Olympia, WA. A lawsuit, filed Friday in Thurston County Superior Court, aims to punish the Olympia Food Co-op for enacting a boycott of Israeli Goods. Plaintiffs, including several candidates who's recent Co-op Board of Directors campaigns failed by large margins, threaten financial harm unless the local food cooperative rescinds its boycott.

An ultimatum from the plaintiffs sent to the Co-op before the lawsuit was filed reads: "If you do what we demand, this situation may be resolved amicably . If not this process will become considerably more complicated, burdensome, and expensive than it has been already."

Groups opposed to the boycott of Israeli goods have repeatedly refused to bring the issue to a vote of the Co-op membership - a democratic option available to any Co-op member - and have instead turned to the court system, prompting some to question the legality of bringing suit at all. Laws prohibiting "strategic lawsuits against public participation" or SLAPP suits aim to protect individuals and organizations that participate in protected speech. SLAPP suits have frequently been used as means of repressing public participation by way of legal and financial intimidation.

According to leaked documents, the Northwest chapter of the international pro-Israel and anti-boycott lobby group StandWithUs and Akiva Tor, the Israeli Consul General for the Pacific Northwest, have been working closely with the plaintiffs to bring the lawsuit forward. In an interview with the online news publication The Electronic Intifada, director of StandWithUs Northwest Robert S. Jacobs acknowledged advising the plaintiffs to focus on procedure rather than substance, noting that trying to persuade the Co-op Board to reverse their decision on the basis of political and moral arguments would "probably not very successful."

StandWithUs Northwest is also actively combating community boycott initiatives at several other food cooperatives, including a local initiative in Port Townsend, where StandWithUs recently brought Israeli Deputy Consul General Gideon Lustig to speak against the proposed boycott.

When asked about the lawsuit, Olympia Food Co-op Staff Representative Jayne Kaszynski remained focused on the Co-op's commitment to social justice: "We can assure you that this lawsuit will not diminish our commitment to the rule of law and universal human rights for all people."

The Co-op's boycott of Israeli products was enacted on July 15 last year by a consensus decision by the Board of Directors. The boycott urges Israel to comply with international law, end its occupation of Palestinians, and respect the rights of refugees. The Co-op's decision to boycott Israeli products sparked several months of constructive discussion on the store's relationship to social justice, on Jewish identity, anti-Arab racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Last November, the election for the Co-op Board demonstrated widespread support for the boycott among the membership when five publicly pro-boycott candidates won by a large margin in a record turnout election.

"As as Palestinian refugee and a member of the Olympia Co-op I wholeheartedly support the boycott, as a way to save Israel from its own excesses, and to end the continued dehumanization of the Palestinian people under Israeli control," says Farihan Bushnaq, Co-op member since 1983.

The Olympia Food Co-op is a cornerstone of the community in Olympia, WA, bringing healthy food to over 15,000 members. The Co-op draws connections between food sovereignty, local production, democracy, and collective management, and strives to "make human effects on the earth and its inhabitants positive and renewing and to encourage economic and social justice". The boycott in question is follows various other boycotts and measures intended to promote these values.

The plaintiffs, who allege that procedural violations on the part of the Co-op's Board led them to "sustain irreparable injury," are seeking "an award of damages in an amount to be proved at trial" and that the Co-op's boycott of Israeli goods be "declared unenforceable, null, and void." The Co-op, an organization largely supported by community engagement and volunteer work, could be economically devastated by such a process.

"We're all just shocked that the boycott opposition would risk closing the store just to make their point. It's disgraceful," says Andrew Meyer, a member of the local activist group Olympia BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions).

Contact:
Olympia BDS
Andrew Meyer: 360 628 3087
David Langstaff: 919 260 8209
contact@olympiabds.org
www.olympiabds.org

Related posts:

• Olympia Food Co-op removes Israeli goods from shelves; first US store to institute boycott
• Warning: Boycott Israel success brings ‘Boycott Arab goods’ smear
• National Union of Journalists in UK votes to boycott Israeli goods and calls for sanctions

A Global Day of Action Set for November 26, 2011

by Stephanie Westbrook* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This past weekend in the Montpellier, France, over 100 activists from 9 countries gathered for the first ever European Forum Against Agrexco. Delegates from Italy, UK, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Palestine joined the French organizers for two full days of workshops aimed at strengthening the boycott campaign against the Israeli agricultural export giant.

Agrexco is Israel's largest fresh produce exporter and European markets account for the vast majority of their sales under the brand Carmel. The Israeli government's 50% stake in the company as well as their marketing of 60-70% of the fruit and vegetables grown in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank have made Agrexco a prime strategic target for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Rafeef Ziadah, representative of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), recalled that the campaign against Agrexco includes all three components of BDS: boycott of Agrexco products, divestment via suspension of commercial agreements and sanctions through legal procedures. Agrexco's complicity in a broad range of human rights violations, profiting from crops grown on stolen land, irrigated with stolen water and worked with child labor, also provides the campaign with ample opportunities to reach out beyond the Palestine solidarity networks to find allies in other social justice movements.

The forum centered on two parallel tracks with the objective of ridding European supermarkets of Agrexco products: boycott campaigns and court actions.

During the boycott workshop, activists presented a review of the campaigns and actions taking place in the various countries, including lobbying retail chains and co-op member meetings, actions at supermarkets and trade fairs, airport blockades and Italy's very first BDS flash mob . In Belgium last May, over 400 people in 22 cities filed a complaint with the police citing Agrexco's complicity with violations of international law. In France, the new Agrexco terminal at the port of Sète became a catalyst for the movement, with a mass demonstration of over 1500 people , a remarkable number for a BDS action! Campaigns are also under way in Sweden and Norway, who were unable to send delegates to the forum. In Sweden activists presented the national co-op with a dossier on Agrexco's activities who promised to investigate. In Norway, the campaing instead focuses on the local importer, who is consulting their attorneys on the question.

Michael Deas, European coordinator for the BNC, underlined the importance of boycotting Agrexco as a company and not just the products it exports from the illegal Israeli settlements. Aside from problems of traceability – Agrexco has been caught on numerous occasions mislabeling products or mixing settlement produce with that from the Israeli side of the Green Line – purchasing any Agrexco products means supporting a company profiting from the occupation and apartheid policies of the Israeli government.

The involvement in the French campaign of farmers unions, Confédération paysanne and Via Campesina, keep the issues of sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty at the forefront. Michael Deas also underlined the role Palestinian farmers unions have and can play in the campaign against Agrexco. In fact, Palestinian farmers unions were crucial in helping to expose a propaganda stunt organized by Agrexco in France, claiming that boycotts of Agrexco products damaged Palestinian farmers in Gaza.

The legal workshop, with the presence of three Palestinian attorneys from the Palestinian Bar Association, concentrated on possible court actions against Agrexco. While several countries – Belgium, UK, Italy – are currently exploring legal action, the French case has already produced an important result. An agent of the court inspected customs documents for the Agrexco ships docking at Sète and found clear cases of fraud . A 2010 decision of the European Court of Justice ruled that products from Israeli settlements are not eligible for preferential trade tariffs under the EU Israel Agreement. Yet here were invoices for dates from the Jordan Valley declared to be "Israel Preferential Origin." This proof of fraud, from none other than a court official, will be vital to campaigns throughout Europe.

The two-day forum succeeded in bringing together campaigns across Europe with the goal of coordinating our actions and strengthening the movement for an Agrexco-free Europe. The first step of the newly formed European-wide network will be a Global Day of Action Against Agrexco set for November 26, 2011.

With all the extremely useful, though highly technical, talk of legal cases, corporate structures, local affiliates, commercial trade agreements, distribution networks, etc., it's important to remember that behind the data and numbers, this is about people's lives.

The land confiscations, the stolen water, the house demolitions, the checkpoints, make it impossible for Palestinians to develop their own economy. A reasonable person can draw but one conclusion, these policies serve to drive the Palestinians from their land. And companies such as Agrexco not only turn a profit, but also provide a direct economic incentive to maintain the occupation and continue the apartheid policies.

Rafeef talked about the first time she saw a Jaffa orange in a UK supermarket. She could smell the sweet aroma, but she couldn't buy it. She thought of her grandfather, evicted from his land, but who returned to work for the new owner because he just couldn't give up his land. And how Palestinian produce figures in the minds of refugees, denied their right of return.

Rafeef concluded the forum with an open invitation to all to her house in Haifa, once Palestine is free. Once she can return home.

And the campaign to boycott Carmel Agrexco is a step along the way.

* Stephanie Westbrook is a US citizen who has been living in Rome, Italy since 1991. She is active in the peace and social justice movements in Italy and traveled to Gaza in June 2009. She can be reached at steph A T webfabbrica D O T com

Related posts:

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• US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
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By Uri Avnery * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In a rare late-night session, the Knesset has finally adopted two obnoxious racist laws. Both are clearly directed against Israel's Arab citizens, a fifth of the population.

The first makes it possible to annul the citizenship of persons found guilty of offences against the security of the state. Israel prides itself on having a great variety of such laws. Annulling citizenship on such grounds is contrary to international law and conventions.

The second is more sophisticated. It allows communities of less than 400 families to appoint "admission committees" which can prevent unsuitable persons from living there. Very shrewdly, it specifically forbids the rejection of candidates because of race, religion, etc. – but that paragraph is tantamount to a wink. An Arab applicant will simply be rejected because of his many children or lack of military service.

A majority of members did not bother to show up for the vote. After all, it was late and they have families, too. Who knows, some may even have been ashamed to vote.

But far worse is a third law that is certain to pass its final stages within a few weeks: the law to outlaw the boycott of the settlements.

Since its early stages, the original crude text of this bill has been refined somewhat.

As it stands now, the law will punish any person or association publicly calling for a boycott of Israel – economic, academic or cultural. "Israel", according to this law, means any Israeli enterprise or person, in Israel or in any territory controlled by Israel. Simply put, it is all about the settlements. And not only about the boycott of the products of the settlements, which was initiated by Gush Shalom some 13 years ago, but also about the recent refusal of actors to perform in the settlement of Ariel and the call by academics not to support the so-called University Centre there. It also applies, of course, to any call for the boycott of an Israeli university or an Israeli commercial enterprise.

This is a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation: it is anti-democratic, discriminatory, annexationist and altogether unconstitutional.

Everybody has the right to buy or not to buy whatever he or she desires, from whomsoever he or she chooses. That is so obvious that it needs no confirmation. It is a part of the right to free expression guaranteed by any constitution worth its salt, and an essential element of a free market economy.

I may buy from the store on the corner, because I like the owner, and shun the supermarket opposite, which exploits its employees. Companies expend huge sums of money to convince me to buy their products rather than others.

What about ideologically motivated campaigns? Years ago, while on a visit to New York, I was persuaded not to buy grapes produced in California, because the owners oppressed the Mexican migrant workers. This boycott went on for a long time and was – if I remember right – successful. Nobody dared to suggest that such boycotts should be outlawed.

Here in Israel, rabbis of many communities regularly paste up posters calling upon their flock not to buy at certain shops, which they believe are not kosher, or not kosher enough. Such calls are commonplace.

Such publications are fully compatible with human rights. Citizens for whom pork is an abomination, have the right to be informed about which shops sell pork and which do not. As far as I know, no one in Israel has ever contested this right.

Sooner or later, some anti-religious groups will publish calls to boycott kosher shops, which pay the rabbis – some of them the most intolerant of their kind – heavy levies for their certificates. They support a vast religious establishment that openly advocates turning Israel into a Halakha state – the Jewish equivalent of a Muslim Shari'ah state". Many thousands of Kashrut supervisors and myriads of other religious functionaries are paid for by the largely secular public.

So what about an anti-rabbinical boycott? It can hardly be forbidden, since the religious and the anti-religious are guaranteed equal rights.

So it appears that not all ideologically motivated boycotts are wrong. Nor do the initiators of this particular bill – racists of the Lieberman school, Likud rightists and Kadima "centrists" – claim this. For them, boycotts are only wrong if they are directed against the nationalist, annexationist policies of this government.

This is explicitly stated in the law itself. Boycotts are unlawful if they are directed against the State of Israel – not, for example, by the State of Israel against some other state. No Israeli in his right mind would retroactively condemn the boycott imposed by world Jewry on Germany immediately after the Nazis came to power – a boycott that served as a pretext for Josef Goebbels when he unleashed on 1 April 1933, the first Nazi anti-Semitic boycott (Deutsche wehrt euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!)

Nor does any upright Zionist find fault with the boycott measures passed by Congress, under intense Jewish pressure, against the late Soviet Union, in order to break down the barriers to free Jewish emigration. These measures were hugely successful.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, promotes the Store to Store campaign, part of drive to boycott of goods produced by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images

No less successful was the worldwide boycott against the Apartheid regime in South Africa – a boycott warmly welcomed by the South African liberation movement, though it also hurt the African workers employed by the boycotted white businesses (an argument now repeated by Israeli settlers, who exploit Palestinian labourers for starvation wages).

So political boycotts are not wrong, as long as they are directed against others. It's the old "Hottentot morality" of colonial lore – "if I steal your cow, that's right. If you steal my cow, that's wrong".

Rightists can call for action against left-wing organizations. Leftists cannot call for action against right-wing organizations. It's as simple as that.

But the law is not only anti-democratic and discriminatory, it is also blatantly annexationist.

By a simple semantic trick, in less than a sentence, the lawmakers do what successive Israeli government did not dare to do: they annex the Palestinian occupied territories to Israel.

Or maybe it's the other way round: are the settlers annexing Israel?

The word "settlements" does not appear in the text. God forbid. Much as the word "Arabs" does not appear in any of the other laws.

Instead, the text simply states that calls for the boycott of Israel, which are forbidden by the law, include the boycott of Israeli institutions and enterprises in all territories controlled by Israel. This includes, of course, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

This is the core of the matter. Everything else is camouflage...

Recently, the folly of the law was demonstrated by a French judge in Grenoble. This incident concerned the quasi-monopolistic Israeli agricultural products export company, Agrexco. The judge suspected the company of fraud, because products of the settlements were falsely declared as coming from Israel. This could well be fraud, too, because Israeli exports to Europe are entitled to preferential treatment which the products of the settlements are not.

Such incidents are occurring more and more often in various European countries. This law will cause them to multiply.

In the original version, boycotters would have committed a criminal offence and been fined. That would have caused us great joy, because our refusal to pay the fines and and subsequent imprisonment would have dramatized the matter.

This clause has now been omitted. But every single company in the settlements and, indeed, every single settler who feels hurt by the boycott can sue – for unlimited damages – any group calling for the boycott and any individual connected with the call. Since the settlers are tightly organized and enjoy unlimited funds from all kinds of casino owners and sleazy sex merchants, they can file thousands of suits and practically paralyze the boycott movement. That, of course, is the aim.

The fight is far from over. Upon the enactment of the law, we shall call upon the Supreme Court to annul it, as contrary to Israel's fundamental constitutional principles and basic human rights.

As Menachem Begin used to say: "There are still judges in Jerusalem!"

Or are there?

* Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist. Author of 1948: A Soldier's Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem.

Related posts:

• Warning: Boycott Israel success brings ‘Boycott Arab goods’ smear
• Call on Dubai to boycott Leviev’s stores over Israel settlements
• Omar Barghouti: The Need to Boycott Israel [Video]

By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Congratulations, BDS campaigners.

Swiss activists disrupts Israel's World Cup qualifier, September 2007

This tissue of lies arrived the same day as news that Israel is spending $1.6 million to train "new media warriors" in the use of social media tools for disseminating the regime's endless stream of disinformation. Of course, it's nothing new. Israel's Ministry of Dirty Tricks launched a revised training manual eighteen months ago to serve as a communications primer for the army of cyber-scribblers it was then recruiting to spread Zionism's poison across the internet.

According to the lie machine I addressed hundreds of Muslim Britons in front of the Libyan embassy in central London and "excoriated the Arab and Iranian regimes for plundering their countries of their wealth and depriving their people of their basic human rights". And I upbraided them for "their entrenched system of apartheid".

The Zionist "media warrior" who thought up this garbage writes that my fictitious new organization -- Britons for Boycotting Arab and Iranian Goods (BBAIG) -- has demanded that all UK importers immediately terminate their contracts with Arab countries, and that I'm claiming "the UK public is supporting our initiative until the vicious dictatorships of the Arab Middle East and Iran are overthrown and their civilian populations are finally endowed with classical democracy".

Not that Zionists know anything about classical democracy. Rabid ethnocracy is more their thing.

Also targeted, and dubbed a co-founder of the imaginary BBAIG, is Dr Ghada Karmi of Exeter University, whom they describe as "a crusader for the seething Arab population of Gaza and the West Bank". The public are supposed to believe that she is threatening the illegitimate Muslim government leaders of the Middle East with arrest warrants should they set foot on British soil or seek asylum here. "Under Britain's laws of universal jurisdiction, war criminals and their genocidal ilk are liable to arrest upon the deposition of a citizen's complaint before a UK magistrate."

Well, not any more actually. Israel's 'heavies' put pressure on British government wimps a year ago and our universal jurisdiction laws are being watered down on Tel Aviv's instructions to provide a safe haven for the world's war crimes riff-raff who qualify as friends of Whitehall and specifically Israel's psychopaths.

Dr Karmi is reported to have "cast aside her life-time enmity towards Israel and pleaded with the Jewish state to invade Syria and Iran and wipe out their respective feudal ruling classes".

Lawyer Daniel Machover and Sarah Colborne of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which leads numerous BDS campaigns, are also named in this wild fiction.

Attempting to strike fear into our hearts the press release contains a footnote saying: "Guaranteed Distribution to 330,000 media, government and NGO activists around the world via Internet, Twitter, Facebook, My Space." The bogus story has managed to surface on a couple of sites, but all activists (and editors) need to be alert to the new tactic.

Just for the record I haven't been in London for months, and I've never met Dr Karmi. However, she emailed to say: "Why not use it to let people know about this latest idiocy?" Agreed.

Truth is fatal to Israel's vile ambition. Its propagandists can only peddle lies. For them the challenge is finding new avenues for their dishonesty and fevered imagination.

But at least they keep us amused.

Note: The source of disinformation on this occasion calls himself/herself Baldev Singh baldevrsin@gmail.com. If anyone recognizes the name or address, please broadcast the details!

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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• Olympia Food Co-op removes Israeli goods from shelves; first US store to institute boycott
• Omar Barghouti: The Need to Boycott Israel [Video]
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More than forty members and friends of the St Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL-PSC) gathered at Best Buy and AT&T for a flash mob urging holiday shoppers to Boycott Israeli Apartheid and Hang Up on Motorola!

One of the participants was arrested as he was attempting to leave the parking lot. Call the police in North St Louis and you’re lucky if someone shows up, but disrupt 3 minutes of Christmas shopping and you are busted!

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVqFqXJh3oQ
(If video gets removed again, check the official website here)

Press Release: YouTube Censors Pro-Palestine Flash Mob Video

Prompts Questions about Selective and possibly Unlawful Shut-Down

Who: Members and friends of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee

Where to view Flash Mob: http://www.stl-psc.org/?p=149

Removed video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGAdfvGQ-xg

Dancing and singing to a parody of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone,” more than forty members and friends of the St Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL-PSC) serenaded holiday shoppers at Best Buy and AT&T stores in Brentwood, MO. They urged patrons to join the boycott of Motorola due to the company’s involvement in Israel’s unlawful military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. A video of the flash mob was posted on YouTube December 13th, quickly going viral, with coverage in media around the world including Israel’s Ynet News. It acquired more than 35,000 hits in less than a week.

Shortly after the count hit 35,000, YouTube removed the video in apparent response to a notice of claimed copyright infringement from "WMG." The STL-PSC is firmly convinced, as advised by legal representation, that the flash mob video does not infringe Warner Music Group's copyright, as it constitutes a "fair use" of the song and parodies of songs are protected under a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose.

While it is unclear how WMG has any interest in the copyright, WMG’s relationship with Motorola is well-known.

STL-PSC believes that this is an infringement on freedom of expression and plans to challenge the take-down.

STL-PSC member, author, and national organizer for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Anna Baltzer, on the removal of the video: “There are more than 1,000 Lady Gaga flash mob videos on YouTube. None of them has been shut down by WMG. What does WMG not want the world to know about Motorola’s connection to Israeli apartheid and war crimes?”

Washington University graduate, Banan Ead, explained why she participated in the flash mob: "I’ve lived in the West Bank for a few years and visited several times, and every time I go back, with every airport interrogation or checkpoint I get stopped at, I feel only a sliver of the degradation of what the Palestinians permanently living there have to go through. It was also important for us to show that there are ways to non-violently resist that occupation. Plus, I like to sing and dance!"

86-year-old Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, also participated, saying: "During my five visits since 2003, to the Israeli Occupied Territories, I was repeatedly asked by Palestinians I met as follows: When you return home to the U.S., please tell people there what you have seen and experienced on the ground, because the media does not convey that. I have tried to honor that commitment.”

To interview Flash Mob participants, call the contact above. To find out more about the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee, visit: www.stl-psc.org

Motorola provides equipment to the Israeli military used to maintain the occupation and illegal settlements. More on Moto here…

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Nima Shirazi * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"The gradual abolition of the slave trade: or leaving of sugar by degrees in 1792" by Isaac Cruikshank

Last week, Indypendent journalist and frequent Mondoweiss contributor Alex Kane noted:

"As the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement continues full-steam ahead in its efforts to force Israel to comply with international law, pro-Israel hawks are increasingly attempting to link the movement to anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany-era policies."

The latest example of this disingenuous and intellectually dishonest smear campaign comes (unsurprisingly) from Jeffrey Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard, unabashed warmonger, and Zionist apologist and propagandist, who recently cheered the New Israel Fund for, in his words, leaving the "BDS swamp."

Despite Goldberg's claim to be "running a campaign on this blog against the cheap deployment of Nazi imagery in argument-making," he does just that, stating that "it's a fair analogy" to liken the boycott of Israeli goods to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, explaining that "the BDS movement, like no other anti-Israel propaganda campaign, has sent chills down the collective Jewish spine precisely because economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews."

Kane, in his cogent response, accurately points out many of Goldberg's errors. For example, Kane notes that the BDS campaign is not a "European-centered campaign," as Goldberg writes, but rather is "a Palestinian-led civil society movement that has spread to the Western world." He also points out that Goldberg is "guilty of conflating Israel with Judaism, and Jews with Israelis," continuing:

"The BDS movement is not an economic boycott directed against Jews; it is a boycott movement directed against the State of Israel, which labels itself the Jewish State, because of its flagrant violations of international law and its continued occupation of Palestinian land."

As per the Nazi analogy, Kane writes that while "Nazi Germany instituted a blanket boycott...directed at a persecuted minority just because of their religious faith...[t]he BDS movement is targeting a state, asking Israel to comply with their obligations under international law, because of their unjust and oppressive policies towards the Palestinian people."

But this is not the limit of Goldberg's spurious claims and specious equivalency. What could - and should - also be addressed is Goldberg's blanket contention that "economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews."

This statement follows Goldberg's pattern of labeling any and all human rights efforts as "anti-Semitic" whenever they happen to address war crimes, contempt for international law, rampant and aggressive discrimination, land and water theft, ethnic cleansing, and collective punishment routinely committed by the Israeli government and military and widely supported (or ignored, or justified) by the Israeli public.

Goldberg not only traffics in knee-jerk emotional blackmail, as usual - yelling "Nazi!" in a crowded blogosphere - but also relies on a very selective historical memory regarding the history of boycotts and campaigns to educate the public about ongoing injustice and mobilize it against such atrocities.

Even leaving the most obvious, and historically recent, connection of the boycott of Apartheid South Africa to the BDS call aside, Goldberg's contention still falls flat.

In what the BBC describes as "one of the earliest examples of consumers using their purchasing power to reject the trade in goods which have not been ethically produced," British civil society widely boycotted sugar produced by slaves in the Caribbean in 1791. Spurred by the distribution of thousands of pro-boycott pamphlets by the London Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, eventually some 300,000 Britons boycotted sugar, resulting in sugar sales dropping by anywhere from a third to a half during that time. Many shops even advertised goods produced by 'freemen,' while sales of sugar from India, where slavery was not used, increased tenfold over two years.

BBC reports that "Hundreds of thousands of people also signed petitions calling for the abolition of the slave trade. Many supported the campaign against their own interests. For example, in Manchester (which sold some £200,000 worth of goods each year to slave ships) roughly 20% of the city's population signed petitions in support of abolition. The size and strength of feeling demonstrated by these popular protests made even pro-slavery politicians consider the consequences of ignoring public opinion. One pro-slavery lobbyist of the time noted that the 'Press teems with pamphlets upon the subject...The stream of popularity runs against us.'"

Also, during this time, even artists joined the fight to expose injustice. Poet Robert Southey spoke of tea as "the blood-sweetened beverage," and Sir William Fox urged the tea drinker "As he sweetens his tea, let him...say as he truly may, this lump cost the poor slave a groan, and this a bloody stroke with a cartwhip."

One wonders what could be written today about every dollop of Sabra hummus or each squirt of Ahava moisture-enhancing face "cleanser."

As Goldberg invokes the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses to disingenuously link BDS to anti-Semitism, he doesn't address the fact that the boycott lasted (at most) three days, was widely ignored by the German public and abandoned due to its damaging effect on the economy. He then deliberately ignores the historical record, which shows that the ineffective (though unquestionably appalling and racist) Nazi boycott was actually preceded by an anti-Nazi boycott of German business, organized by the American Jewish community.

On March 23, 1933, less than two months after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, less than one month after the infamous Reichstag Fire of February 27 (the false-flag operation which paved the way for massive Nazi gains in the parliamentary elections six days later) and the exact same day that the parliament voted overwhelmingly to gave Hitler dictatorial powers, New York City's Jewish War Veterans, after considering the consequences for the already persecuted German Jewry, became the first American organization to announce a trade boycott of the Third Reich and organize a massive protest parade, in which over 4,000 veterans marched on City Hall and were welcomed by Mayor John P. O'Brien.

Soon thereafter, a coalition of the American Jewish Congress, the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, and the Jewish Labor Committee sponsored simultaneous protest rallies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and numerous other locations, encouraging the boycott of German goods. The New York rally, held at Madison Square Garden, was broadcast worldwide and featured speeches delivered by American Jewish, Christian, and labor leaders, along with Senator Robert F. Wagner and former New York governor Al Smith, calling "for an immediate cessation of the brutal treatment being inflicted on German Jewry." Four years later, another rally sponsored by the AJC and the Jewish Labor Committee was held at Madison Square Garden, at which union leader John L. Lewis, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and Rabbi Stephen Wise all spoke in support of boycott.

Nevertheless, the boycott movement - both in the US and worldwide - was largely unsuccessful, in part due to governments' unwillingness to cut economic ties with the heavily industrialized Germany, but also because the Jewish community itself was divided on the issue. Historian Lenni Brenner writes that "there were those in the Jewish community in America and Britain who specifically opposed the very notion of a boycott. The American Jewish Committee, the B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) fraternal order and the Board of Deputies of British Jews refused to back the boycott. However, of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea, the most important was the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers."

The WZO, intent on pursuing policies which would promote the establishment of a Zionist state in what was then Mandatory Palestine, "saw Hitler's victory in much the same way as its German affiliate, the ZVfD [Zionistische Vereinigung fuer Deutschland, or the Zionist Federation of Germany]: not primarily as a defeat for all Jewry, but as positive proof of the bankruptcy of assimilationism and liberalism," Brenner tells us. These sentiments were enthusiastically expressed by the renowned German biographer Emil Ludwig during a visit to the United States at the time. "Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in Palestine," he said. "Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.” (Meyer Steinglass, "Emil Ludwig before the Judge," American Jewish Times, April 1936)

Clearly, Zionist opposition to morally-justifiable boycott - in service of its ethnocentric ideology - is nothing new. But as history has shown, boycotts can succeed despite libelous opposition and propaganda - it just takes time.

*****

A portion of this article was previously published in my September 10, 2010 piece, "The Thin Green Line," here on Wide Asleep in America.

* Nima Shirazi is a writer and musician from New York City. His political commentary is published on his website, Wide Asleep in America.com. His analysis of United States policy and Middle East issues, particularly with reference to current events in Iran, Israel, and Palestine, can also be found in numerous other online and print publications.

Related posts:

• …more boycott
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• The boycott of Israel is “gaining speed”

The University of Johannesburg's Senate will next week meet to decide whether to end its relationship with an Israeli institution, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, on the grounds of that university's active support for and involvement in the Israeli military. Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports the move. He explains why.

By Archbishop Desmond Tutu | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Photo: ROBYN BECK / AFP)

"The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own.

We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice." - Nelson Mandela, December 4 1997

Struggles for freedom and justices are fraught with huge moral dilemmas. How can we commit ourselves to virtue - before its political triumph - when such commitment may lead to ostracism from our political allies and even our closest partners and friends? Are we willing to speak out for justice when the moral choice that we make for an oppressed community may invite phone calls from the powerful or when possible research funding will be withdrawn from us? When we say "Never again!" do we mean "Never again!", or do we mean "Never again to us!"?

Our responses to these questions are an indication of whether we are really interested in human rights and justice or whether our commitment is simply to secure a few deals for ourselves, our communities and our institutions - but in the process walking over our ideals even while we claim we are on our way to achieving them?

The issue of a principled commitment to justice lies at the heart of responses to the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is the absence of such a commitment that enables many to turn a blind eye to it.

Consider for a moment the numerous honorary doctorates that Nelson Mandela and I have received from universities across the globe. During the years of apartheid many of these same universities denied tenure to faculty who were "too political" because of their commitment to the struggle against apartheid. They refused to divest from South Africa because "it will hurt the blacks" (investing in apartheid South Africa was not seen as a political act; divesting was).

Let this inconsistency please not be the case with support for the Palestinians in their struggle against occupation.

I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches. I say, "Why are our memories so short?" Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their own previous humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?

Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about all the downtrodden?

Together with the peace-loving peoples of this Earth, I condemn any form of violence - but surely we must recognise that people caged in, starved and stripped of their essential material and political rights must resist their Pharaoh? Surely resistance also makes us human? Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

South African universities with their own long and complex histories of both support for apartheid and resistance to it should know something about the value of this nonviolent option.

The University of Johannesburg has a chance to do the right thing, at a time when it is unsexy. I have time and time again said that we do not want to hurt the Jewish people gratuitously and, despite our deep responsibility to honour the memory of the Holocaust and to ensure it never happens again (to anyone), this must not allow us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians today.

I support the petition by some of the most prominent South African academics who call on the University of Johannesburg to terminate its agreement with Ben-Gurion University in Israel (BGU). These petitioners note that: "All scholarly work takes place within larger social contexts - particularly in institutions committed to social transformation. South African institutions are under an obligation to revisit relationships forged during the apartheid era with other institutions that turned a blind eye to racial oppression in the name of 'purely scholarly' or 'scientific work'." It can never be business as usual.

Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation. BGU is no exception. By maintaining links to both the Israeli defence forces and the arms industry, BGU structurally supports and facilitates the Israeli occupation. For example, BGU offers a fast-tracked programme of training to Israeli Air Force pilots.

In the past few years, we have been watching with delight UJ's transformation from the Rand Afrikaans University, with all its scientific achievements but also ugly ideological commitments. We look forward to an ongoing principled transformation. We don't want UJ to wait until others' victories have been achieved before offering honorary doctorates to the Palestinian Mandelas or Tutus in 20 years' time.

(Times Live - South Africa)

Related posts:

• Archbishop Desmond Tutu to UC Berkeley: Divesting is the Right Thing To Do
• Eight American Universities Say Yes to Apartheid
• Desmond Tutu Letter to Bil’in

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A letter from Gaza appeared on the Web dated September 24, 2010. It was from a group of Gaza academics and students and sought to publicize the fact that eight American universities have recently signed agreements with various Israeli universities to offer U.S. students free semester long programs in Israel. Among the American universities participating in this venture are Harvard, Columbia and Michigan.

The Gaza academics and students expressed shock at this turn of events. And so they might given the fact that they are sitting in an outdoor prison of Israeli making and have seen their educational institutions both starved of resources by an Israeli blockade and literally bombed to rubble by Israeli warplanes. The situation in Gaza is but the worst of a bad situation for all Palestinians, including those in the West Bank and Israel proper. When it comes to education in all of these locales apartheid policies are in place to interfere with Palestinian students and teachers and minimize the educational experience. Actually, this is part of an unspoken strategy of cultural genocide. Such policies are directly or indirectly supported by the Israeli academic institutions to which the participating American universities now want to send their students.

How can these U.S. universities do this? This is certainly a legitimate question in an age when discrimination and racism are, supposedly, no longer socially or politically acceptable. After all Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, etc. are institutions of higher learning housed in a country that prides itself on broad civil rights laws and all of them adhere to social equity rules. Yet here they are climbing into academic bed, so to speak, with a state that practices apartheid against its non-Jewish minority and is attempting to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population of the Occupied Territories.

Well, there are any number of scenarios that might lead them to this sort of hellish arrangement and here I offer only one possibility. It assumes an "Adolf Eichmann context."

1. The realm of the bureaucrat

The people in control of American universities (and perhaps all universities) are mostly bureaucrats. Some of them are trained in the specialty field of higher education administration, some are professors who have crossed over to an administrative career line, and some are just folks hired from the general population pool to run sub-departments such as public relations and accounting. They are all trained to pay lip service to various sorts of mission statements and assessment markers, however their lives are really very insular and their goals narrow and short term. For instance, even at the highest level, say the office of the university president, there are usually but a few major goals, and the main one in this case is to raise money.

Somewhere in the organizational chart is an office of overseas programs (or some similar title). It is usually a small operation with a director and a secretary. Their job is to set up exchange programs. What they are looking for are programs at overseas schools that are roughly similar in quality to the courses their own institution offers. That way the credits can be legitimately transferred back home and stand in for some of their student's degree requirements. The people who are arranging these exchanges usually know little or nothing of the social or political situation in the overseas institution's country. And, they are not likely to educate themselves on these subjects beyond some assurance that the place is relatively safe for the students that will be participating in the exchange. It may be hard for those of us who are so focused on Israeli apartheid to accept this, but for most of the folks in these little offices, Israel has about the same cachet as the Czech Republic or maybe Ireland. There is a lot of ignorance at his level.

2. What else is going on?

Of course, that is not the end of the story. There are other folks out there, most of whom are indirectly associated with the university in question. These people know that there is a war going on against apartheid Israel, and they are not on our side. They want to counter the increasingly effective process of "chipping away at Israel's legitimacy." They also have deep pockets and lots of influence. These folks may be big donors to these universities and some of them may well sit on the institution's board of governors/regents.

When the president or his representative goes out to raise money these donors have what appears to be innocuous conditions for their gifts. So they say to president x or y, "sure we will give you half a million dollars for that new sports complex you so covet, but in return we want you to create this exchange program with Hebrew and Haifa U." The president thinks that this is little enough to ask for such a generous gift, and his friend on the board of governors/regents seconds the motion. A telephone call is made to the director of overseas programs who is given a contact name and number at the Israeli embassy to get things rolling. And that is how it happens.

3. What comes next?

Soon enough this arrangement becomes public. You have to figure if they know about it in Gaza, they know about in Cambridge, Ann Arbor and upper Manhattan. Given the times there will probably be some sort of public protest, but the ensuing struggle will not be easy for the following reasons:

a. The university position will almost certainly be that to shun Israel is a violation of academic freedom, free inquiry, and the essential non-political status of learning. This sort of argument is age old. The U.S. universities were making it when they were asked to divest from apartheid South Africa and stop research funded by the "Defense" Department during the Vietnam war. One can never lay this argument to rest in any final way because it represents a cherished, if somewhat unreal, ideal.

So you point out for the one thousandth time that there is an inherent contradiction when you take this position relative to Israeli universities just because they do not promote these academic ideals. They are destroyers of free thought and free inquiry as far as Palestinian rights (and particularly the right of education) are concerned. And so if the ideal of a non-political status for learning exists anywhere in the real world, it ain't in Israel. The whole Zionist academic setup has been criticized by international as well as Israeli human rights organizations for these anti-educational activities. And finally, you try to tell the university decision makers that there is precedent for universities taking a stand against apartheid practices. At this point you notice that they have, figuratively, clicked on their I-pods and are no longer listening.

b. Next you go to the professors of the institution and try to explain the same thing. That is when you come to the stomach wrenching realization that most of them do not care. Most academics are as specialized as the bureaucrats, and live their lives in just as insular a world. They know a lot about their sub-field and very little beyond it. They are dedicated to their families and their local communities and are, on the whole, decent people, but they are not interested, nor are they going to hit the street, for oppressed people far away. This is particularly true when their local news sources have been systematically libeling those people for sixty plus years. They too will hide behind the idea of academic freedom.

It should be noted that this is not quite the same thing as Julien Benda's "treason of the intellectuals." There is very little spouting of national chauvinism or the racism of Islamophobia (except for the Zionists professors among them). No, it is just co-option into the system. It is just natural localism-I really just want to live my life and work in my lab or library cubicle, etc. I am reluctant to get too annoyed at my fellow academics for this attitude, because theirs is the immemorial stance of all ordinary folks everywhere.

c. So that leaves the students, and here there is a much better chance to gather a crowd and take a stand. There is always a socially conscious group among the youth who are willing to fight for a good cause and risk defying the powers that be. This is because they have yet to become ensconced in the system, bogged down with career, family, mortgage and the like. In other words, some of them have not yet shrunk into an insular world of very local interests and goals. And those are the people who will protest, if anyone will, at the ivy towers of Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and the five other schools which have willed their own corruption.

4. What are the odds of victory?

Whether anyone will listen to the protesters depends on how many there are, how loud they protest and how far they are willing to go with it. Are they willing to go into the dormitories and spread the word? Are they willing to picket not only the ordinary centers of power on campus, but also the admissions office when prospective students come to visit, or demonstrate on home-coming day and at all the football games? Are they willing to hunt for donors who might say they will not give if their institution partners with Israel? Are they willing to occupy the president's office and thereby risk arrest? Are they willing to keep all of this up for weeks on end? It might take all of these sorts of activities to even have a chance at winning this contest.

And even so the odds are not good. Essentially, you have to create such a cost to the institution in trouble and bad publicity that it outweighs that donor's half a million dollars and/or the anger of the fellow on the board/regents. If in the end you do not win, you have to understand that it is not wholly a defeat. After all, you have certainly raised consciousness. In other words, you have set the stage for the next battle and made that one a little easier to win. So you have to have the energy to fight again and again. It is a scenario wherein youth is a definite plus.

There is another way in which the mounting a serious protest at any of these schools must constitute a victory. And that is the fact that such a protest will demonstrate to the academics and students in Gaza and the rest of Palestine that the world has not abandoned them, that they have allies and their struggle is now a worldwide one. In the short run, that might be the most important victory of all.

In Conclusion

Here is quote from the American academic Richard Hofstadter, "A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism-a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else." If this so (and all the leaders of the institutions involved in these exchanges will undoubtedly agree) then why are these eight universities sending their students off to Israeli schools that cooperate with state policies that deny just these sacrosanct pursuits to persecuted Palestinians? Why are they sending their students to a country that seeks to silence, at all levels of society, any free inquiry and criticism of its racist and oppressive national ideology? Why are they cooperating with institutions that have state dictated policies (for instance, admissions policies) that would be illegal in the United States? Do they condone such behaviors? If they go through with these exchange programs the answer is, for all intents and purposes, yes, they do. Essentially, they now lend themselves to the destruction of the very educational virtues they claim to cherish.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

Related posts:

• Uphill battle for academic freedom in US universities
• Int’l study: Israeli control in occupied territories ‘is a breach of the prohibition of apartheid’
• No Business as Usual with Apartheid Israel

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

Though this affair was domestic, it provided a jumping off point for Ha'aretz to go on and examine the larger international boycott of Israel which is indeed "gaining speed". It noted that Chile had recently pledged to boycott products from the Israeli settlements and Norway's state pension plan had divested itself of companies involved in construction in the occupied territories. The Ha'aretz article pointed out that these incidents (and there are others that can be named in such countries as Ireland and Venezuela) are signs that the boycott movement - so long the province civil society - is now finding resonance at the level of national governments. The Israeli paper declared that "the world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem."

The article puts forth two explanations for this turn of events one of which is problematic, and the other incomplete. Let's take a look at them.

1. "Until now boycott organizers had been on the far left. [Now] they have a new ally: Islamic organizations... The red side has a name for championing human rights, while the green side [the Islamic side] has money." I have some personal knowledge of the boycott movement and I find some of these particulars to be, at best, exaggerations. The term "far left" must be based on some arbitrary Zionist definition of the political spectrum. Worldwide community support for the growing boycott movement has gone beyond political alignments. Today, it is a reflection of real united front seeking the promotion of Palestinian human rights (in this Haaretz is on the mark). As for the "green side", there is certainly an understandable affinity here. Muslims too are concerned about the human rights of Palestinians (including the Christians ones). However, the claim of any significant flow of cash is, as far as I know, another exaggeration. The Ha'aretz piece cites the example of the aid flotilla to Gaza, with its link to Turkey. But this is just one case in a worldwide movement. And, there was nothing illegitimate (despite Israeli propaganda) about the involvement of Turkish charities. It might come as a surprise to the Israelis, but you can run a boycott movement without heavy outside funding - as was the case of the boycott against South Africa.

2. Ha'aretz continues: "but then came the occupation, which turned us into the evil Goliath, the cruel oppressor, a darkness on the nations". The article suggests that this is such a contrast with the righteous stand that helped convince the West to support the original formation of Israel that many have turned away from Israel in disappointment. "And now we are paying the price of presenting ourselves as righteous and causing disappointment: boycott." No doubt there is much disappointment. The horrors of Israeli expansionism and occupation are such that they draw worldwide attention. And rightly so. But, they are symptoms of some deeper cause. What might it be? The state of Israel was founded on an ideological programme called Zionism. That programme called for the establishment of a state designed to serve the exclusive interests of one religiously identified group. While the Zionists felt this aim was justified by the centuries of persecution suffered by European Jews, it actually carried within it the seeds of its own corruption. The simple truth is that you cannot successfully design a state for one group only unless you found it on some desert island. If you put it down in a place that is occupied by others who are not of your group, what is the most likely next step? You turn into racists, ethnic cleansers or worse. The Zionist adherence to their ideology and its programme is the cause of their turning into "cruel oppressors". The means dictated by their end made it so.

The Ha'aretz article does not go beyond these points, but there is plenty more to say. Those who wonder whether they should support the boycott should certainly consider the horrors of the Israeli occupation and its ghettoizing of the people of Gaza. They might also consider the following:

1. The non-Jewish population of Israel proper, that is Israel within the 1967 borders (the "Green Line") are subject to segregation and economic and social discrimination that is both de jure and de facto. Their overall standards of living are lower than the Israeli Jews, their educational facilities inferior and their economic prospects poorer. This is to be expected. If you are running your state based on a racist principle, by definition discrimination must infuse the home front. This fact does not appear to fit with the often heard claim that the Israelis are "just like us" Americans. However, in a rather anachronistic way they are "like us" - that is like the United States prior to our civil rights legislation. In other words, Israel is like, say, Georgia or Alabama circa the 1920s.

2. The second factor worthy of consideration is the negative international impact of Zionist ideology, for the harm of Zionism is not confined to either Israel or its occupied territories. The fact is that Zionist influence spreads far beyond Israel's area of dominion and now influences many of the policy-making institutions of Western governments, and particularly those of the United States. This influence is corruptive if only because it distorts both official and popular notions of national interests in the Middle East. When you have a powerful and single-minded lobby that is able to manipulate your government in such a fashion that it pours its national treasure into a racist state, arms it and protects it to the point of becoming an accomplice to its crimes, and by doing so wilfully alienates 22 per cent of the world's population, you know that your notion of national interest has been seriously mangled. This harmful influence makes it imperative that Israel's oppressive behaviour be singled out as a high priority case from among the many other oppressive regimes that may be candidates for boycott.

So no one in Israel, the US or anywhere else should be surprised that the boycott against Israel, in its many manifestations, is "gaining speed." If you are not yet a supporter you should become one. To join the boycott is good for the world's future in general. It is certainly good for the Palestinians, and yes, it is good for the Jews too.

For more information on how to join the boycott Israel campaign, visit the websites of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement website and the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

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• Omar Barghouti: The Need to Boycott Israel [Video]
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• Olympia Food Co-op removes Israeli goods from shelves; first US store to institute boycott

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the Global BDS movement for "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights" for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.

The Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (RI) provides "real-time strategic decision-making" support in areas of national security and socioeconomic policy. Its new report titled "The Gaza Flotilla: The Collapse of Israel's Political Firewall" suggests it's working. It followed an earlier one on "creating a political firewall" against Israel's "delegitimization challenge," recommending sabotage and subterfuge against growing global forces it fears, not an equitable solution it rejects.

Focusing now on the Gaza Flotilla, it called it "the tip of the iceberg" attempt along with the BDS movement and Durban conference against racism to cause "tangible and significant damage to Israel." Unmentioned was how expert Israel is in self-inflicting it by decades of occupation and crimes of war and against humanity.

Clearly they're having an effect, RI saying opposition "momentum is gaining," its aim "to delegitimize Israel in order to precipitate its implosion, inspired by the collapses of" apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union. Calling the challenge global, systemic and political, RI blames two cooperating forces:

-- the Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah "Resistance Network;" and

-- the "Delegimization Network" based in cities like London, Brussels and San Francisco.

Their "constantly adapting" strategy requires Israel to adopt "a comprehensive systemic treatment" of the challenge it faces.

RI gave its version of the Gaza Flotilla interdiction, specifically against the Mavi Marmara mother ship, a "grave incident devlop(ing) during the takeover (when) Members of the Turkish IHH organization attacked Israeli forces with knives and metal bars, and in some cases with live fire. In the ensuing confrontation, nine Israeli soldiers were injured and nine Turkish activists killed."

An earlier article discussed the truth, not RI's revisionism, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/05/brave-israeli-commandos-slaughter-aid.html

Israeli commandos (trained killers), planned and executed a premeditated attack in international waters against nonviolent, unarmed humanitarian activists, trying to deliver essential to life aid to besieged Gazans - to break Israel's attempt to suffocate and starve them.

RI ignored the crime, focusing instead on world outrage, including anti-Israeli demonstrations in dozens of major cities, increased BDS efforts, international investigations, and the "stronger perception of cooperation between Israel's Arab citizens and the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks." Turkey also "exploited" the incident, "deepen(ing) the crisis with Israel."

Israel followed with two inquiry commissions, an IDF one under reserve Major General Giora Eiland and another under retired Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel, both mandated to whitewash the crime, what RI won't admit, instead saying:

"The mandates of both commissions reflect the mindset that mistakes surrounding the Gaza Flotilla were technical-operational or tactical-political in nature. The commissions are thus focused on the reasonableness of the actions taken by decision-makers on existing laws, regulations, and accepted practices."

In addition, RI is conducting its own inquiry, "based on a methodology of systemic policy analysis and on its conceptual framework for confronting the delegitimization challenge....to contribute to understanding the strategic significance of the event and to suggest principles for preventing similar occurrences in the future."

RI, of course, means preventing world outrage from boiling over, followed by actions harming Israeli interests, not its repeated crimes of war, against humanity, and high seas outrages. It worries instead about a new challenge because of two developments:

-- Hamas' "increased sophistication and efficiency and the Resistance Network's 'Logic of Implosion.' " It aims to precipitate Israel's collapse from overstretch, benefitting from the unpopular occupation, promoting its delegitimization, and engaging in asymmetric tactics against Israeli civilians; and

-- the Delegitimization Network's evolution, aiming to portray Israeli as a pariah state, gaining support from "the Western liberal progressive elite (through) a variety of means aimed at blurring its true intentions."

In recent years, the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks have created connections able to accelerate the following dynamics:

-- "Promoting the one-state paradigm;" and

-- Foiling Israel's ability to contain or deny legitimacy to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Both lead "a systemic and systematic attack against Israel's political and economic model, which has already had strategic consequences and may become existential if ignored or inadequately addressed." In addition, Israel hasn't developed an effective response to this challenge.

Hamas gained "agility" from 2006 electoral victory. Israeli "rigidity" followed - policies unable to change Hamas' positions or precipitate its demise. "On the contrary, Hamas went from strength to strength" despite Israel's imposed siege and Cast Lead. It continually adapts to new circumstances, "demonstrating a relatively clear strategic logic....while strengthening its domestic and international status" and ability to promote Israeli delegitimization.

The Gaza Flotilla and others planned are "the latest manifestation of a systemic and systematic attack" to undermine Israel's legitimacy with considerable support from the BDS campaign, the "lawfare" war against senior Israeli officials, and effect of the Goldstone Commission.

The Flotilla was "a first-of-its-kind collaboration" between Hamas and the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks. Turkey's involvement was the "difference that made the difference." In addition, its organizers' ability to gain Western progressive elite support turned Israel's interdiction into a "global and politically explosive event." RI called it a "clash of brands," Israel tarnished and defeated in the eyes of world public opinion.

Indeed so but not enough. Still RI concludes that Israel's firewall is eroding because it's increasingly viewed as not "genuinely striving for peace, consistently and honestly committed to ending control over the Palestinians, or concerned with alleviating the humanitarian situation in Gaza."

Israel doesn't understand the gravity of the delegitimization threat, and hasn't addressed it effectively. The campaign promoting it will continue, perhaps in new forms. RI urges confronting it strategically by "systematically collect(ing) intelligence (and) identif(ing) key (delegitimization) catalysts," as well as adopting a:

"consistent and honest....commitment to end....control over the Palestinians, advance human rights (at least rhetorically), and promote greater integration and equality for its Arab citizens...."

"It takes a network to fight" one, says RI. Disrupting it is job one by training Israeli diplomats to work in delegitimization hubs, developing its own network, re-branding itself to promote a new image, and engaging "liberal progressive elite(s)." The objective - delegitimize, isolate and marginalize the delegitimizers and BDS movement.

Its earlier "delegitimize challenge" report recommended sabotage and subterfuge against growing forces it fears. Perhaps now it's softening but not enough. It omitted the right of return, East Jerusalem as Palestine's capital, the logic of a one-state solution, the renunciation of conflict, an admission of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity, accountability for those responsible, demilitarization as a show of good faith, legislation granting all Israeli citizens equal rights, an occupation end date, a full commitment to the rule of law, and restitution to compensate victims for decades of crimes and destructive harm for starters.

Short of fundamental change, Israeli delegitimization will prevail over half-hearted measures, more rhetorical than substantive the way they've always been for decades.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

Related posts:

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• Another insult to Christianity. Meet the Methodist Friends of Israel – by Stuart Littlewood

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A few weeks ago the Methodist Church's annual conference did a very courageous and praiseworthy thing. It voted to boycott products from Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine, regarded as illegal under international law, and to encourage Methodists across Britain to do the same.

"The decision is a response to a call from a group of Palestinian Christians, a growing number of Jewish organisations, both inside Israel and worldwide, and the World Council of Churches," said the press release.

Christine Elliott, Secretary for External Relationships, remarked: "This decision has not been taken lightly, but after months of research, careful consideration and finally, today's debate at the Conference. The goal of the boycott is to put an end to the existing injustice. It reflects the challenge that settlements present to a lasting peace in the region."

Predictably the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which calls itself "the chief voice of British Jewry", blew a gasket. In a joint statement with the Jewish Leadership Council they said the Methodists should "hang their heads in shame". The Chief Rabbi led the verbal assault warning that the implications would "reverberate across the hitherto harmonious relationship between the faith communities in the UK".

What seemed to have inflamed the Chief Rabbi this time was the report 'Justice for Palestine and Israel' submitted to the Methodist Conference. Its recommendations include the following...

In listening to Church Leaders and our fellow-Christians in Israel Palestine as well as leaders of Palestinian civil society we hear an increasing consensus calling for the imposition of boycott, divestment and sanctions as a major strategy of non-violent resistance to the Occupation. The Conference notes the call of the WCC [World Council of Churches] in 2009 for an 'international boycott of settlement produce and services' and calls on the Methodist people to support and engage with this boycott of Israeli goods emanating from illegal settlements (some Methodists would advocate a total boycott of Israeli goods until the Occupation ends).

Elsewhere it says:

The Methodist Church has consistently expressed its concern over the illegal Occupation of Palestinian lands by the State of Israel. That Occupation continues not only compounds the state's illegal and immoral action but also makes any accommodation with the Palestinian people and future peace in the region much less possible.

The Chief Rabbi nevertheless denounced the report as "unbalanced, factually and historically flawed" without saying in what way it was inaccurate. Actually it is a very well put together document, which hits the mark and is hard to fault.

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council said the authors of the Methodists' report had "abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage on this issue, only to find our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction". Here is the full text:

Statement on the Flawed Document Endorsed by the Annual Methodist Conference

This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy. The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report's authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction.

This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and as an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations, Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the Methodist Conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the Conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.

Empty barrels, they say, make the most noise.

If arrogance is the only response to serious concerns about Israel's unending barbarity towards Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land, it's time that implications did indeed "reverberate" across the faith communities, not only in the UK but around the world.

Zionist cuckoos in the Methodist nest

Lo and behold, before the dust could settle another new product from the Zionist drawing-board popped up, calling itself Methodist Friends of Israel. "We are Christians who are members or adherents of the Methodist Church, who love Israel and want to bless her and who fully accept God's everlasting covenant with His chosen people," they announced. "While recognising that the nation of Israel is, like all nations of the world, an unrighteous nation that does not always get things right, we firmly stand with her at all times and continue to support her in an increasingly hostile world. We will not turn our backs as so many did in the 1930s.

We see that anti Semitism is on the rise throughout the world with synagogues and graveyards vandalised and Jews being attacked both verbally and physically and that there appears to be a direct relationship between the increased attacks on Jews and the blanket condemnation of Israel by the media, many charitable organizations and world bodies such as the UN. We are concerned that the whole, true picture of what life is like in Israel is given to the world rather than the biased half truths, distortions and lies that are presently reported.

We are concerned that many churches are going down the politically correct line of condemning Israel's policies and are thus contributing to the strong anti Semitic views of the world.

Note that they are concerned only with "what life is like in Israel", not the hell Israel has created in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Christians and Muslims.

And what else do they believe in?

• They recognize that Israel is the land given by God to the Jews and Jerusalem is its only capital.
• They believe that God's word for, promises to, and covenants with Israel - people and land, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel) are everlasting and that the church has not replaced Israel.
• They believe that Scripture prophesies the restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel and what they are seeing today is a fulfilment of prophecy. It is a privilege that they are witnesses to this fulfilment.
• They believe that Israel is central in the enactment of God's purposes as we move in these last days.
• They believe in finding out from many sources the whole picture of what is happening in Israel so that they can pass on the facts to those whose view is based solely on biased media coverage, and so correct mistaken beliefs (achingly funny, this).
• They believe in blessing Israel however possible including buying goods and produce from Israel and resisting all calls for boycotts.
• They believe in supporting Israel's defence of its people and their right to live without the threat of missile attacks, homicide bombings etc.
• They believe in standing against libelous attacks against Israel.
• They believe in fully supporting Israel's right to the land given them by God

According to The Jewish Chronicle, the group was set up by preacher Pam Smith from South Wales in reaction to her Church's call to boycott Israel. Naturally Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chairman of the Zionist Federation, was overjoyed and said: "I hope this will be the start of a grass-roots movement within the Methodists to reverse the motion passed at the Methodist Conference, which was theologically invalid, maligned Zionism and demonised Israel."

Needless to say, the Methodist Friends of Israel website editorial reads like pages from some Israeli propaganda rag.

Have they not heard of The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006? It is neatly summed up in its first sentence:

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

Those guys are on the ground, in the front line. They know the score. It's time Preacher Pam visited Gaza and the West Bank (not by Israeli tour bus or as guests of Israel's 'establishment') and got a grip on reality. She and others have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into supporting a sinister political movement that is intent on stealing the Holy Land from under our noses.

I wonder how long these cuckoos will be allowed to foul the Methodist Church's nest.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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K6S2MA9DFMEQ Olympia, WA– The Olympia Food Co-op Board of Directors has decided to boycott Israeli goods at their two locations in Olympia, Washington. At a July 15th meeting packed with Co-op members, the Board reached this consensus. The Co-op becomes the first US grocery store to publicly join the international grassroots movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) on Israel for its human rights abuses.

Co-op board member Rob Richards explained, "My hope is that by being the first in the US to adopt the boycott we act as a catalyst for other co-ops to join in. Each additional organizational entity that joins may have a very small effect on the big picture, but drop by drop fills the tub."

Noah Sochet, a Co-op member and Olympia BDS organizer adds, "As a US citizen and as a Jew, I'm proud to say that my Co-op no longer underwrites the suffering in Palestine."

In accordance with its mission statement, the Olympia Food Co-op has a longstanding boycott policy, which includes a boycott of China (for its occupation of Tibet) and a previous boycott of Colorado (for legalizing discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in 1992). The Co-op also has policies for rejecting items whose packaging feature exploitive or oppressive imagery.

One Israeli product is exempt from the boycott: "Peace Oil," a brand of olive oil fairly traded from Palestinian farmers in the West Bank and the Galilee, will continue to be carried by the Co-op.

The boycott follows on the heels of a similarly historic event at the nearby Evergreen State College. On June 2, students at the Olympia-based college voted overwhelmingly to approve two resolutions calling on the college's foundation to divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, as well as calling on the college to ban the use of Caterpillar equipment due to Caterpillar's complicity in Israeli war crimes. The college is the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by a weaponized Caterpillar bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

News of the boycott has drawn praise from around the world, including in Israel. "I salute the great work of the people in Olympia," said Yonatan Shapira, an Israeli Air Force captain and co-founder of Combatants for Peace. "The decision taken by the Olympia Food Co-op is an important step toward just peace for all people living in Israel/Palestine. It is also a step toward accountability for Israel's murder of Rachel Corrie."

The BDS movement began in 2005 when over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in Israel and in Palestine issued a call for the nonviolent tactic of BDS on Israel until the country abides by international law and human rights standards. The BDS call has become an international movement, endorsed by renowned figures such as Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein, and Alice Walker. The Co-op boycott comes two months after Italy's largest supermarket chains, COOP and Nordiconad, declared a boycott of products exported by Israeli Carmel Agrexco.

Israel has responded to the BDS movement by arresting prominent Palestinian endorsers. The Knesset is currently considering legislation to outlaw endorsement of BDS by Israelis.

Contact:
360-918-8665
contact@olympiabds.org
www.olympiabds.org

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By Terry Crawford-Browne* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration By Pete Pasho: www.dollopsofirony.com

If international civil society is serious about urgently ending Israel's violations of Palestinian rights, including ending the occupation, then suspension of SWIFT transactions to and from Israeli banks offers an instrument to help bring about a peaceful resolution of an intractable conflict. With computerization, international banking technology has advanced dramatically in the subsequent 20 years since the South African anti-apartheid campaign.

Although access to New York banks remains essential for foreign exchange transactions because of the role of the dollar, interbank transfer instructions are conducted through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which is based in Belgium. So, instead of New York -- as in the period when sanctions were applied on South Africa-- Belgium is now the pressure point.

SWIFT links 8,740 financial institutions in 209 countries. Without access to SWIFT and its interbank payment network, countries are unable either to pay for imports or to receive payment for exports. In short, no payment -- no trade. Should it come to a point where trade sanctions are imposed on Israel, it may be able to evade them. Instead of chasing trade sanctions-busters and plugging loopholes, it is both faster and much more effective to suspend the payment system.

The Israeli government may consider itself to be militarily and diplomatically invincible, given support from the United States, and other governments, but Israel's economy is exceptionally dependent upon international trade. It is thus very vulnerable to financial retaliation. South Africa's apartheid government had also believed itself to be immune from foreign pressure.

Without SWIFT, Israel's access to the international banking system would be crippled. Banking is the lifeblood of any economy. Without payment for imports or exports, the Israeli economy would quickly collapse. The matter has gained additional urgency with the bill now before the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to penalize any person who promotes the imposition of boycotts against Israel. Another important political factor is that SWIFT is not only outside American jurisdiction, it is also beyond the reach of Israeli military retaliation.

Israel has long experience in sanctions-busting since the 1948 Arab boycotts. Apartheid South Africa was also well experienced in sanctions-busting -- breaking oil embargoes was almost a "national sport." Trade sanctions are invariably full of loopholes. Profiteering opportunities abound, as illustrated by Iraq, Cuba and numerous countries against which for many years the United States unsuccessfully has applied trade sanctions. Iran conducts its trade through Dubai, which happily profits from the political impasse.

Suspension of bank payments plugs such loopholes, and also alters the balance of power so that meaningful negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians become even possible. This is because banking sanctions impact quickly upon financial elites who have the clout to pressure governments to concede political change. Trade sanctions, by contrast, impact hardest on the poor or lower-paid workers, who have virtually no political influence.

SWIFT will, however, only take action against Israeli banks if ordered to do so by a Belgian court, and then only in very exceptional circumstances. Such very exceptional circumstances are now well-documented by the UN-commissioned Goldstone report into Israel's winter 2008-09 invasion and massacre in Gaza and by the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on 31 May 2010. There is also a huge body of literature from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organizations detailing Israeli war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.

The Israeli government, like that of apartheid South Africa, has become a menace to the international community. Corruption and abuses of human rights are invariably interconnected. Israel's long military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for example, has corrupted almost every aspect of Israeli society, most especially its economy. The Organization For Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported in December 2009 that the Israeli government lacks commitment in tackling international corruption and money laundering.

The international financial system is exceedingly sensitive about allegations of money laundering, but also to any associations with human rights abuses. Organized crime and money laundering are major international security threats, as illustrated by the United States subpoena after the 11 September 2001 attacks of SWIFT data to track terrorist financing. The website Who Profits? (www.whoprofits.org) lists hundreds of international and Israeli companies that illegally profiteer from the occupation.

Their operations range from construction of the "apartheid wall" and settlements to agricultural produce grown on confiscated Palestinian land. As examples, Caterpillar, Volvo and Hyundai supply bulldozing equipment to demolish Palestinian homes. British supermarkets sell fresh produce grown in the West Bank, but illegally labelled as Israeli. Ahava markets Dead Sea mud and cosmetics.

The notorious Lev Leviev claims in Dubai that Leviev diamonds are of African origin, and are cut and polished in the United States rather than Israel. They are sourced from Angola, Namibia and also allegedly Zimbabwe, and can rightly be described as "blood diamonds." Israeli diamond exports in 2008 were worth $19.4 billion, and accounted for almost 35 percent of Israeli exports. Industrial grade diamonds are essential to Israel's armaments industry, and its provision of surveillance equipment to the world's most unsavory dictatorships. Such profiteering depends on foreign exchange and access to the international payments system. Hence interbank transfers are essential, and SWIFT -- willingly or unwillingly -- has become complicit, as were the New York banks with apartheid South Africa.

Accordingly, a credible civil society organization amongst the Palestinian diaspora should lead the SWIFT sanctions campaign against Israeli banks. And, per the South African experience, it should be led by civil society rather than rely on governments.

Each bank has an eight letter SWIFT code that identifies both the bank and its country of domicile. "IL" are the fifth and sixth letters in SWIFT codes that identify Israel. The four major Israeli banks and their SWIFT codes are Israel Discount Bank (IDBILIT), Bank Hapoalim (POALILIT), Bank Leumi (LUMIILIT) and Bank of Israel (ISRAILIJ).

Such a suspension would not affect domestic banking transactions within Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip -- or international transfers to Palestinian banks that have separate "PS" identities. The campaign can be reversed as soon as the objectives have been achieved, and without long-term economic damage.

What is required is an urgent application in a Belgian court ordering SWIFT to reprogram its computers to suspend all transactions to and from Israeli banks until the Israeli government agrees to end the occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and that it will dismantle the "apartheid wall;" the Israeli government recognizes the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and Israel recognizes, respects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees.

* The writer is a retired banker, who advised the South African Council of Churches on the banking sanctions campaign against apartheid South Africa. He spent October 2009 to January 2010 in East Jerusalem monitoring checkpoints, house demolitions and evictions, and liaising with Israeli peace groups. He lives in Cape Town.

Source: EI

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Palestinians call to boycott Israeli products (Photo: MaanImages/Mushir Abdelrahman)

By Sam Bahour* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

When politicians face failure what do they do? Step down? No way. Not in Palestine at least. Over and over again the Palestinian leadership has hit a cement wall (no pun intended) in its attempts to lead the Palestinian people to freedom and independence. And with every colossal failure, the leadership looks to Palestinian civil society for direction.

The first intifada was adopted to cover for the failures in Lebanon, and the second intifada was adopted to cover for the collapse of Oslo. The current Palestinian Authority boycott of Israeli settlement products is no different. The boycott is the scaffolding that the PA is attempting to erect and climb in order to retake a leadership position. The dilemma PA leaders face is that it is very possible that they may be expending efforts to build a scaffold that others may climb to assume leadership of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence.

With an insignificant political constituency on the ground, a failed election campaign, and engaged in creating what many fear is a police state in the making, the PA finally jumped on the boycott bandwagon that civil society has struggled to assemble over the past several years, if not decades.

The PA's newly realized dedication to cleanse Palestinian markets of Israeli settlement products comes at a time when Palestinian markets are overwhelmingly dependent on the Israeli economy. This structural dependency is not new; it was nurtured over decades of direct occupation all the way up to the Oslo agreement. The Oslo period would have been an ideal time for the PA to set the tone that settlements--all settlements, but especially those in East Jerusalem--are not a negotiable issue but are illegal under international law and have no place in a peaceful solution. But that did not happen.

As a matter of fact, the PA not only ignored the illegal products from these settlements for many years, it also ignored the Israeli services that infringed on Palestinian markets, the most notorious being the unlicensed Israeli telecommunications operators who used their settlement-based infrastructure to provide service to all Palestinian areas, A, B and C. This infringement on the Palestinian marketplace not only caused real losses to the licensed Palestinian operators, who at the time had a monopoly license to provide services to the Palestinian areas, but it allowed for an economic fact on the ground to be created and take root. This fact was, and is, no less an obstacle to peace than the settlements themselves.

Today's boycott of settlement products is not a new effort, nor was it designed by the PA. It is a product of the hard work of dozens upon dozens of civil society players in Palestine and abroad. The build-up to today's boycott comes from a two-pronged civil society strategy.

The first prong is a global campaign that is much more comprehensive than just addressing settlement products. It is known as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Campaign and emerged from a unified call from Palestinian civil society on July 9, 2005. The last few years have witnessed a series of successes for the BDS campaign that have surely not gone unnoticed by the PA.

The second prong of the strategy is a multitude of efforts that promote local production. The most notable of these efforts is the Intajuna ("our production" in Arabic) project: a donor-funded project that is managed by the Palestinian private sector player that designed it. This effort can be seen everywhere--retail points of sales, building and construction materials, and most recently in the produce markets. Intajuna provides a depth of analysis and campaigning that goes far beyond the traditional slogan of "Buy Palestinian".

It is on the backdrop of the BDS Campaign and efforts like Intajuna that the PA had its boycott awakening. The effort is welcomed by the public, and the PA is setting a good example of how non-violent efforts can be amplified when formal leadership assumes the role of leadership grounded in the community. Civil society leaders also welcome the PA's efforts, but are more cautious in their analysis because they understand that the Palestinian leadership has abruptly stifled mass civil society efforts in the past, the first intifada being the prime example when it ended with the Oslo accords.

But as this all plays out, Palestinians and those in solidarity with them are taking some satisfaction in watching the settlement enterprise run in circles trying to figure out a way to stop the boycott. Perhaps more interesting is that there are those in Israel itself, including the Knesset's Economic Committee, who are running in the same circles, most likely in an attempt to raise the stakes now so that the boycott does not expand to include all Israeli products and services.

If past experience is any guide, the Palestinian leadership will end up bear-hugging the entire BDS campaign approach in due time, given that the tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions are much more powerful non-violent methods than negotiating in vain with a government bent on ethnic cleansing.

* Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American management consultant living in Ramallah.

Source: bitterlemons.org

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By Nathan Guttman

Washington - It was a feather in the cap of pro-boycott activists, but for Israelis, a major setback.

With battle lines drawn across concert halls and stadiums hosting rock bands, the decision by mega-star Elvis Costello to cancel his planned concerts in Israel is being viewed as a game changer.

In a statement posted on his website, Costello described his decision as a "matter of instinct and conscience." Israel's culture minister, Limor Livnat, responded by saying that Costello "is not worthy" of performing in Israel.

The movement for a cultural boycott of Israel has increased its activity in recent years, strategically targeting selected artists who are scheduled to perform there. Until recently, the campaign has had limited success. It failed to dissuade musicians Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen from giving concerts in Israel, but took pride in positive responses from several authors and poets.

Both Sides Now: Paul McCartney (1) played before Israeli audiences, and Elton John (3) still is scheduled to perform. But Elvis Costello (2) and Gil Scott-Heron (4) have joined the cultural boycott of Israel. Carlos Santana (5) canceled a large concert in Israel due to 'unforeseen scheduling conflicts.'

But Costello's action is the first open endorsement of the boycott movement by an A-list artist in protest of Israel's policies in the occupied West Bank and of its siege of Gaza. In a detailed statement, the performer argued that he could not perform in Israel because by doing so, "it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent.

"One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament," Costello wrote in his statement.

He suggested that his decision had been complex and difficult. "I must believe that the audience for the coming concerts would have contained many people who question the policies of their government on settlement and deplore conditions that visit intimidation, humiliation or much worse on Palestinian civilians in the name of national security," he wrote. "I am also keenly aware of the sensitivity of these themes in the wake of so many despicable acts of violence perpetrated in the name of liberation.

"I offer my sincere apologies for any disappointment to the advance ticket holders as well as to the organizers."

In reaction, a music industry insider confirmed that the winds could be shifting. The music executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in light of his ongoing business ties with artists, said that in recent months he had approached more than 15 performing artists with proposals to give concerts in Israel. None had agreed. The contracts offered high levels of compensation. He called them "extreme, big numbers that could match any other gig."

Another successful boycott campaign was directed at poet and performing artist Gil Scott-Heron. Shortly after announcing his plan to perform in Tel Aviv on May 25, Scott-Heron, who is known for his political activism, was blasted by supporters of the boycott movement, who called on him to cancel his visit. Scott-Heron's April 24 concert in London was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, and at the end of the show, he announced the cancellation of his Tel Aviv tour.

A letter sent to Scott-Heron by more than 50 pro-boycott groups and artists praised the decision as a moral one. "You have chosen to stand on the right side of history," the letter stated.

Scott-Heron's progressive views and his outspoken political stands have made him a prime target of the boycott movement. Organizers explained that they have been focusing on artists who they believe could be open to the idea of culturally boycotting Israel. "Obviously, we can't target everyone, so we single out those who we think will be more responsive and open to the issue," said Hannah Mermelstein, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel.

But the groups are also going after other performing artists whose planned concerts in Israel are expected to sell tens of thousands of tickets.

Currently, the focus is on singer Elton John, who is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on June 17. A video clip circulating on the Web shows a takeoff on Elton John's 1976 hit "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word." The parody replaces the song's original lyrics with a call to cancel the planned show: "Always seems to me that boycott seems to be the hardest word."

The song criticizes Elton John for performing in South Africa during the apartheid era and claims that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using gay tourism to Israel as part of the country's rebranding campaign. The clip urges John not to "let Bibi use you as his gay Band-Aid."

Other high-profile artists being targeted are Bob Dylan, who plans to give a concert in Israel at the end of May, and Joan Armatrading, who is scheduled to give two shows in the first week of June.

But in the battle over public opinion, many other names have also been thrown into the debate. These include artists who either scheduled concerts in Israel or indicated their wish to perform there, but who later withdrew without providing reasons for their decisions.

Such is the case of guitar legend Carlos Santana, who had planned a stop in Israel as part of his tour of Europe and the Middle East. Thousands of tickets to the concert, which was scheduled to take place in a large soccer stadium in Jaffa, had already been sold before Santana and his group announced that the concert had been canceled due to "unforeseen scheduling conflicts." The Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot quoted unnamed sources from the Israeli production company organizing the concert as saying that Santana had been under "pressure from anti-Israel figures" to cancel the visit.

Another no-show is rapper Snoop Dogg, who pulled out of a planned performance in Israel due to "contractual difficulties." It is not clear in this case whether the decision was a response to pressure to boycott Israel or the result of slow ticket sales.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists, however, have included these artists in a list of musicians who declined to perform in Israel, hinting that their decision to cancel was driven by political considerations.

Mermelstein, the Adalah-NY spokesperson, said that even when artists officially cite logistical reasons for canceling their shows, it could still be a sign that they are responding to boycott calls. "Most mainstream artists are not yet making public statements in support of BDS, but the movement is becoming a consideration, and artists are thinking twice before performing there," she said.

Some artists have come out clearly in support of the boycott and have declared their refusal to appear in Israel. These include mainly poets, authors and scholars rather than performing artists. Indian writer Arundhati Roy, British novelist John Berger, poet Adrienne Rich, director Ken Loach, and author and activist Naomi Klein are among them.

BDS activists in the United States stress that by calling on artists to boycott Israel, they are following demands from Palestinians on the ground who believe that this is an effective way of pressuring Israel. The movement also has supporters in Israel. Ofer Neiman, a Jerusalem activist, said the purpose is to show that occupation "has a price tag attached." He rejected the notion that having leading artists come to Israel in order to express their disagreement with the government's policies would be more effective than boycotting. "How many people have taken [rock musician] Roger Waters' anti-occupation statements to heart when he played here in 2006? The main thing people remember is that he performed here," said Neiman.

Despite recent successes of the boycott movement, Israelis still face a full slate of concerts and performances this summer. Elton John, Rod Stewart, Rihanna and the Pixies are among those confirmed to play in Israel. Also in the works are plans to host MTV's annual summer party, one of the music channel's top productions, in Tel Aviv.

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com

Source: Forward

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