BDS -- "A Community Debate -- Achieving a Just Peace in Israel/Palestine"

[delrem]

"A Community Debate -- Achieving a Just Peace in Israel/Palestine: Is the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Campaign a Help or Hindrance?" (1 hour, 46 minutes)

Recorded in Davis, California on March 7, 2010 by a Media Edge crew, this debate was sponsored by the Davis Peace Coalition and features::
(1) Omar Barghouti, an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator, human rights activist, founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Barghouti holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, NY.
(2) Zeev Maoz, a UC Davis professor of political science, and director of the International Relations Program. Maoz is a scholar of Middle East politics and an expert on the Israeli security establishment. He serves as a distinguished fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, and is a past director of academic programs at Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa and the Israeli Defense Forces' National Defense College.

http://archive.org/details/MediaEdge401

The debate starts 11 minutes in, after a short video focused on an Iraqi Kurd refugee.

Since BDS is a hot topic in DU I/P I thought this debate would be of interest. I don't know if the debate has already been discussed in I/P.

[delrem]

1. I don't think Zeev Maoz was the best oppostion to Omar Barghouti.

First, in regard to format, I don't think Zeev Maoz shines in a one-on-one debate. A one-on-one real time debate requires a kind of instantaneous reaction that not all academics have honed.

Second, Zeev Maoz was hobbled by the fact that he substantially agreed with Omar Barghouti that 180 degree turn in I/P relations is required and that Israel is the power at absolute advantage, so the power that must be pressured.

Zeev Maoz was therefore in an untenable position. I admire the fact that nowhere in the debate did he try to pretend otherwise.

I'm under the impression that Omar Barghouti was Zeev Maoz's pupil.

IMO Omar Barghouti's argument was devastating, and honed in a way that only an argument that is based in truth can be honed.