Rattling the Cage: The Zionist Left's red lines

[shira]

There's a lot I agree with, a lot I identify with, in Neve Gordon's recent Los Angeles Times op-ed "Boycott Israel." Like the Ben-Gurion University professor, I realize that Israel has become so right-wing that it's not going to end the occupation on its own. While I haven't lost all hope, as he has, that the Obama administration will force Israel's hand, I can't help seeing that Barack Obama and his team are wilting by the day.

Like Gordon, I look at my two sons and dread the future that's waiting for them in this country unless there's a radical change, which is seeming more and more unlikely.

But while I pretty much go along with his reading of where things stand, I want nothing to do with the solution he's chosen - throwing in with the Palestinian/international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. By doing so, he's joining a movement that is not out to "save Israel from itself," as he writes, but one that simply hates Israel's guts, that sees it as 100 percent guilty and the Palestinians as 100% innocent.

He's standing up for a cause that's rotten and destructive.

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[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. On this one, Dirfner is wrong, and Gordon is right.

Dirfner writes "But what is the goal of the BDS movement, aside from the "right of return" to Israel for 4.5 million Palestinian refugees? It's definitely not the two-state solution, not if one of those states is Zionist."

He's simply wrong about that. The objective of most of those advocating boycotting and sanctioning Israel is a 2-state solution. If one of those states is nominally "Zionist" that's not a problem for the vast majority of Israel's Western critics.

[bemildred]

2. His argument seems incoherent, at best.

He mostly agrees with Gordon, but some people he really hates agree with Gordon too, so he doesn't agree with Gordon after all, or something like that. Guilt by association in other words, supporting the enemy in time of war, etc. The cause is "rotten and destructive", "hates Israel's guts", and so on, essentially begging the question he purports to answer: "ought one support BDS efforts?" by making a speculative attack on the motives of some of the supporters.

But this is nothing new.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Good article.