Concerns about BDS
In 2009 a broad coalition of Palestinian Churches issued Kairos
Palestine (http://www.
kairospalestine.ps/content/kairos-document. This document invites people of faith to boycott, divest and
work towards sanctions against Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian
lands. It is a bold and faith-filled attempt to give shape and form to some of
the political despair within the faith communities on the ground in Palestine.
Concurrently it is a vibrant testimony to the deep hope that God’s will shall
be done on earth as it is already being done in heaven – even in the occupied
territories – and a lament. Since its release, Kairos Palestine has garnered
support from the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church USA. My
own colleagues in the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ
will consider sponsoring a BDS resolution in the spirit of Kairos Palestine in
June 2015.
As a matter of conscience, I support and respect those who are led
by study, prayer, analysis and experience to participate in the Kairos Palestine BDS action. The
anguish and suffering of the Palestinian people is agonizing and must be
addressed justly. Further, the safety and security of ordinary Israelis must
become normative, too; acts of terrorism – whether bombs, rockets or knives -
must never be accepted as part of the price of doing business. The reality on
the ground for everyone is excruciating and morally untenable.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that healing or wholeness for
either Palestine or Israel will be advanced through BDS. Rather, my faith and
politics suggest that a strategic and sustained engagement with both peoples –
in concert with careful political agitation in the United States, creative
experiments with a variety of NGOs and fervent prayer – is a more resourceful
response to the current stalemate. My emerging “Yusuf Islam/Peace Train sensibilities” suggest that
BDS is more a desperate act of anguish and frustration without clearly stated
goals than a creative course of compassion. As Bradley Burston recently wrote
in Haaretz (May 27, 2015): “What does BDS want from Israel?”
I'm not asking for much. And I am certainly not asking out of
antagonism. I'm just asking for clear goals. And straight talk. I want to know
if BDS wants to encourage two states - for example, by concentrating on
supporting labeling of products from the West Bank and East Jerusalem – or if
the goal is a one-state Palestine.
For me, the BDS movement’s ambiguous and slippery strategy that blames all of Israeli society for the horrors and degradation of the Occupied Territories not only
inhibits the work of cultural cooperation between these two peoples and their
external partners, but also reinforces the political and social isolation in
Israel and Palestine that is part of the current problem. Without a doubt, the
continuing colonization of Palestine must be challenged. The expansion of
Israeli settlements and the ever growing appropriation of Palestinian homes and
land must be challenged. Full social, economic and political equality for Arab
Palestinian citizens of Israel must become an essential part of the social
contract in a democratic Israel. And the safety and dignity of every Palestinian
person must become codified and honored by all wielding power throughout the
region.
Simultaneously, Palestine and its allies must affirm Israel’s
right to exist in safety and peace. This is a requisite not just for the
emasculated Fatah contingent in the West Bank, but also for the belligerent
partisans of Hamas in Gaza. Israeli security is an indispensable ingredient in
this equation – and is too often dismissed or denigrated in the quest for authentic Palestinian
sovereignty.
As a musician – and person of faith – I resonate with Paul Simon’s
conviction that artists must never be treated as if they work for governments.
When taken to task in the 1980s by the African National Congress for violating
their cultural and economic embargo of the apartheid regime of South Africa,
Simon replied: “I was invited by South African artists to join them. Do I need
to ask the ANC for their permission? That’s the kind of government you want to
be? People who check our lyrics and fuck the artists like all other types of
governments have done in the past? No way!” Simon refused to be co-opted – and
in time “Graceland” became the artistic and human face of the fight against
apartheid for the world. (NOTE: at the time, the ANC responded to Simon’s
artistic freedom by temporarily placing him on an assassination hit list!) I
consider Simon to be right: creative people of conscience and compassion need
constructive ways to collaborate with their artistic allies, not
well-intentioned but ideological rigidity mediated by political segregationists
of any brand.
Another reason I do not support BDS involves the complex context
and history of this conflict. Despite surface level parallels, the state
of affairs between Palestine and Israel is not equivalent to that of apartheid
in South Africa. Not that there aren’t forces already at work in both
camps eager to foment increased racial hatred and oppression. But Jimmy
Carter’s analysis notwithstanding, I do not see these conflicts as analogous.
In Israel, the Palestinian Arab population – 1,658,000 or 20% – has political
rights secured by citizenship. No racial laws exist that prohibit Palestinians
from Israel’s beaches, places of employment or the political process.
Increasingly, a vibrant Arab presence in the Knesset articulates the needs of a
neglected minority. During the March 2015 elections, there was a 10% increase
in Palestinian voter turnout and 13 delegates united as the Joint Arab List
took office.
Further, there is the growing awareness within parts of the Israeli government that the whole nation has changed. President Reuven Rivilin's recent speech to the Herzliya Conference is a case in point: "The nation of Israel that we used to know no longer exists."
Israel is fast becoming a tribal state composed of four groups — secular Jews, religious Zionist Jews (also called national religious), ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews and Arabs, all of them fearful, hostile to one another and even to members of their own group. “Today, the first grade classes are composed of about 38 percent secular Jews, about 15 percent national religious, about one quarter Arabs, and close to a quarter Haredim,” Rivlin noted. He said the demographic processes that these numbers represent have “created a ‘new Israeli order"... in which there is no longer a clear majority, nor clear minority groups” and consisting of “four principal ‘tribes,’ essentially different from each other, and growing closer in size. Whether we like it or not, the make-up of the ‘stakeholders’ of Israeli society, and of the State of Israel, is changing before our eyes.” (Haaretz, June 11, 2015.)
He then cut deeper into the reality of this moment in time: a new social contract for a vastly divided Israel must be created. It must guarantee equality and equity for Jew and Arab, secular and religious and everyone in-between. There used to be a time, Rivilin, observed when "the Israeli Defense Forces served as a central tool for fashioning the Israeli character.
In the military, Israeli society would confront itself, would consolidate and shape itself morally, socially and in many ways economically... now that over half the population — most Arabs, most Haredi Jews and a growing number of secular Jews — does not serve in the military, this is no longer the case. Israelis will meet for the first time, if at all, only in the workplace…” The time has come for Israelis to abandon the accepted view of a majority and minorities, and move to a new concept of partnership between the various population sectors” resting on what he called “four pillars:
1. A sense of security for each sector, so that
it is confident that joining the partnership “does not require giving up basic
elements of their identity”
2. Shared responsibility for Israeli society and
the state
3. Equity and equality
4. The creation of a shared Israeli character.
(for more: http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/1.660417?utm_ campaign= Echobox &utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook)
Additionally, despite an almost schizophrenic public persona when it comes to equality, peace-making with Palestine and advancing human rights throughout Israeli society, the new right-wing education ministry in the Netenyahu coalition, Naftali Bennett, reaffirmed a five year commitment to give Arab preschools priority funding. The Haaretz journalist, Meirav Arlosoroff , wrote:
Bennett’s choice to help Arab-Israeli children, even at the expense of Jewish children in the state-religious system, is truly praiseworthy. The support of the Union of Local Authorities for the plan – even though its implementation will come at the expense of governments in well-to-do locales – is also welcome. If we continue down this path, with the national interest trumping political and personal interests, we may be able to start fixing some of the country’s serious problems. (http://www.haaretz.com/business/ .premium-1.660399?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook)
My point is simple: not all of Israeli society is to blame for the ugly and destructive impasse that
The broad condemnation of Israel by the BDS movement, however, not only refuses to celebrate the very real democracy within Israel (the only authentic democracy in that region), but also seeks a one size fits all solution for Palestinian suffering. This univocal analysis both diminishes what is healthy and hopeful while forsaking incremental possibilities for peace. A focused and strategic way of articulating the goals of supporting Palestinian civil and national rights might be stated like this:
The
international boycott weapon should be aimed in a careful and focused way
against the occupation and the settlements. Of course, some people will find it
hard to clearly differentiate between the “territories” and “Israel,” when the
institutional, economic and cultural connections between the occupying State of
Israel and its colonialist enterprise in the post-1967 territories are
unequivocal. But whether it’s a naïve question, or one that winks at
annexation, the answer is that is certainly possible. The Israeli organizations
and institutions and companies that operate in sovereign Israeli territory that
is recognized under international law should not be subjected to a boycott,
even if they have branches in the occupied territories, just as there should be
no thought of boycotting foreign countries and institutions that have
cooperation and economic or cultural ties with the settlements.
Like the
institutions and businesses inside Israel, they should be continually called
upon to join a boycott of the occupation and settlement project. An effort
should be made to persuade them to cut off all ties with the international
criminal enterprise that is enslaving the Palestinian people contrary to “the
law of nations” and gnawing away at the existential infrastructure of the State
of Israel, which arose and continues to exist thanks to that same “law of
nations.” As for
organizations, institutions and companies that operate from within the
military-messianic colonialist enterprise – these should be subject to a
comprehensive and uncompromising economic and cultural boycott. This must
continue until the settlement enterprise disappears off the face of the earth –
either by evacuation of all the settlements, or by territorial exchange and
agreed-upon borders between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine, or
whether – and this is the most desirable solution – by having the settlers who
wish to do so remain in and become citizens of the Palestinian state with the
approval of the sovereign Palestinian entity. For after all, this small piece
of land between the Jordan River and the sea is cherished by both peoples, by
Palestinians and Jews both.
(Dimitry Shumky, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.660574)
Anything less is a case when the perfect has become the enemy of the good.
(part three of this essay will deepen my critique of the selective historical narrative the BDS movement uses to advance sympathy - and why such dishonesty cannot be endorsed.)
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