Boycott Israel - Los Angeles Times

Boycott Israel

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it's the only way to save his country.

By Neve Gordon

August 20, 2009

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis -- even peaceniks -- aren't signing on. A global boycott can't help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one's own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future.

more http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gordon20-2009aug20,0,1126906.story

to change the things that drove Gordon to this conclusion. You could admit that the Occupation is wrong and that collective punishment of Palestinians needs to stop. And you could support progressive humane Israelis like Ezra Nawi, whose probably going to be sentenced to prison for the horrible crime of standing between IDF bulldozers and the homes of nonviolent Palestinian Bedouins that they were demolishing for no reason.

Most important of all, you could admit that it's wrong to equate Palestinian resistance to antisemitism.


Would that be asking so much?

And kudos to this brave Israeli. I supported boycotts as a white South African when I lived under Apartheid too. It is extremely effective.

I note that he used the term "Apartheid State". Its good to see Israelis speaking truth to power.

keep appearing over and over again on neo-nazi websites, along with those from his holocaust minimizing friend who mocks survivors, Norm Finkelstein.

A real class act.

:eyes:

And there is no apartheid in Israel or the OPT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x284199#284490

His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp, as well as two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, since it first struck her then that she was alone, none of her parents and siblings having managed to survive. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com

more here...
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=67

He's disgusting.

just posts what AIPAC tells her to post.

close your eyes and click your heels 3 times while repeating "there is no apartheid, there is no apartheid" maybe it'll come true, well in Kansas at least

n/t.

(1) Boycotting Israel would not work. Many Israelis, especially on the right, are highly isolationist and convinced that 'the whole world is against our tiny country, so we have to defend ourselves in any way we can'. A boycott would only exacerbate matters.

(2) Most of the countries doing the 'boycotting' would probably be countries that are doing similar or worse things themselves. An Israeli could quite naturally say, 'why don't America and Britain end their own wars and occupations, before boycotting us for ours'?

I don't think it's possible to say that something like high-level international sanctions wouldn't work. I do think it's important to be focused on what needs to be achieved, though. If the purpose of sanctions were to protest the settlements in the West Bank and to do so by stopping military sales until that was achieved, then how pissed off and alientated isolationists in Israel feel isn't an argument against imposing sanctions and boycotts. I'm sure similar attitudes prevailed in South Africa, but that didn't stop sanctions happening back then, and it shouldn't now. I can totally understand Gordon's previous opposition to boycotts, though, as I think it'd be incredibly difficult on a personal level for most people to support boycotts against their own country....

As to the 'but they do similar or worse!' argument, that same argument could be used in any situation of a country or organisation becoming the target of boycotts. I just don't believe people saying that should be a reason for not boycotting Israel.

"The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state."

So let's get this straight - Israel requires the world to BSD because Israel isn't working hard enough to ensure a 2-state solution like Gordon describes above?

Olmert offered exactly that in 2008 and Abbas rejected it!

So BSD against Israel.......why?

:eyes:

Perfect example of SLES, as described by Carlo Strenger.

The only democracy in the Middle East™ seems to honor its democratic values only in the breach. So much for academic freedom and freedom of speech Israel-style, when it comes to the case of Prof. Neve Gordon of Ben Gurion University. He wrote an opinion piece in the L.A. Times this week, Boycott Israel, which announced his support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. While it hasn’t stirred any revolutionary fervor on the left, Gordon has struck a nerve on the Israeli right and among its fellow travelers here in the U.S.

CAMERA, the pro-Israel advocacy group, has called for the professor (”a veteran defamer of Israel”) to be put in the stocks and flogged (not literally). The Israeli consul in Los Angeles has slyly encouraged a fundraising boycott against Ben Gurion among U.S. Jewish donors. Arutz Sheva (”All Settlers All the Time”) notes that MKs “across the political spectrum” (translation: from the right to the extreme right) have called for Gordon’s head on a platter.

All this has apparently made BGU’s president quake in her boots. University presidents are notoriously squishy when it comes to maintaining any strong sense of principle in the face of public attack. Rivka Carmi is no exception. Realizing she can’t fire Gordon, who has tenure (and chairs his academic department), she does the next best thing by inviting the ungrateful bastard to do a Pappe-Reinhardt (they were two Israeli professor-peace activists so ostracized within their universities that they were forced to secure teaching positions in England and New York respectively). If you don’t like it here, get the hell out, she declares. Then BGU would be well rid of the snake in the grass nipping at its heels.

Carmi shows remarkably little understanding of the meaning of the term “academic freedom” when she lets loose this quip:

BGU President Prof. Rivka Carmi called Gordon’s views “destructive” and an “abuse the freedom of speech prevailing in Israel and at BGU.

“We are shocked and outraged by remarks, which are both irresponsible and morally reprehensible…

Since when is a professor publishing a legitimate point of view on a subject that falls within his academic specialty an “abuse” of free speech? I would think she would recognize that this is precisely the epitome of it. I also fail to see how supporting the boycott can be “morally reprehensible.” She is again confusing a legitimate (albeit controversial) political-academic argument with morality. This is a failing of reason on her part. When one of her faculty publishes a political text with which she agrees and brings acclaim to BGU, then it is morally wholesome. But when Gordon publishes a view Israeli politicians detest, then it becomes immoral, when in truth it has nothing whatsoever to do with morality.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/08/23/ben-gurion-university-president-calls-for-professor-supporting-israel-boycott-to-quit/

Good to know you can speak your opinion freely without fear of retribution.
:sarcasm: