Mark Weiss, The Telegraph, April 8 2011

bdsmovement.net, April 8, 2011

On March 29^th, 2011 students, faculty, staff, alumni and community allies made a significant stride toward divestment at Carleton University in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) first launched our campus-based pension fund divestment campaign in January 2010. The student-led campaign was motivated by the 2005 call from Palestinian civil society “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel… until it fully complies with the precepts of international law.”

After over a year of failed attempts to meet with Carleton’s Pension Fund Committee, SAIA submitted a formal request to present our motion to the Board of Governors (BOG) – the highest decision-making body of the university – to divest from four companies complicit in violations of international law in Palestine: BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Motorola and Tesco Supermarkets. These companies manufacture weapons and weapons components used by the Israeli military against Palestinians, and also facilitate the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank (for background see: http://carleton.saia.ca/pension-divestment-campaign.html). SAIA’s motion also called upon Carleton to implement a binding socially responsible investment policy, in full consultation with the Carleton community.

In an attempt to silence the students who put forward the motion, the BOG rejected SAIA’s request to make a presentation at their meeting. They informed students that the ostensibly public meeting would be closed to all observers, save for a small BOG-sanctioned list of five representatives “from both sides,” while the floor of the building where the meeting was to be held would be locked down and security stationed at all entrances.

However, the university administration’s attempts to muzzle the long list of divestment campaign endorsers – including over 2,000 letter and petition signatories, both the undergraduate and graduate students associations, and more than 25 student clubs, academic workers’ unions and university service centres – deeply backfired. During one of the busiest academic weeks of the year, more than 400 divestment supporters rallied at every entrance of the building to challenge the illegitimate decision-making process, and to voice a united message: “Board of Governors, we won’t rest, we won’t rest til you divest!” In an inspiring show of solidarity, students and their allies engaged in a diversity of creative protest tactics, ranging from sit-ins to salsa and dabke dance-offs for divestment, successfully blocking several BOG members from entering the meeting. Eventually, the highly mobilized and energetic crowd became too much for the BOG to ignore, and they announced to the crowd that they had cancelled the meeting. The BOG members who had literally walked over students to go upstairs to the meeting then exited the building through a ‘walk of shame’ created by the crowd of cheerful protestors.

Divestment supporters proceeded to hold an ad-hoc, student-run General Assembly in the lobby of the building, voting to: divest from Israeli military occupation; open a Sexual Assault Centre on campus; abolish tuition fees; and create a new, democratically elected and representative membership for the BOG. While the General Assembly was only a symbolic exercise and real institutional divestment still lies ahead at Carleton, we are confident that the university administration will eventually bow to student pressure, as we plan to increase the campaign’s momentum next year.

The unprecedented support and dedication from our allies in the lead up to the rally not only illustrated the community’s unanimous rejection of the practice of investing students’ tuition money in funding war and illegal occupation, but also showed that the SAIA-led divestment campaign is now a campus-wide movement. Our allies have made the campaign theirs; for example, Inés Barreda-Castañón, member of the Humanitarian Organization of Latin American Students (HOLAS), stated at the rally: “Our tuition money is going to fund war, to fund money and to fund murder. It’s gone past SAIA and Palestine. HOLAS will always be here… if it’s a humanitarian issue, we’ll be there.”

Ending Carleton’s unethical investments is also part of a broader struggle against the university’s repeated attempts to silence the student body and implement undemocratic decision-making processes. It’s no coincidence that the same meeting the public was barred from was also the meeting where the BOG intended to announce an increase in student tuition fees. As media spokesperson Reem Buhaisi said of the rally: “This is about reclaiming our space, this is about tuition fees, this is about being respected and heard by people who say they advocate the things we ask for.”

SAIA’s actions to expose Carleton’s appalling lack of ethical principles and accountability have publicly shamed the university administration, who would like nothing better than for the issue of divestment to go away. However, as the crowd dispersed from the rally, SAIA and our allies were quite clear that the movement to divest from companies violating international law in occupied Palestine will only grow until our demands are met: “We will be back!”

In early March, I attended an Independent Jewish Voices event in London with Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy. Those who follow Levy’s articles in Haaretz – a collection of which have been published in his 2010 book, The Punishment of Gaza – will be familiar with the central theme of his presentation: Israeli society’s indifference to a brutal, military occupation on their doorstep and the ongoing crimes – under international law – against the Palestinian people. After his talk, and a brief intervention by director of JNews, Miri Weingarten, the floor was opened to questions: two out of five questions were about economic sanctions and the academic and cultural boycott. Levy affirmed that boycotts are legitimate, but questioned whether an Israeli boycott can be effective, concluding that it will push Israelis further to the right, and feed into their paranoia that ‘the world is against us’. He said that academic institutions should be the last target of a boycott and it ‘should be against the occupation, not all of Israel’.

I approached Tali Shapiro, Israeli activist and writer, for her responses to what seems to have become the last line of defense against the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) amongst progressive circles, in Israel and internationally. I was curious as to why the international community is still being asked to consider the feelings/fears of Israelis who rarely challenge their own government’s apartheid policies, and why we are still discussing ‘if’ the boycott ‘will’ be effective in Year seven of the campaign.

Tali Shapiro: Part of being an effective activist on any issue is to know it inside-out. I happen to be the head editor of the Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from within newsletter; this gives me good insight into the trends in the mainstream media, concerning BDS. I’ve been involved since the Gaza massacre of ‘Operation Cast Lead’. This unabashed blood bath was a turning point in Israel’s international image, and the emergence of BDS as the main tactic to fight the occupation and apartheid is a clear result of Gaza.

While international papers were beginning to talk about what was previously the sole domain of alternative media, it took the Israeli media six more months to catch up. In another six months (one year after Cast Lead), it would be common to see several articles a day concerning BDS in the online Israeli MSM; within two years of Cast Lead there’s not an article, a news spot, or a radio show that doesn’t include ‘Israel’s declining image’/ ‘delegitimization’. In fact, by now it’s not just in the news, it is part of the language and culture. The latest BDS victory began a couple of months ago, when Israeli journalists preyed upon the fears of the typical, colonial citizen with titles like ‘BDS is working’. The interesting thing is that when you actually read the article [in Hebrew], you realize that all that’s happening is that a certain company has looked into the details. This latest phenomenon shows how hard it is to really measure effectiveness. I believe all movements for social change learn, sooner or later, how to respect the complexities of reality and not force themselves upon it. This ability to adjust is what makes us truly effective. Chela Delgato of INCITE! was quoted as saying, “when you’re making the road by walking it’s hard to run.” That’s the cautionary tale, which those who use force as an “easy solution” refuse to grasp.

Just to answer that cheap shot about Israelis becoming even more defensive, this is a natural progression which happens with every abuser who is called out on his abusive behaviour: when you tell the man who beats his partner that you see what he’s doing and it’s wrong, naturally, the first thing he does is get defensive. He may lie, he may make excuses, he may blame the victim, but does that mean he shouldn’t be confronted?

EK: Why does the academic – and cultural – boycott continue to be the most controversial amongst those commentators that yet understand how complicit state institutions are in the occupation?

TS: To me, statements like Levy’s are a clear indicator that the man doesn’t know the issue to its full extent (and I say this with all due respect to his dedication, sharp analysis, and genuine concern for the well-being of human beings). It’s hard to grasp the vastness of the workings of the occupation. This is what separates the Gush Shalom ‘progressives’/ ‘enlightened colonialists’ from the Who Profits radicals. When the Who Profits project began, I don’t think they anticipated the depth of economic involvement in the occupation. What they realized is that it is all about the money – war profiteering, in the most classic sense of the term. What they discovered was that 80% of Israel’s economy is entangled in occupation. The meaning of this big word ‘occupation’ is theft by force, and amassing of profit on those stolen gains by exploitation.

One has to remember that Israelis are no different from other people. The banality of evil is, well, banal. How do you get the ‘average Joe’ to do the above? How do you get them not to object to all this? You have to create justifications for it. These will only be effective if they are manifested in each and every member in the society. In other words, you have to create a culture around it. So in Israel you write songs about ‘mighty battles won’, you create a whole culture that never mentions its victims, and this serves as the canon in your educational institutions. Once we can see the clear connection, of how culture has been enlisted to enable economic oppression by military means, really there’s no other choice, but to widen the boycott.

As I’ve illustrated in my response to the first question, BDS’s main effect will not be via the actual severing of ties. The effect will be felt much sooner with the fear of severing of ties. This pressure was instrumental in fighting the South African apartheid regime and I think denying it doesn’t point to an understanding of the situation – not then and not now. This doesn’t mean BDS is the only action taken. People have been taking to the streets in a very organized and consistent manner for years: we write, we speak abroad. South Africans did all this as well. Just as evil doesn’t substantially change through geography and time, neither do the ways to fight it effectively.

EK: Weingarten responded to the questions on BDS by saying that in the light of the new anti-boycott bill, which is likely to be passed by the Knesset, it seems strange that audiences would ask an Israeli speaker if she or he supports the boycott because a) they could be penalized for their opinion, and, she implied b) the boycott does not need a ‘kosher stamp’. Is it relevant what Israeli commentators, academics and cultural figures think about the boycott?

TS: Israeli speakers can simply say ‘my country has made it illegal for me to comment, fearing the consequences I choose not to speak’ – this would be making a very clear political statement about how bad things have become and does not belittle the importance of other activists who do choose to take the risk.

Israelis do have that unique role in the BDS movement, in that we are basically asking to boycott ourselves. Yes, one of our roles is to ‘kosher stamp’ the movement, but that’s hardly our only role, and we’re not the first in history to hold this status. Whites did it in South Africa, in the US, Christian Germans in Nazi Germany, veterans do it in the anti-war movement, as do cisgendered, heterosexual men in the feminist and queer movements. They can choose to be a tool, or they can choose to take an active, thinking part. Israelis in the BDS movement are much more than ‘kosher stamps’; we commit much of our time, resources and energy, and we do it knowing the consequences. We initiate and we join – that is what activists do. For solidarity groups, it’s not just about the ends, but about the means. There are two results by which we measure success: 1. Have we attained our goal? 2. Have we gained the trust of the oppressed, enough to be welcome in their safe spaces? Our voices can only become relevant if we manage to achieve the latter. Otherwise, we are still the oppressor, speaking from a place of privilege. It’s only when we’re radical enough to step out of the binary paradigm that we can truly become part of the movement; otherwise all we do is perpetuate oppression.

Some elements within the progressive Israeli left would really like to make it about ‘BDS vs. anything other than BDS’. This is also a historic repetition of earlier struggles between the centrists and the radicals, which isn’t specific to Israeli politics. As long as the Israeli government didn’t impede on the centrists (typically educated, Ashkenazi, upper-middle class), they were OK with Palestinians biting the dust. A fine example of this is Sheikh Jerrah: if the state hadn’t arrested Jews in truck-loads, the great majority of the people with the Meretz stickers wouldn’t have come out against the forced poverty, through property theft, of East Jerusalem Palestinians.

In Israel today the left is actually one of the smallest minority groups. You can be classically fascist, like the ‘National Left’ group and still be considered a ‘leftist fifth column’. This is epitomized by the Boycott Prohibition Law. Because it’s so all-encompassing, all of a sudden organizers of B’tselem feel a need to come out on television and say, ‘I’m a Zionist’. It’s very similar to the American progressives talking about how ‘true patriotism is in criticizing the state’. I don’t disagree with this statement, I disagree with the framing of social involvement as subject to my proving my loyalty to a state/government. In this kind of reality, we are very limited in our actions. Fortunately for us, this isn’t reality, just one way of perceiving it. Again, this is where radicals come in: our role is to challenge these concepts, while visualizing and working towards a more just/free society.”

EK: When do you think we will reach the point – or have we already arrived – when BDS will be at the centre of any discussion on Israel/Palestine?

TS: We have arrived!

On Islam, March 29 2011

Thirty seven Knesset Members voted in favor of the bill while only 11 opposed.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – A new law passed by the Israeli Knesset enabling the court system to revoke citizenship of anyone convicted of espionage or helping the enemy has triggered uproar among Israeli rights activists as targeting Israeli-Arab minority.

“It is very clearly aimed at Israel’s Arab citizens, and sends them a message that their citizenship is not guaranteed,” Ronit Sela, spokeswoman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, March 29.

“MKs [Knesset members] have made it clear that even though the wording of the bill is broad,” she added blasting the bill as ‘racist’.

The bill was initiated by two MKs David Rotem and Robert Ilatov from the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Thirty seven Knesset Members voted in favor of the bill while only 11 opposed.

The new legislation empowers the Israeli court system to revoke the citizenship of anyone convicted on charges of “terrorism,” espionage, helping the enemy during time of war or any other act which harms national sovereignty.

A similar procedure for revoking citizenship already exists under the 1952 Nationality Law that could only be done through the interior ministry.

Sela added that the move would mainly affect the Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem (Al-Quds), making it easier for Israeli authorities to kick them out from their homes.

“Before, it was a separate process handled by the interior ministry, but now, if the court has convicted someone, they can revoke citizenship at the same time as handing down sentence,” she said.

The new law is a part of Lieberman’s “no loyalty, no citizenship” campaign which he pushed during the run up to the 2009 elections, regarded as targeting Israel’s Arab minority.

“Without loyalty, there can be no citizenship,” Lieberman said just minutes after the bill was passed, in comments reported by the Jerusalem Post.

“Any person who harms the country cannot enjoy the benefits of citizenship and its fruit.”

“Fascism”

The new amendment to Citizenship Act was also blasted by Arab MKs as leading Israel towards fascism.

“It is possible that the overuse of the word leaves people unaffected. There is a kind of acceptance, Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh said, Yediot Ahronot reported late on Monday, March 28.

“All of the offenses that appear in the amendment already have penalties set by law.”

MK Hanin Zoabi for Balad party agreed.

“There is a clear fascist trend. What is happening today shouldn’t surprise any of us. Someone has already constructed the political, mental and ideological infrastructure for revoking citizenship,” she said.

“Someone thinks that you can jump from democracy to fascism in one go?”

MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) also attacked what he called “racial effrontery” offered by the Knesset.

“Who do you see as a loyal citizen? A loyal citizen is someone who gives up their rights. As soon as I demand my rights I’m no longer a loyal citizen,” Zahalka said.

“International law states that a man cannot be left without citizenship. Even when a person is executed in the US – his citizenship is not revoked.

“Now a party comes along that re-invents the racist wheel and puts revoking citizenships in the law book.”

Israeli Arabs, who make up nearly a fifth of the population, are descendants of those who stayed when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Zionist gangs in1948, when Israel was founded on the rubble of Palestine.

Relations between Israel’s Jews and Arabs have long been difficult, with Arabs complaining of discrimination.

A recent Israel Democracy Institute poll found that nearly half of Jewish Israelis don’t want to live next door to Arabs, foreigners or mentally ill.

Last December, dozens of Jewish rabbis issued an edict against renting or selling real estate to non-Jews, particularly Arab citizens.

Earlier on October, the Israeli government approved an amendment to Israel’s Citizenship Act that would require all non-Jews taking Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to the “Jewish and democratic state of Israel”.

A Palestinian activist holds Israeli bread products being sold in a shop in the West Bank town of Ramallah [EPA]

It was Egypt that got me thinking about the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement in a serious way. I was already conducting a quiet targeted boycott of settlement goods – silently reading labels at the grocery store to make sure I was not buying anything that came from over the Green Line.

I had been doing this for a long time. But, at some point, I realised that my private targeted boycott was a bit naïve. And I understood that it was not enough.

It is not just the settlements and the occupation, two sides of the same coin, which pose a serious obstacle to peace and infringe on the Palestinians’ human rights. It is everything that supports them – the government and its institutions. It is the bubble that many Israelis live in, the illusion of normality. It is the Israeli feeling that the status quo is sustainable.

And the settlements are a bit of a red herring, a convenient target for anger. Israelis must also face one of the major injustices that have resulted from their state – the nakba, the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

While BDS addresses that, among other concerns – the three principles of the movement are respect for the Palestinians’ right of return, as outlined in UN resolution 194, an end to the occupation and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel – I remained reluctant to get involved.

I have to admit that I was frightened by the movement. I did not think it would help. I was sure that BDS would only encourage Israel to dig its heels in deeper. It will only make things worse for everyone, I reasoned.

Egypt was the tipping point for me. I was exhilarated by the images of people taking to the streets to demand change. And while the Palestine Papers prove that the government seems intent on maintaining the status quo, I know plenty of Israelis who are fed up with it.

There are mothers who do not want to send their children to the army; soldiers who resent guarding settlers. I recently spoke with a 44-year-old man – a normal guy, a father of two – who told me he wants to burn something he is so frustrated with the government and so worried about the future.

And Egypt is on many Israeli lips right now. So, what can be done to help bring it to Israeli feet? What can be done to encourage Israelis to fight for change, to fight for peace, to liberate themselves from a conflict that undermines their self-determination, their freedom?

BDS has stacked up a number of successes, which is one reason the Israeli Knesset is trying to pass a bill, known as the Boycott Law, that would effectively criminalise Israelis who join the movement, subjecting them to huge fines.

And some of those involved with BDS are already feeling an immense amount of pressure from the state.

‘Israel’s mask of democracy’

Leehee Rothschild, 26, is one of the scores of Israelis who have answered the 2005 Palestinian call for BDS. Recently her Tel Aviv apartment was raided. While the police did this under the pretense of searching for drugs, she was taken to the station for a brief interrogation that focused entirely on politics.

“The person who came to release me [from interrogation] was an intelligence officer who said that he is in charge of monitoring political activity in the Tel Aviv area,” Rothschild says. It was this officer who had requested the search warrant.

Since Operation Cast Lead, Israeli activists have reported increasing pressure from the police as well as General Security Services – known by their Hebrew acronym, Shabak.

The latter’s mandate includes, among other things, the goal of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state, making those who advocate for democracy a target.

House raids, such as the one Rothschild was subjected to, are not uncommon, nor are phone calls from the Shabak.

“Obviously [the pressure] is nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through,” Rothschild says. “But I think we’re touching a nerve.”

When asked about the proposed Boycott Law, Rothschild comments: “If the bill goes through, it will peel off, a little more, Israel’s mask of democracy.”

Tough love

As for her involvement in BDS, Rothschild remarks that she was not aware of the movement until it became a serious topic of discussion within Israel’s radical left, which she was already active in. And even after she heard about it, she did not jump onboard right away.

“I had reservations about [BDS],” Rothschild recalls. “I thought about it for a very long time and I debated it with myself and my friends.

“The main reservation I had was that the economic [aspects] would first harm the weak people in the society – the poor people – the people who have the least effect on what’s going on. But I think that the occupation is harming these people much more than the divestments can.”

Rothschild points out that state funds that are poured into “security and defence and oppressing the Palestinian people” could be better used in Israel to help those in the low socioeconomic strata.

“Another reservation I have had is that it might make the Israeli public more extremist, more fundamentalist,” Rothschild adds. “But I have to say that the road it has to go to be more extreme is very short right now.”

As an Israeli, Rothschild considers joining the BDS movement to be an act of caring. It is tough love for the country she was born and raised in.

“I hope that, for some people, it will be a slap in their face and they will wake up and see what’s going on,” Rothschild says, adding that the oppressor is oppressed, as well.

“The Israeli people are also oppressed by the occupation – they are living inside a society that is militant; that is violent; that is racist.”

‘Renouncing my privileges’

Ronnie Barkan, 34, explains that he took his first step towards the boycott 15 years ago, when he refused to complete his mandatory military service.

“There’s a lot of social pressure [in Israel],” Barkan says. “We’re raised to be soldiers from kindergarten. We’re taught that it’s our duty [to serve in the army] and you’re a parasite or traitor if you don’t want to serve.”

“What is even worse is that people are raised to be deeply racist,” he adds. “Everything is targeted at supporting [Jewish] privilege as the masters of the land. Supporting BDS means renouncing my privileges in this land and insisting on equality for all.”

Barkan likens his joining of the boycott movement to the “whites who denounced their apartheid privileges and joined the black struggle in South Africa”.

When I cringe at the “a-word,” apartheid, Barkan counters: “Israel clearly falls under the legal definition of the ‘crime of apartheid’ as defined in the Rome Statute.”

‘Never again to anybody’

Some oppose BDS because it includes recognition of the Palestinian right of return. These critics say that the demographic shift would impinge on Jewish self-determination. But Barkan argues that “the underlying foundation [of the movement] is universally recognised human rights and international law”.

He emphasises that BDS respects human rights for both Palestinians and Jews and includes proponents of a bi-national, democratic state as well as those who believe a two-state solution is the best answer to the conflict.

He also stresses that BDS is not anti-Semitic. Nor is it anti-Israeli.

“The boycott campaign is not targeting Israelis; it is targeting the criminal policies of Israel and the institutions that are complicit, not individuals,” he says.

“So let’s say an Israeli academic or musician goes abroad and he is turned away from a conference or a venue just because he’s Israeli … ” I begin to ask.

“No, no, this doesn’t fall under the [boycott guidelines],” Barkan says.

“Because that’s not a boycott. It’s racism,” I say.

“Exactly,” Barkan responds, adding that the Palestinian call for BDS is “a very responsible call” that “makes a differentiation between institutions and individuals and it is clearly a boycott of criminal institutions and their representatives”.

“Whenever there is a grey area,” he adds, “we take the gentler approach.”

Still, Barkan has faced criticism for his role in the boycott movement.

“My grandmother who went to Auschwitz tells me, ‘You can think whatever you want but don’t speak up about your politics because it’s not nice,’ I tell her, ‘You know who didn’t speak up 70 years ago.’”

Barkan adds: “I think that the main lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is ‘never again to anybody’ not ‘never again to the Jews.’”

Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Victims include children and armed fighters, as raids continue in the Gaza Strip.

The raid comes after increased cross-border violence, raising fears of another Israeli invasion of Gaza [Reuters]

At least eight Palestinians, including children, have been killed in mortar attacks and airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

The deaths occurred in two separate attacks on the eastern part of Gaza City on Tuesday, witnesses said.

Two of the dead were aged 11 and 16, and four of them were from the al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, a spokesman for the group said.

Four people died when a shell slammed into a family home  in Shejaiya, medical sources told AFP news agency. Several hours later, another four were killed – all of them fighters - in an air raid in the nearby Zeitun neighbourhood.

On Tuesday, the military said it was responding to rocket attacks from Gaza. It also confirmed it had fired mortar rounds towards the eastern outskirts of Gaza City on Tuesday, shortly after four rockets hit Israel, and expressed “regret” over reports that civilians had been hurt.

It was the third time Shejaiya had been targeted on Tuesday, following an earlier one which wounded one fighter and a burst of tank fire, which left two civilians wounded shortly after dawn.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Gaza, said that more tit-for-tat attacks could be expected.

“Tensions look to be rising here, and violence could increase,” he said.

The latest incident also comes after at least 19 people were wounded in a series of raids on Monday, in the northern town of Beit Lahiya and Gaza City.

Witnesses said a security compound for Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, a training camp north of the city and a brickworks and metal foundry in northern Gaza were among the targets.

Rising cross-border violence has occurred, also increasing tensions between Israel and Hamas and once again raising fears of another large-scale Israeli invasion.