselves as advocates for peace and justice for the Palestinians, oppose even MESA’s consideration of supporting boycotts of Israel that could include sanctions against Israeli universities.  Representatives of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS), whose leadership lodged a formal letter of protest with MESA, were the only ones to speak against the resolution at the general meeting.  But not all AIS members are opposed to BDS or the MESA resolution in support of it.

I am a founder and past president of AIS.  I organized the conference at Dartmouth College in 1985 where it was founded and currently serve on the Association’s Board of Directors. Here is why I voted for the BDS resolution.

The first Intifada (1987-1993) helped initiate a wave of non-violent uprisings.  From the Philippines to Tiananmen square, to the color revolutions of Eastern Europe and central Asia, these inspiring movements for freedom shook the foundations of autocratic and repressive regimes.  Some succeeded, some failed.  The Intifada was a struggle to end Israeli occupation by establishing an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories.  I supported that struggle.  Tragically, it failed.  Three decades and half a million settlers later, that objective is no longer attainable. The BDS movement has effectively taken its place as a grassroots popular movement, based on an absolute commitment to nonviolence, a long-term strategy, a fundamental commitment to equality, and insistence on the realization of Palestinian rights, rather than calling for a specific kind of institutional arrangement. 

Thanks to de facto annexation, the question is no longer where Palestinians will have their state. Their state, now called Israel, is the one in which the large plurality of Palestinians live. The real question is how can that state be democratized so that the rights of all its inhabitants can be equally honored. Thanks in large measure to BDS, the question is no longer when will American foreign policy save Israel from itself, but how can international civil society be mobilized to make untenable a regime of apartheid that refuses to name itself as such.  Exploiting the internet and social media, Palestinian civil society, both in Palestine and in the diaspora, has energized a worldwide popular struggle, subjecting Israeli policies to harsh and sustained international scrutiny.  It has had significant success branding Israel as an oppressor and shifting the terms of political discourse toward expectations that no “solution” to the “Palestinian problem” will be achieved without an end to systematic discrimination against Palestinians, both inside and outside of Palestine.

This is a spectacularly important development.  Israel and Israeli advocacy groups have found themselves on the defensive.  They can neither dismiss BDS as violent terrorism, nor advance persuasive arguments in defense of Israeli policies, nor lay out a vision for the future to which they can proudly and confidently subscribe.  Their desperation is reflected in their abandonment of substantive argument.  Instead, they offer specious claims of “anti-Semitism,” debating tricks that pretend boycotts of Israel are unjustifiable unless all bad actors throughout the world are similarly sanctioned, or exercise political clout to illegalize grassroots political action targeting Israel.  As my own research has shown, Israeli elites are increasingly concerned that the “war of position” over the discursive space within which Israeli policies and the Palestine question are debated will eventually force Israel to choose between living in a Jewish supremacist state treated as an international pariah, or in a democratizing multicultural state, with all the political stresses and cultural transformations that such a process will entail. 

My own view is that it will take generations of struggle to democratize the one-state reality.  In that fight for equality, there is nothing that can substitute for a worldwide campaign to highlight the contradictions between Israeli pretenses of liberal democracy and the reality of systematic discrimination against half the population living under the effective rule of the Israeli state.  That is the main reason I support the BDS movement.

But I also support BDS because it is flexible and respects the moral posture and complex circumstances affecting those whose support is solicited. I can boycott as selectively as my own analysis of the situation warrants and my own circumstances allow.  As is the case for many academic specialists on Israel, my life is too intertwined with, and my research too reliant on, colleagues and programs at Israeli universities to cut all ties with the Israeli academy. Failure to understand the flexibility built into BDS is one reason why only a few AIS members are publicly supportive, even though some, perhaps many, welcome its basic message and strategy. Nor do all, or even most, AIS members believe that BDS is driven by anti-Semitism, or that MESA should avoid becoming involved in the struggle for equality in Israel/Palestine.  Indeed, it is quite common to hear AIS members and even leaders declare that they themselves boycott Ariel University, located in a settlement in the West Bank, thereby demonstrating that they do not believe politically motivated boycotts of Israeli academic institutions are, per se, wrong, anti-Semitic, or necessarily conducted in ways that inflict undue harm on individual scholars.

If MESA’s membership approves the BDS proposal, a sharp struggle will erupt within AIS over whether to continue its affiliation with MESA.  I believe a great deal will be lost if that connection is severed.  The scouring attention devoted to Palestinian issues in MESA is as relevant for AIS members as is understanding Zionism, Israeli Jews, and Israeli institutions, for the majority of MESA members.  For although many in MESA have a riveting interest in Palestine and Israel, only a minority are professionally focused on developments and trends there.  I therefore call on both AIS and MESA to appreciate how much they need each other.  Agendas for scholarship and research continue to grow in ways that demand more, not less, understanding of how all the inhabitants of Palestine/the Land of Israel, as well as those who identify strongly with them, interact and can interact.  Only thus, can the problems of today be traded for better problems tomorrow.

Editor’s note: MESA’s annual meeting endorsed the BDS resolution in December. The general membership will be voting until March 22.