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Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political and cultural
analyst whose articles have appeared in the Hartford Courant, BalletTanz,
Open Democracy, Z Magazine, Counterpunch, Al-Adab (Beirut), Al-Ahram
(Cairo), Daily Star (Beirut), among others. His article 9/11 Putting the
Moment on Human Terms was chosen among the Best of 2002 by the Guardian.
He contributed to the recently published book, "The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid" (Verso Books, 2001).
He advocates his ethical vision for a unitary, secular and democratic
state in historic Palestine.
"Where is the world? Is it dead?" exclaimed the bereaved mother in Rafah
on Al-Jazeera. Before her lay the lifeless body of her little child.
Faced with overwhelming Israeli oppression, Palestinians under
occupation, in refugee camps and in the heart of Israel's distinct form
of apartheid have increasingly reached out to the world for
understanding, for compassion, and, more importantly, for solidarity.
Palestinians do not beg for sympathy. We deeply resent patronization,
for we are no longer a nation of hapless victims. We are resisting
racial and colonial oppression, aspiring to attain justice and genuine
peace. Above all, we are struggling for the universal principle of equal
humanity. But we cannot do it alone. We need international support.
The question of
Palestine
was created by the world - mostly the western part of it - and it is the
world that must rise to its moral responsibility to resolve it. The
renowned French philosopher Etienne Balibar captures this exceptional
feature saying that the Palestinian cause is a "universal" one because
"it is a test for the recognition of right, and the implementation of
international law."
[1]
Indeed, in few other causes in modern history has the fundamental
primacy of the rule of law and moral principles been put to such a fatal
challenge.
Given its uncontested military superiority, the unquestioning and
all-embracing support it enjoys from the world's only empire and the
lack of political will by Arab and European states to hold it in check,
Israel
has been gravely violating international law, with audacious impunity,
showing little if any consideration for the UN or world public opinion.
Only consistent, systematic and broad international pressures can help
end
Israel's
oppression and injustice, through ascertaining its status as a pariah
state.
This article focuses on the ethical dimension of boycott, a tactic which
I regard not only as a justified form of international intervention, but
an imperative one as well. More specifically, academic and cultural
boycott is examined, due to its evidently controversial nature.
The Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of
Israel
[2]
is specifically premised upon
Israel's
systematic and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people which takes
three basic forms:
First:
Israel's
rejection of the Palestinian refugees' right of return to their lands
and properties, as stipulated in international law, and denying any
responsibility for the Nakba -- the massive dispossession and ethnic
cleansing campaign carried out by Zionists around 1948, transforming
close to 800,000 Palestinians into refugees. A virtual consensus exists
among Israelis, including academics and other intellectuals, on
rejecting the legally and morally binding rights of Palestinian refugees
[3].
The most peculiar dimension in the popular and academic Israeli
discourses on the creation of the state is substituting the concept of
"independence" for colonization and birth for destruction. Even
committed "leftists" often grieve over the loss of
Israel's
"moral superiority" after occupying the
West Bank
and
Gaza
in 1967, as if prior to that
Israel
were as civil, legitimate and law-abiding as
Finland!
Ironically, while stubbornly rejecting Palestinian refugee rights,
Israeli academics have played a central role in the massive campaigns
demanding, and often winning, restitution, repatriation and compensation
rights for Jewish refugees of the World War II era.
Second: the military colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since
1967, with all what it entails in land expropriations, house
demolitions, indiscriminate killings, and, most ominously, the colonial
wall - declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in
July 2004 - which serves to facilitate Israel's unremitting land grab
and gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
[4].
Israeli universities - all government controlled - have not only been
complicit in planning, maintaining and furnishing the justification for
various aspects of the occupation, but have also directly participated
in acts of colonization. Besides the voluminous record of individual
acts of collusion by Israeli academics, the academic institutions
themselves have never refrained from committing colonial crimes
themselves.
The
Hebrew
University
has been slowly but consistently expropriating lands and expelling their
Palestinian owners in occupied
East Jerusalem.
Tel
Aviv
University
(TAU) refuses to date to acknowledge the fact that it sits on top of an
ethnically cleansed Palestinian village
[5].
Some of TAU's departments are also organically linked to the military
and intelligence establishment.
Bar Ilan University not only operates a campus on the illegal colony of
Ariel near Nablus, but has also awarded Ariel Sharon an honorary
doctorate for his role in the March 2002 reoccupation of Palestinian
cities, which witnessed atrocities in Jenin and Nablus as well as wanton
destruction and indiscriminate killings in all the major Palestinian
cities and refugee camps in the West Bank.
Ben
Gurion
University
has supported in various ways the slow ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinian Bedouins in the
Negev
or has witnessed in condemning silence the decades-old policy of racial
discrimination prevailing there. In one glaring example, its scholars
conducted from 1995 to 2000 a confidential study
[6]
commissioned by the Health Ministry on the high incidence rate of severe
birth defects and cancer among Palestinian Bedouins living near a
polluting Israeli industrial site. Although the researchers established
a clear correlation between the industrial pollutants and the mortality
rate of the Palestinian citizens in the area - "65% higher than among
equivalent communities in
Israel"
- as well as their cancer rate - "double the national average" - the
findings were kept secret in accordance with the academics' agreement
with the ministry. It was only recently leaked to the press, by chance.
Haifa
University
boasts one of the most racist academics in
Israel:
Prof. Arnon Sofer, the infamous "prophet of the Arab demographic
threat," who relentlessly and influentially provides academic
justification for ethnically cleansing Palestinians - including citizens
of
Israel
- in innovative shapes and forms
[7].
Moreover, the University has itself sponsored a wide campaign attempting
to cover up a Zionist massacre in the Palestinian
village
of
Tantura,
near
Haifa,
during the Nakba, and went through motions to fire, discredit or silence
Prof. Ilan Pappe and one of his students for daring to reveal the facts
about this massacre.
It is perhaps common knowledge now that the Palestinians have suffered
grave human losses due to
Israel's
37-year-old occupation. But what seems to escape the mainstream opinion
makers is that during the current intifada, the Israeli army has crossed
many of its former red lines, committing crimes that are reminiscent in
form - though certainly not in scale - of Nazi crimes against European
Jews, as British MP Oona King had once stated
[8].
And the Israeli army accurately represents and is supported by Israeli
society at large, mainly due to the fact that the IDF is still,
relatively speaking, a people's army
[9].
From forcing a Palestinian violinist to play at a military roadblock
near Nablus[i][10],
to executing a 13-year-old refugee girl in Rafah in cold blood[ii][11],
to engraving the Star of David on the arms of teenage Palestinian boys,
to inscribing ID numbers on the foreheads and forearms of Palestinians,
young and old[iii][12],
Israel has acted with nauseating criminality and shocking impunity.
Despite all this, Israeli academics and intellectuals who have
explicitly called for an end to the occupation have remained in a
depressingly tiny minority. Moreover, no Israeli academic body or
professional union has to date publicly called for an end to occupation
and the other forms of Israeli oppression. If this does not define
complicity, what does?
Third: The third form of Israeli oppression is hardly ever mentioned in
the western media or in academia: the system of racial discrimination
against Palestinian-Arabs[iv][13]
who are officially "citizens" of
Israel, a state which categorically precludes them from its
self-definition and severely punishes them when they eventually shout "j'accuse!".
The entire state apparatus, including the education system, is designed
to keep Palestinian-Arab citizens of
Israel
disempowered, largely dispossessed and lacking equal status in the laws
and practices of the state. Moreover, despite being the natives, the
indigenous population of the land, or perhaps because of it, they are
increasingly being viewed by the Israeli Jewish settler majority as
unwanted, or, worse, as a demographic threat that ought to be dealt
with, resolutely. Polls have steadily shown that a solid majority of two
thirds of all Israeli Jews supports "encouraging the Arabs to leave" by
various means
[14].
In
every vital aspect of life, from land ownership to access to higher
education and jobs,
Israel
has been practicing its own form of apartheid for 56 years. Of all the
areas of racial discrimination, education stands out. A ground-breaking
Human Rights Watch study published in 2001 concludes:
"The hurdles Palestinian Arab students face from kindergarten to
university function like a series of sieves with sequentially finer
holes. At each stage, the education system filters out a higher
proportion of Palestinian Arab students than Jewish students. ... . And
Israel's courts have yet to use ... laws or more general principles of
equality to protect Palestinian Arab children from discrimination in
education."
[15]
Despite the above, I agree with those who argue that Israel is not
identical to
South Africa;
that it is more complex, more multi-dimensional and even more sinister,
in some respect. But, no matter how we define Israel, the fundamental
and undisputed existence in it of a system of racial discrimination
based on religious/ethnic identity is what motivates calls for South
Africa-like sanctions against
Israel.
"Apartheid," "Zionist settler-colonialism," "Jewish supremacy," ...etc.
are all variations on the name of the ailment. What matters is how best
to cure it. Taking into consideration all 3 dimensions of Israel's
oppression mentioned above, it can be concluded that a sufficient family
resemblance between
Israel
and South Africa exists to grant advocating
South Africa
style remedies.
Some distinguished supporters of the Palestinian cause
[16]
have argued against applying South-Africa style sanctions and boycotts
to
Israel
for various reasons, most significant of which are:
·
The Holocaust's memory makes calls for boycotting
Israel
widely detested and prohibitively unpopular
- As Etienne Balibar says, "Israel
should not be allowed to instrumentalize the genocide of European Jews
to put [itself] above the law of nations."
[17]
Beyond that, by turning a blind eye to Israel's oppression, as the U.S.
and most of official Europe often do, the west has in fact perpetuated
the misery, the human suffering and the injustice that have ensued since
the Holocaust. Only the oppressed are different now; they are "the
victims of the victims," as Edward Said said. As for the unpopularity
argument, recent breakthroughs in the positions of the US Presbyterian
church, the Anglican church and some progressive Jewish-American
organizations, not to mention the fast spreading grassroots boycott
movement in
Europe, indicate that there is an encouragingly growing acceptance of
the need to boycott Israel in western countries. Those who were active
in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa often remind us that also
they faced what seemed like insurmountable hurdles when they first
started in the late 1950's.
·
Israel is essentially a democratic country with a vibrant civil society,
and therefore it can be convinced to end its oppression without
sanctions
- How can an ethno-religious supremacy that is also a colonial power
ever qualify as a democracy?
Israel
may be a democracy for its Jewish citizens, but it is apartheid for its
Palestinian citizens, as argued earlier.
New York
University professor Tony Judt, for instance, calls Israel a
"dysfunctional anachronism," categorizing it among the "belligerently
intolerant, faith-driven ethno states."
[18]
·
Unlike in
South Africa during apartheid, the majority in Israel is opposed to
sanctions
- Of all the anti-boycott arguments, this one reflects either surprising
naivet or deliberate intellectual dishonesty. Are we to judge whether to
apply sanctions on a colonial power based on the opinion of the majority
in the oppressors' community? Does the oppressed community count at all?
·
Israeli academics are largely progressive and at the vanguard of the
peace movement, and therefore they must be supported not boycotted -
This is simply a myth propagated and maintained by Israeli academics who
count themselves in the "left." The vast majority of Israeli academics
serves in the armys reserve forces, and therefore directly knows of and
participates in the daily crimes. Moreover, with the exception of a tiny
yet crucial minority, Israeli academics are largely supportive of their
state's oppression or are acquiescently silent about it.
Some infamous cases are worth mentioning here for illumination: Israel's
most celebrated philosopher, Asa Kasher, provided "ethical"
justification for extra-judicial killings, even when a large number of
innocent civilians are deliberately killed or injured in the process.
[19]
Israel's foremost military historian, Martin Van Creveld, of Hebrew
University, advised the Israeli army in 2002[v][20],
in the Jerusalem regional weekly, March 1, 2004, to commit swift
genocide against the Palestinians, explaining that, "Perhaps 5.000 or
10.000 killed won't be enough, and then we will have to kill more." He
concludes by saying, "it is better that there be one massive crime,
after which we will exit and lock the gate behind us." Like any proper
peacenik, his ultimate objective remains to "exit" the occupied
territories.
Benny Morris has recently argued that completely emptying Palestine of
its indigenous Arab inhabitants in 1948 might have led to peace in the
Middle East
[21].
In response, Baruch Kimmerling, professor at
Hebrew University, wrote: "Let me extend Benny Morris's logic.... If the
Nazi programme for the final solution of the Jewish problem had been
complete, for sure there would be peace today in
Palestine."
[22]
Far from being isolated examples, such explicitly racist and criminal
positions are quite popular in
Israel
today. They are not only condoned in universities, but highly praised,
judging from the prominent stature enjoyed by Kasher, Van Creveld,
Morris and their ilk.
From a slightly different perspective, some academics have argued that
boycotting Israel is counterproductive and may lead to:
·
Losing the ability to influence
Israel's possible path to peace
- What influence?
Europe
hardly has any right now. Even in the U.S., the Israeliziation of US
foreign policy, particularly regarding the middle east, has reached new
depths, effectively tying the hands of any prospective American pressure
aimed at curtailing, not to mention changing, Israel's oppressive
policies. On the rare occasions when
Israel did at all contemplate changing its policies, it was mainly due
to facing concerted pressures by the international community.
·
Radicalizing the Israeli right and pulling the rug from under the
feet of the left - What left? Those in Israel who officially call
themselves "the left", the Zionist left, more accurately, easily make
the far-right parties in Europe look as moral as Mother Teresa,
especially when it comes to recognizing Palestinian refugees' rights. On
the other hand, the morally consistent, non-Zionist left, is a very tiny
group, whose members may inadvertently end up losing benefits,
privileges and funding as a result of boycott. This should compel us to
nuance our boycott tactics to decrease the possibility of that
unnecessarily happening. But, we all know, this is not an exact science
(if any science is). Rather than focusing on the error margin, we must
emphasize the positive impact boycott can have on the overall academic
establishment in
Israel. The price that some conscientious academics may pay as an
unavoidable byproduct of the boycott is quite cheap when compared to the
price Palestinian academics, and indeed Palestinians at large, have to
pay for the lack of boycott or any similarly effective pressures on
Israel. The most urgent type of support the international community can
provide to the Palestinian academy is to adopt various forms of boycott
against Israel's academic institutions, forcing them to disengage
themselves from their direct and/or indirect collusion in their state's
oppression. This will serve not only the Palestinians, but also, in the
longer term, the moral left in Israel, academics included. Challenging
the fanatic, militaristic establishment may strengthen its grip on power
in the short run - extreme populism and the rise of fascist tendencies
in
Israel
today attest to that; but in the longer run it will weaken that
establishment, just as in South Africa. Repression under apartheid did
not die down in a smooth downwards spiral, after all.
·
Indirectly increasing the suffering of Palestinians who stand to lose
financially and may even be subjected to deteriorating conditions of
oppression by a wilder, more isolated
Israel
- More suffocation? Even South Africa's leading human rights advocate,
archbishop Desmond Tutu, horrified by the elaborate, multi-layered siege
Israel has set up in the occupied Palestinian territories[vi][23],
drew many similarities between Israel and apartheid South Africa,
calling for boycotts against the former similar to those applied on the
latter
[24].
Some sincere advocates of Palestinian rights have argued that boycotting
Israel is a self-righteous act that ignores the pressing need to
alleviate the immediate suffering of Palestinians under occupation. But,
as I have argued elsewhere[vii][25],
regardless of all intentions, this type of logic is not only
patronizing, claiming to better know what's best for Palestinians, but
also based on an unconscious premise that Palestinians have somewhat
less than normal human needs. Implied in it is the supposition that
food, shelter and basic services, which would be better served without
boycott, the argument claims, are considered by Palestinians to be more
profound or dear than their need for freedom, justice,
self-determination, dignified living and the opportunity to develop
culturally, economically and socially in peace.
From an entirely different angle, some argue that, in spite of all the
above, it is still necessary for Palestinian academics and intellectuals
of all people to maintain and foster open communication channels with
their Israeli counterparts, to debate, to share, to convince, to learn,
to overcome the "psychological barriers" and ultimately to reach a
common vision and a common struggle for peace.
I
beg to differ. Those who imagine they can wish away the conflict by
suggesting some forums for rapprochement, detente, or "dialogue", which
they hope can lead to authentic processes of reconciliation and
eventually peace, are either clinically delusional or dangerously
deceptive.
First, given the financial luring and political arm-twisting that
typically come as part of the package of western "suggestions" for
collaboration, the latter are more often than not perceived as right out
dictates.
Second, any sincere joint projects aimed at reaching a just peace must
be fundamentally based on rejection of all oppression and recognition of
equal humanity. Prior to establishing equal humanity any communication
is strictly an exercise in asymmetrical negotiations between oppressor
and oppressed. Only after equality is established can such communication
rise to the level of dialogue. The mutual recognition of equal humanity
is therefore a fundamental precondition for, never a consequence of
dialogue. As the late Edward Said used to say: "Equality or nothing!"
Third, if a member of the oppressors' community theoretically accepts,
on principle, the requirements for justice without acting to attain
them, while simultaneously enjoying the benefits brought about by
occupation, racial discrimination and the illegal use of Palestinian
refugees' properties, then he/she would still be indirectly responsible,
and ethically accountable for the injustice his/her state is committing.
Reflection without action cannot suffice to exonerate a member of an
oppressive group. Action is needed to translate the formal commitment
into a process for change and ethical transformation.
Israelis who always ask the Palestinians for a political price to be
paid in advance in return for their "noble" recognition of a meager
subset of Palestinian rights are not really seeking justice or a moral
end to the conflict. Some shamelessly seek European funds; others do it
for prestige or fame; and some even participate in this typical colonial
behavior as a form of taming the Palestinian shrew, or inhibiting
resistance to oppression.
Striving for peace divorced from justice is as good as
institutionalizing injustice, or making the oppressed submit to the
overwhelming force of the oppressor and accept inequality as fate.
Those who attempt to change the perception of the oppressed rather than
help end oppression itself are guilty of moral blindness and political
short-sightedness. Prolonging oppression is not only unethical; it is
also pragmatically counter-productive as it perpetuates the conflict.
In
conclusion, I wish to emphasize the necessity of applying an evolving,
comprehensive, institutional boycott against Israel's academic,
cultural, economic and political organizations. Without principled and
effective support for this minimal, non-violent form of resistance to
oppression, intellectuals and academics will be abandoning their moral
obligation to stand up for rights, for justice, for equality and for a
chance to establish the primacy of universal ethical principles.
[viii][1]
Etienne Balibar, A Complex Urgent Universal Political Cause,
Address before the conference of Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (FFIPP),
Universite Libre de Bruxelles, July 3rd and 4th.
[ix][2]
The Palestinian call for boycott, issued by the Palestinian Campaign for
the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), and supported by
close to 60 of the most important professional, educational and cultural
unions and organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories, can be
read at:
right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/article178
[x][3]
"The Palestinian leadership would be well advised to take very seriously
the united front in
Israel that opposes a right of return," read the lead editorial in
Ha'aretz,
August 18, 2003.
[xi][4]
According to peace activists Gadi Algazi and Azmi Bdeir: "Transfer
[Israeli euphemism for ethnic cleansing--OB]
isn't necessarily a dramatic moment, a moment when people are expelled
and flee their towns or villages. It is not necessarily a planned and
well-organized move with buses and trucks loaded with people ... .
Transfer is a deeper process, a creeping process that is hidden from
view. ... The main component of the process is the gradual undermining
of the infrastructure of the civilian Palestinian population's lives in
the territories: its continuing strangulation under closures and sieges
that prevent people from getting to work or school, from receiving
medical services, and from allowing the passage of water trucks and
ambulances, which sends the Palestinians back to the age of donkey and
cart. Taken together, these measures undermine the hold of the
Palestinian population on its land." Cited in: Ran HaCohen, Ethnic
Cleansing: Past, Present, and Future,
www.Antiwar.com,
December 30, 2002.
[xii][5]
The Palestinian village's name is Sheikh Muwannis
[xiii][6]
Ran Reznick, Ramat Hovav has double number of birth defects and cancer,
Ha'aretz, June 1, 2004.
[xiv][7]
One example is the "Mitzpim Project," supervised by Sofer, which calls
for the "conquest" of areas populated by Palestinian-Arabs inside via
Jews-only settlements and roads.
haaretz.com/hasen/spages/481680.html
[xv][8]
Following a visit to the completely fenced Gaza Strip, Oona King, a
Jewish member of the British parliament commented on the irony that
Israeli Jews face today, saying: "...in escaping the ashes of the
Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in
its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto."
Israel
Can Halt This Now, The Guardian, June 12, 2003.
guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,975423,00.html
[xvi][9]
According to surveys of Jewish-Israeli views on conscription, the
primary factor indicating support for the continuation of the "people's
army" heritage, a solid majority favours it. For example, refer to the
authoritative April 2001 Peace Index poll conducted by Tel Aviv
University at:
tau.ac.il/peace/Peace_Index/2001/English/p_april_01_e.html
[xvii][10]
Chris McGreal,
Israel Shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at
roadblock, The Guardian,
November 29, 2004.
guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1361755,00.html
[xviii][11]
Amos Harel, Absolutely Illegal, Ha'aretz,
23/11/2004.
haaretz.com/hasen/spages/504878.html
[xix][12]
Serge Schmemann, At Least 17 Are Killed in Israeli Raid at Palestinian
Camp in Gaza,
New York Times,
12/3/2002.
[xx][13]
According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, "Although the
Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel represent approximately 20%
of its population, this community suffers from institutionalized
discrimination that produces severe socio-economic gaps between the
Jewish majority and the Arab minority. No significant investments are
made to eliminate these gaps. On the contrary, the Arab population
continues to suffer from under-budgeting and discrimination in many
areas including employment, education, property and planning policies,
and health care services."
phr.org.il/Phr/Pages/PhrArticle_Unit.asp?Cat=37&Pcat=4
[xxi][14]
Yulie Khromchenco , Poll: 64% of Israeli Jews support encouraging Arabs
to leave, Ha'aretz,
June 22, 2004.
[xxii][15]
Human Rights Watch, Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian
Arab Children in
Israel's
Schools,
September 2001.
hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2
[xxiii][16]
Noam Chomsky, for instance, describes sanctions as "probably harmful and
at best pointless," arguing that, "In the current real-world
circumstances, a call for sanctions, even if it were justified, would be
greatly welcomed by the right wing extremists and hard-liners, because
they could easily convert it into another 'proof' that everyone wants to
kill the Jews and so we must rise to the support of embattled Israel to
prevent another Holocaust." ZNet, May 31, 2004. http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/archives/000492.html
[xxiv][17]
Etienne Balibar, ibid.
[xxv][18]
Tony Judt,
Israel: The Alternative,
New York Review of Books,
Vol. 50, #16,
October 23, 2003.
nybooks.com/articles/16671
[xxvi][19]
Reuven Pedatzur, The Israeli army's house philosopher, Ha'aretz,
February 24, 2004.
[xxvii][20]
Ran Hacohen, Against Negotiations, Antiwar.com,
March 28, 2002.
antiwar.com/hacohen/h032802.html
[xxviii][21]
Benny Morris, A new exodus for the
Middle East,
The Guardian,
October 3, 2002.
guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,803417,00.html
[xxix][22]
Baruch Kimmerling, False logic, The Guardian,
October 5, 2002.
guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,805123,00.html
[xxx][23]
Desmond Tutu, Apartheid in the
Holy Land,
The Guardian,
April 29, 2002.
guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,706911,00.html
[xxxi][24]
Desmond Tutu, Of Occupation and Apartheid Do I Divest?, CounterPunch,
October 17, 2002.
[xxxii][25]
Desmond Tutu, Of Occupation and Apartheid Do I Divest?, CounterPunch,
October 17, 2002.
