Nothing is 100 percent. No person is totally good or
totally bad, nor is any action. We all wind up contributing to things that we would
not choose to support. By the time I had
breakfast this morning, I had supported sweatshops where the sheets on which I
slept were sewn and left a significant carbon footprint by its transportation
to the store where I shop. Global warming is a product of living.
Politicians love this aspect of being able to find an
alternative argument to any action or policy that does not benefit their cause.
This intertwining of good and bad in everything we do means that opponents can
always find enough flaws in our good efforts to bring us to inaction. When we call Israel to cease its abusive
treatment of non-Jews both within its walls and beyond, its defenders accuse us
of ignoring all the good there is about Israel, and they are right.
Israel does protect the freedom of its press, holds open
elections, has developed high-tech medical procedures and engineering systems.
Israel has established a land of opportunity… at least for Jews.
For these reasons, the United States has been the
patron saint of Israel for decades. However, Lawrence Davidson points out that
the popular reasons for supporting Israel are not the whole story:
The common given reasons
are suspect. It is not because the two countries have overlapping interest. The
US seeks stability in the Middle East and Israel is constantly making things
unstable (mostly by practicing ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, illegally
colonizing conquered lands and launching massive assaults against its
neighbors). Nor as is often claimed, is the alliance based on “shared Western
values”. The US long ago outlawed
racial, ethnic and religious discrimination in the public sphere. In Israel,
religious-based discrimination is the law. The Zionist state’s values in this
regard are the opposite of those of the United States.[i]
For these reasons, I support the BDS (Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions) non-violent movement, which has gained much more
traction outside the US than here. Our presidential candidates love cast
dispersions on BDS. By doing so, they not only gain praise, it makes them sound
as though they are on top of the Israel/Palestine situation and would probably
cost them very few votes, if any.
Jeb Bush, “On day one I
will work with the next attorney-general to stop the BDS movement.”
Ted Cruz, “BDS is
premised on a lie and it is anti-Semitism, plain and simple.”
Marco Rubio, “This BDS
coalition of the radical left thinks it has discovered a clever, politically
correct way to advocate Israel’s destruction.”
Hillary Clinton, “We need
to make countering BDS a priority.”
Marc Ellis, Jewish scholar and activist, finds such caricature
amusing:
The Knesset anti-BDS
solutions are becoming more and more bizarre. First they try to stamp BDS out
by waving the magic wand of anti-Semitism around the world. Then they propose to mobilize Jews and
everyone else that counts politically to rise up because BDS wants to destroy
Israel. Even supporters of Israel should ask: Can these strategies succeed when
the world is aware that an entire people are being ghettoized by Israel.[ii]
I have been an anti-Zionist for almost thirty years. I
move in those circles, read anti-Zionist books, attend conferences, study
documentaries, subscribe to anti-Zionist magazines, have hundreds of
anti-Zionist friends and I have never, ever heard anyone talk about wanting to
destroy Israel or “push all the Jews into the sea. No one wants that to
happen. What they do want is for Israel to become a democratic nation committed to
living in peace with all its citizens and its neighbors. That cannot happen as
long as Israel insists upon being a Jewish state.
I support BDS, not because it is perfect, but because
it is the best hope I know of to pressure Israel into living by the rules that
respect liberty and justice for all like any other nation claiming to be a
democracy.
BDS is not perfect. As it exposes Israel’s underside,
it inevitably feeds to latent anti-Semitism. It hurts some innocent people
along the way and disrupts the social unity in Israel and its critics.
But, having said that, I support BDS because it works.
During the Gaza war in
the summer of 2014, dock workers in the Port of Oakland refused to unload cargo
from an Israeli ship. That same summer the Presbyterian Church passed a
divestment resolution that pulled millions of dollars from companies profiting
from the occupation. [This summer, the Methodists joined the Presbyterians and
voted to withdraw their investments from five major Israeli banks for
divestment]. Last April, the British bank Barclays dumped its holdings of Elbit
Systems and the Danish bank Merkur terminated its contract with G4S. The European Union is about to start
“slapping labels on products produced in Israeli settlements.”[iii]
And what do the supporters of BDS want? At least three things: To end the occupation.
To give Palestinian citizens within Israel equal rights and protection, and to
respect the right of refugees to return to their homes. Is that enough? No. But it would bring hope to the
Palestinians and peace to Israel.
Now:
NEWSWEEK REPORTS THAT FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN ISRAEL HAS DROPPED BY FIFTY
PERCENT.[iv]
It’s
not perfect. I wish it were 100%. But it
is enough to get Israel’s attention and cause anxiety in the Knesset for its
failure to stem the effects of BDS. Hopefully Israel will get the message: Join
the nations of civilized people or become even more isolated.
Thomas
Are
January
21, 2016