Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights

by Omar Barghouti

Overview

As international awareness of the apartheid nature of Israel grows, Omar Barghouti offers a manifesto for winning Palestinian civil rights.

Thirty years ago, an international movement utilizing boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) tactics rose in solidarity with those suffering under the brutal apartheid regime of South Africa. The historic acts of BDS activists from around the world isolated South Africa as a pariah state and heralded the end of apartheid.

Now, as awareness of the apartheid nature of the State of Israel continues to grow, Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, presents a renewed call to action. Aimed at forcing the State of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights for the Palestinian people, here is a manifesto for change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608461141
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Series:	Ultimate Series
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian commentator and human rights activist. He is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, NY, and a master's degree in philosophy (ethics) from Tel Aviv University.

Read an Excerpt

From the Conclusion:

The great Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, wrote in his iconic Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.

Reflecting on Israel's three-tiered system of oppression, the people of Palestine have, once more, emerged from their oppressive reality and turned upon it, calling upon international civil society to shoulder the moral responsibility to fight Israeli injustices, as it did in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa. This time, representatives of Palestinian civil society are convinced they got it right! The Palestinian BDS Campaign has almost all the ingredients for success in ending Israel's occupation, colonization and apartheid: a comprehensive rights-based approach that addresses the three fundamental rights corresponding to the main components of the indigenous people of Palestine and that accordingly enjoys a solid consensus among Palestinians everywhere, inside historic Palestine and in exile; a morally compelling message anchored in unmitigated equality, freedom, universal human rights, firmly anti-racist principles, and compliance with international law; and an empowering strategy of non-violent, civil, creative resistance to injustice and oppression that people of conscience all over the world can contribute to.

An important component that is often overlooked in the BDS Call is the unambiguous invitation to conscientious Israelis to support the Call, recognizing the important role anti-colonialist, anti-racist – i.e., anti-Zionist — Israelis can and ought to play in ending Israel's criminal impunity and apartheid. Even as the BDS movement advocates diversity and ingenuity in designing and implementing BDS campaigns in various settings, the Palestinian BDS Call remains the movement's frame of reference. A fast growing group of principled Jewish-Israeli supporters of BDS fully recognizes this Palestinian reference. However, a few on the Zionist left — and their supporters in Western countries – who have recently jumped on the BDS "bandwagon," so to speak, just as the movement started breaking ground in the mainstream, have attempted, perhaps unintentionally, to invent or suggest an alternative reference for the international BDS movement that perpetuates their Israel-centered perspective, unwarranted agency, inflated sense of entitlement, and entrenched colonial privilege. It seems some have yet to overcome their age-old patronizing attitudes towards the Palestinians whom they apparently perceive as "irrational natives."

As in the struggle against South African apartheid, genuine solidarity movements are those that recognize and follow the lead of the oppressed , who are in turn not passive objects but active, rational subjects that are asserting their aspirations and rights and their strategy to realize them. Solidarity groups advocating BDS tactics are guided by the principles and overall strategy defined by the BDS National Committee, the BNC, which is the largest alliance of Palestinian civil society political parties, unions, mass organizations, NGOs, refugee-rights networks and professional associations, representing the main segments of the indigenous people of Palestine.

Another strength of the BDS movement lies in the fact that it is, above everything else, a quest for justice and equal rights. Its agenda, like its South African precursor's, is not based on some dogmatic or fanatic ideology, but on universal principles of human rights and international law that ought to appeal to liberals as well as progressives of diverse ideological backgrounds, religious and secular alike.

In challenging Israel's oppression, the global BDS campaign does not call for Israel to be treated according to higher or lower standards than those that apply to any other state committing similar crimes and violations of international law. The crucial demand is for Israel to be taken off the lofty pedestal on which it has been placed by the same Western powers that sponsored and justified its creation on the ruins of Palestinian society. Although Israel is by no means the most atrocious offender around the world, it is the only persistent wrongdoer that has constantly been treated as an honorary member of the Western club of "democracies," with the Holocaust cynically — and quite irrelevantly — summoned as a smokescreen to cover up this collusion. The virtually unparalleled state of exceptionalism and impunity that Israel enjoys today allows it to pursue its apartheid, ethnic cleansing and slow-genocide agenda against the indigenous people of Palestine without any regard to international law or concern about possible punitive measures for violating it.

It is worth repeating, in this context, that Palestinians — and Arabs, more generally — bear no responsibility whatsoever for the Holocaust, a European genocide committed against mostly European communities of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, among others. It is therefore not incumbent upon Palestinians to pay in our lives, land and livelihoods the price for relieving Europe's conscience of its collective guilt over the Holocaust. And, as some progressive Jewish intellectuals have stated recently, "Never Again!" must always be understood to mean: never again to anyone.

Western civil society carries a unique responsibility to hold Israel accountable to international law due to the exceptional level of complicity of Western governments in sustaining Israel's system of colonial and racial oppression through vast diplomatic, economic, academic, cultural and political support – all in the name of Western citizens and using their tax money.

Collusion and moral duty aside, the responsibility to promote and support the BDS campaign against Israel also derives from common interest. While the US and other Western states fund Israel's endless atrocious wars and system of apartheid to the tune of billions of dollars every year, millions of children in the West are still left behind in substandard housing, inadequate or non-existent health care, poor education and an establishment that effectively disenfranchises them when they grow up from effectively participating in the democratic political process. At the same time when the oil, military and banking industries are aggrandizing their colossal wealth, most Westerners are steadily seeing their civil rights and economic wellbeing erode before their very eyes. A progressive transformation in US and EU priorities from directing these nations’ great human and material resources into wars and imperial hegemony on the international scene to investing in universal health care, dignified housing, a school system that is conducive to critical and contextual learning and development, decent jobs, and reversing the fatal damage to the environment, is not only good on its own merits for the peoples of the West; it is also great for the world — for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Latin America, Africa, and, most certainly, Palestine. It would deem Israel’s regime of oppression against the Palestinian people untenable.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Why Now? 35

2 Why BDS? 49

3 The South Africa Strategy for Palestine 63

4 Academic Boycott: Moral Responsibility and the Struggle Against Colonial Oppression 85

5 Just Intellectuals? Oppression, Resistance, and the Public Role of Intellectuals 99

6 Freedom versus "Academic Freedom": Debating the British Academic Boycott 105

7 Reflecting on the Cultural Boycott 117

8 Fighting Apartheid in South Africa, Celebrating Apartheid in Israel: Open Letter to Nadine Gordimer 135

9 Between South Africa and Israel: UNESCO's Double Standards 139

10 What We Really Need!: A Response to Anti-boycott Arguments 143

11 Derailing Injustice: Palestinian Civil Resistance to the "Jerusalem Light Rail" 151

12 "Boycotts Work": Omar Barghouti Interviewed Ali Mustafa 167

13 Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products: Tactic versus Strategy 183

14 Our South Africa Moment Has Arrived 191

15 After the Freedom Flotilla Atrocity: BDS Takes Off 205

16 Leadership, Reference, and the Role of Israeli Anticolonialists: Omar Barghouti Interviewed Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta 217

Conclusion: If Not Now, When? 225

Appendixes

1 Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (2004) 235

2 BDS Call (2005): Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until It Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights 239

3 PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel 249

4 PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel 257

Notes 263

Acknowledgment/Sources 304

Index 306

Editorial Reviews

"There is no more comprehensive and persuasive case than his for boycott, divestment, and sanctions to end the Israeli occupation and establish the ethical claim of Palestinian rights."
–Judith Butler, University of California at Berkeley

"No one has done more to build the intellectual, legal and moral case for BDS than Omar Barghouti. The global Palestinian solidarity movement has been transformed and is on the cusp of major new breakthroughs."
–Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo

"I commend this excellent book by Omar Barghout. BDS is a call to refuse to be silent in the face of military occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli regime, apartheid, and colonialism. BDS is a nonviolent way in which each of us and our governments can follow our conscience and rightful moral and legal responsibility and act now to save Palestinian lives by demanding that the Israeli apartheid regime give justice and equality to all."
–Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976)

"I have been to Palestine where I’ve witnessed the racially segregated housing and the humiliation of Palestinians at military roadblocks. I can’t help but remember the conditions we experienced in South Africa under apartheid. We could not have achieved our freedom without the help of people around the world using the nonviolent means of boycotts and divestment to compel governments and institutions to withdraw their support for the apartheid regime. Omar Barghouti’s lucid and morally compelling book is perfectly timed to make a major contribution to this urgently needed global campaign for justice, freedom and peace."
–Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"Barghouti is the future. He is intelligent, empowered, and non-violent. He is completely impressive. It would help Americans to see such a picture of Palestinian political engagement, when they have such a distorted image of who Palestinians are. Some day they will know him."
–Phillip Weiss, author of Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle East

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