The Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement (The Nation June 28)

[Onceuponalife]

In April the student senate at the University of California, Berkeley, twice held all-night sessions to debate a proposal urging the school to divest from two US military companies "materially and militarily profiting" from the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Hundreds of people packed the hall, and statements in support of the measure were read aloud from leaders, including Noam Chomsky, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein and Alice Walker. In the end the divestment measure failed (the senate majority of 13 to 5 was not enough to overturn the student government president's veto), but the outcome was surely less significant than the furor over the issue. Following related battles last year at Hampshire College and the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berkeley measure was yet another signal that the divestment initiative, part of a broader movement popularly known as BDS, for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, has become a key battleground in the grassroots struggle over the future of Israel/Palestine.

"We're at a super-exciting moment, truly a turning point," says Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace, an activist organization that supports selective divestment from companies profiting from the occupation. "For the first time we're seeing a serious debate of divestment at a major public university." BDS supporters say the movement has the potential to transform international opinion in much the way that the divestment movement in the 1980s isolated the South African apartheid regime. Or as Tutu wrote to the Berkeley students:

"The same issue of equality is what motivates the divestment movement of today, which tries to end Israel's 43 year long occupation and the unequal treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government ruling over them. The abuses they face are real, and no person should be offended by principled, morally consistent, nonviolent acts to oppose them. It is no more wrong to call out Israel in particular for its abuses than it was to call out the Apartheid regime in particular for its abuses".

http://www.thenation.com/article/boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement


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My opinion? The time may have finally arrived for the BDS movement. What say the denizens of DU?

Mods: I hope this link is OK for this forum. I'm kind of new to the P/I forum and am not sure about what is permitted. I'm basically talking about the comments at the end of the article. If it is not allowed, feel free to delete this post.

[aranthus]

1. Here's the problem with BDS

The movement is not simply about ending the occupation. That may be what is said to sell the idea to college students and other gullibles, but the movement is actually about at least three things. They are:

1. Ending the occupation.
2. Ensuring full equality of rights for Israeli Arabs.
3. Enforcing the Palestinian Right of Return.

It's also important to note that the movement seeks to do all of this in the context of a war against Israel by the Palestinians and the Arab states.

So most, if not all DU'ers have no problem with the first two goals (although some would argue that Arab Palestinians have more or less equal rights in a country with which their cultural brethren are at war). However, the last goal (which is really the ultimate goal of the movement), should be totally unacceptable to reasonable decent people. Despite obfuscation to the contrary, the Right of Return is intimately entwined with the desire to end Israel's existence as a Jewish state. Even if you think that's a good idea, it's not something that can be done without a major war on Israel. So it's not something a supposed peace movement should get behind.