Nelson
Mandela and the South African freedom story were getting a lot of mileage in
the 1990s. They still do today. By the time I was in high school, Mandela had
reached living, secular sainthood. His
face, along with Gandhi’s, Martin Luther King’s, and Mother Teresa’s and then
some more generic motivational posters, hung near our principal’s office and
presumably near other principals’ offices in other schools. Sophomore year, on a retreat, we watched and
discussed part of The Power of One, a
1992 film directed by John Avildsen, based on the 1989 Bryce Courtenay
novel. The movie inspired in me, as a
student, a naive but genuine desire to do something to challenge “the system,”
like “PK” did—PK, the white, English-speaking South African boy
protagonist. I reflected that, in the
future, I might even have to go “over there” to that continent to help “those
people.”
When I was
in college, I had to read from Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was by then also among
the (living, Protestant) saints. Weaving
together deep history and nonviolent spirituality, his writings informed and invigorated
me amidst some other drearier texts in political science.
Unrelated but also during college,
in amongst other rock videos, I memorized Bono’s rant midway through "Silver and Gold" off Rattle and Hum: “...while they fail to support a man like Bishop
Tutu and his request for economic sanctions against South Africa. Am I buggin' you? I don’t mean to bug ya. Ok, Edge play the blues.” It seemed like the true liberal arts
synchronicity moment: my studies and my music tastes and my larger future
visions, however not well articulated, were nevertheless overlapping.
Peter
Gabriel’s "Biko" was a good addition in my navy,
mid-twenties days. Furthermore, Bono had
put me on to “Sun City” and Artists United against Apartheid, begun by Steve
Van Zandt, aka Little Steven, aka “Silvio Dante.” "Sun City" is wonderfully ‘80s, i.e.
wonderfully cheesy, and I was pleased to learn that Bruce Springsteen’s lead
guitarist was against apartheid, too.
And so,
this is how the story went in my head: once upon a time, there were some good
black people who were oppressed by some bad white people. But, we good white people over here rooted
for and helped free those black people through our music, our political culture
of equal rights, and, of course, through their singular hero of Nelson Mandela
(maybe with a little Desmond Tutu on the side).
We had done it: truth, reconciliation,
and the long walk to freedom! It’s a
story of triumph, of our agency over here, and the agency of singular heroes
over there. I was not politically aware
in the 1980s and early 1990s, but retroactively, I felt like I did it, too. That I was part of the global movement after
the fact. My listening to “Biko” and
“Silver and Gold” was reaffirming the freedom struggle (in the way that I
helped reaffirm the end of famine in Ethiopia, too, twenty years after the
fact, by buying the Live Aid DVD
set).
Some years
later, in 2009, Invictus (directed by
Clint Eastwood) provided the icing on the cake. Matt Damon, as the rugby star Francois Pienear,
and the rest of the Springboks soothed the wounds of immediately post-apartheid
South Africa, and all they had to do was play a rugby match. And, my watching it stamped the freedom
struggle even more, after the fact, and all through watching a movie. (Morgan Freeman is, by the way, our black
stand-in, for both Geel Piet in The Power
of One and Mandela himself in Invictus).
In the end,
it is a feel-good story for us. We were
on the right side—we made the difference—and everyone lived happily ever after. Of course, that’s not how it happened.
Don’t get
me wrong. I love “Biko,” The Power of One, and “Silver and
Gold.” I indulge in rock-star
activism—who can help it?—even though for the most part, it doesn’t cost too
much skin in the game. Or, I indulge in
it precisely because it doesn’t require much.
Maybe that’s why I pay $85 for the Springsteen nosebleed ticket and then
throw a couple bucks into the Philabundance food bank bins on the way out of
the stadium and still feel good about myself.
I love Invictus less—I just
think it’s not that good of a film—but it is based on a true story. That rugby match did matter in symbolically
bringing the country together, and if you focus on Mandela’s strategy and
difficult choices rather than Matt Damon and the white rugby players, there are
some valuable lessons. I still love a
feel-good story, especially if I get to be one of the good guys, or at the very
least, I get to be neutral and not one of the bad guys. Celebrating triumphs is a good thing—we need
more triumphal stories. But, humble
reckonings are the prerequisite. First,
truth. Then, reconciliation.
The South
Africa freedom struggle was, and is, much more complicated.
*
We
celebrate the South Africa story like we were always on the right side, on the
side of justice. We do this with the
Civil Rights Movement, too, in the United States—only after we have de-fanged
Martin Luther King, watered down his prophetic rage, made invisible the mass
movement behind him, and erased the mainstream opposition towards him. (For instance, public opinion polls on the
eve of the March on Washington show that most Americans did not approve of the event.
Or after he turned his attention toward Vietnam, the “paper of record” The New
York Times lambasted his speech as “facile,” “slander,” “wasteful,” and
“self-defeating” and many white liberals and even black civil rights leaders turned
against him. The last year of his life was arguably when he was the most hated.
Some time
after his assassination, we made King a saint.
We made Rosa Parks a saint. And
internationally, we made Nelson Mandela a saint. This popular canonization, though, can have
the effect of papering over a person’s—or a movement’s—natural contradictions,
limitations, doubts, and in-fighting.
More detrimentally, this canonization has allowed us to hide the struggle
against the struggle—meaning, that at every turn, the powerful sought to
undermine these respective freedom struggles.
“Don’t call me a ‘saint,’” Dorothy Day is purported to have said. “I don’t want to be dismissed that
easily.”
*
A thumbnail
sketch of modern South African history might be useful.
The Dutch first arrived in South
Africa in 1652 and set up a trading post for their East India Company at Cape
Colony. Farmers, mostly of the Dutch
Reformed Church, soon followed. These
settlers would eventually become the Boers or Afrikaners. Thus followed centuries of settler
colonialism, importation of slaves from Dutch Asian colonies, and war with
various indigenous African tribes and factions.
The Boers would also later fight the British, who were then the new
colonizers, and who themselves brought in Indian laborers from their
empire. Competition between the Dutch
and British colonists was fierce, but diamond extraction and other mining and
land expropriation continued unabatedly, no matter the European flavor of the
year. Under the Union of South Africa
(combining Dutch and British colonies), founded in 1910, strict racial laws
discriminated against indigenous Africans and other “coloureds.” In 1948, apartheid was enshrined into
law.
Meanwhile, the African National
Congress had been founded in 1912 as a political party to protect black South African
rights. Initially, the ANC organized
mostly nonviolent resistance to apartheid, but after years of no in-roads and
then after the Sharpeville massacre, the ANC established an armed wing.
Through a combination of internal
resistance led by the ANC and international pressure—from both other newly
independent states and global civil society—the apartheid government released
Mandela from prison in 1990. Apartheid
ended soon afterward. Mandela was
elected and became president in 1994.
That famous Rugby World Cup, with Matt Damon, took place in 1995. South Africa certainly has its struggles
today, and many of them stem from grave economic inequalities rooted in years
of colonialism and apartheid. Political apartheid has ended, but economic justice remains elusive. (Particular white reactionaries who think
that history started yesterday point to South Africa’s, or Zimbabwe’s for
instance, problems as evidence that black people cannot govern themselves. The Union of South Africa flag and the Rhodesian
flag are symbols of this racist, colonial mindset, which Dylan Roof, the
Charleston church shooter, wore on his jacket in an infamous photo that was circulated).
That
aforementioned international pressure played a large role. When moral and legal arguments against
apartheid did not persuade the South African government to reform and did not
persuade the United States, United Kingdom, and the “first world” countries
that could have intervened, the ANC and other civil society groups called for a
global boycott campaign against South Africa.
When all else fails, “Hit where it hurts: silver and gold” (to borrow
from Bono).
The rough
theory of change went: the apartheid regime would not budge when moral and
legal arguments were made; the US and UK (and other western nations with
the leverage to do so) would not force it to budge; business interests greatly
influenced political decision-making in those countries; there were many
business ties with South Africa; when international civil society couldn’t move
any of the governments, it targeted businesses; when the boycott made it costly
to do business in and with South Africa, those businesses stopped doing so; so
go corporate interests, so go the governments; when enough businesses left or
stopped doing business in South Africa, other western governments would have to consider not
doing politics and business in South Africa and South Africa itself would have to consider
changing course; once the apartheid regime was
isolated economically and politically, it would have to change.
The boycott was initially called in
the 1950s. In 1962, the United Nations
General Assembly passed resolution 1761, a non-binding measure calling for
economic sanctions on South Africa (twenty-five years before Bono's Rattle and Hum diatribe, just to give chronological perspective). In
1963, the Security Council passed (binding) resolution 181 calling upon
countries to stop the sale and shipment of weapons to South Africa, and the
General Assembly urged an oil embargo.
All these UN resolutions mirrored and sprouted from the ANC and activist
and civil society partners building the movement. In 1968, the General Assembly requested all
states and organizations "suspend cultural, educational, sporting and
other exchanges with the racist regime and with organisations or institutions in South Africa which
practice apartheid.”
Tutu summarized the movement’s
sentiments:
We are not asking that you make a political
decision. We’re not asking you to make an economic decision. We’re asking you
to make a moral decision. Those who invest in South Africa are upholding and
buttressing one of the most vicious systems the world has ever known.
The United States did ban the sale
of arms to South Africa in 1964, after international pressure (they had made a
military deal in 1952 and had agreed to help build nukes for South Africa in
1957) and in multiple forums did condemn the racist policies of South
Africa. But in between, it was mostly
business as usual. Especially
economically, the U.S. was a “partner in apartheid.” The U.S. refused to put economic teeth behind
any pronouncement.
This was made possible through mostly bipartisan Democratic and
Republican support and/or non-concern and/or inertia. Countries in the global north only started
listening to that call for boycott in the 1960s and 1970s, twenty years after
it was made. Still, the UK, US, France,
Spain, and Portugal all defied the oil embargo.
In 1964, US companies, generally, reaped $72 million in profit, two
times the average 11.8% profit reported in most other countries (possible
partly because of apartheid-enforced low wages, not dissimilar to antebellum
US northern investors getting rich off southern cotton, picked by unpaid
slave labor). GM, Ford, Chrysler,
Firestone, and Goodyear all continued to invest heavily after the boycott call,
as did Chase Manhattan, First National City, and other U.S. banks (and the IMF
and World Bank) and American mining companies and American investors in foreign
and South African mining companies. In
one dramatic victory for the boycott movement, however, the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts and successfully
pressured Polaroid—after no less than a seven-year fight, though—to stop the
company from providing technology to the apartheid regime, particularly for its
notorious pass books.
But on the whole, the US government
and US businesses, hand-in-hand, continued to ignore or actively subvert the
boycott movement. There was money to be
made. As for most US citizens and
consumers, we were too distant, too inert, or too distracted to know or to
care.
Even when the United States finally
passed the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which placed sanctions on
South Africa, it was the result of no less than fifteen years of rigorous
advocacy by the likes of Congressman Ron Dellums and nongovernmental allies. It was an
uphill battle the whole time: even when it finally reached a vote and Congress
passed it, President Reagan vetoed it.
Congress had to override Reagan’s veto.
The president ostensibly preferred “constructive engagement” with South
Africa, but this had been cover for business as usual, with an emphasis on
business. When Desmond Tutu visited
Congress, Reagan had the gall to complain, without any sense of irony (see US Cold War policy at the time or foreign policy more generally), “It is counterproductive
for one country to splash itself all over the headlines demanding that another
government do something.”
The UK was the largest foreign
investor in South Africa during the apartheid years and therefore the last
other county to come around. After the US placed its sanctions, Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher saw the writing on the wall, and then South African President
de Klerk saw the writing on the wall.
In short, the anti-apartheid
struggle was not as rosy or as squeaky clean as we now present it in our
sanitized textbooks and mass media and rock concerts. It can’t be “dismissed
that easily.”
As you might have heard, there is a
relatively new movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions—this time
against the state of Israel. The call
was originally put out in 2005 by Palestinian civil society.
*
In college, even as I was
sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and taking courses on the “conflict,” I
used to think that it was like the Notre Dame-USC, Red Sox-Yankees, or
Michigan-Ohio State rivalries. I read
every New York Times article about
it. In my circle of friends, I fashioned
myself the (relative) expert—to the degree that we talked about it or anything
political—and I can still hear myself (and I cringe now) using the tepid, milquetoast
language of “just got to bring both sides to the table.” Maybe even I, baby-faced student of the
conflict, would be the one in the future to “bring both sides to the
table.” (Instead, apparently it would be
Jared, or now Avi Berkowitz, both just as inexperienced and baby-faced). I had even accepted the “facts on the ground,”
that is, the State Department language for the illegal Israeli settlements in
East Jerusalem, the West Bank (and at the time the Gaza Strip, too). One of the deacons at our church, who was
intrigued by my studying Arabic and the Middle East, said he was counting on me
to bring those angry Arab peoples in line, be it in Palestine, Iraq, or
elsewhere (and then we celebrated mass).
Even though most of me bristled at his ignorant, Orientalist trope, part
of me thought that we did just need to bring “those unreasonable people” into
line.
When Jimmy Carter, in his
post-presidency days, wrote Palestine:
Peace not Apartheid, I hadn’t read it, but I flipped out like the rest of
the national media: “Woahhh! Easy with
the a-word! That’s not very ‘helpful’ to
the discussion, Mr. President. We can’t even
get people to say the o-word (occupation).”
With further study and ultimately a
visit to both Israel and the occupied territories though, I came to see the starker
truth. As Peter Beinart, formerly of The New Republic and now of The Atlantic—still a liberal Zionist but
now a less unconditional defender of Israel—recently said, visiting the region
and seeing the conflict from the Palestinian side is “a shattering experience.” The truth is that in varying degrees, in
Israel proper, in East Jerusalem, in the West Bank, and in the Gaza Strip,
Israel is an apartheid state.
Some people bristle at the use of
the term apartheid. Some people bristle
at the comparison of Israel-Palestine to South Africa. But, it first must be noted that “apartheid is not an analogy...it is a definition." And so, yes, apartheid is first a definition, but the analogy to South
Africa is nevertheless useful, if not perfect. It is
especially useful when considering our complicity with and non-reactions to
both examples. Furthermore, that
bristling and cringing to the a-word stems, in part, from the fairytale,
romanticized versions of history—of Mandela, for instance—we tell
ourselves.
European settlers—both the earlier Dutch and
later English—had different reasons for migrating to South Africa than Zionist
settlers had for migrating to Palestine.
Much of the latter group migrated to Palestine to flee discrimination in
Europe, where anti-Semitism had a long history.
In the modern era, Jews had to flee the pogroms of Eastern Europe and
then, of course, the Nazification and “final solutions” of Western Europe. It must be noted though that, one, not all
Zionist settlement has been in response to oppression (especially in recent
years), and two, when that oppression did reach full throttle in the 1930s and
1940s, the UK and the US refused to accept many of those Jewish refugees. Nevertheless, Jewish settlers in
Palestine—and the Jewish diaspora more broadly—carry a unique historical trauma
that is not shared by white South Africans in their story.
That important nuance and
background, however, does not a priori negate
the fact that Israel is an apartheid state and that it shares much in common
with South Africa’s system. To use the
definition and then to make the comparison is not to ignore the aforesaid
historical trauma of Jewish people broadly. But, it is to describe the present situation
and the policies of a particular nation-state.
The 2012 documentary Roadmap to Apartheid, directed by Ana Nogueira and Eron
Davidson and narrated by Alice Walker, shows the Israeli systems of occupation,
creeping annexation by building barriers, house demolitions, settlement, checkpoints, water theft, separate
roads, soldier harassment, house raids, killing, and youth incarceration, and juxtaposes each example next
to its counterpart in South Africa. And,
just as black South Africans were supposed to be content with their Bantustans—sham
states lacking arable land, other resources, and sovereignty—Palestinians are
berated for rejecting the “generous offers” from Israel and the powerful states
like the US and UK, who pose as honest brokers: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” or “Had the Palestinians only accepted the UN partition plan in 1947, they too could
have been celebrating their independence alongside Israel.” The latter statement, of course, ignores that the partition plan
proposed to give more than half the land (and most of the arable land) to the
minority Zionist settlers for the future Israeli state.
(Echoes in our own US settler
colonialism might sound like: If only the
Lakota or the Nez Perce moved to Oklahoma or Carlisle when they had the
chance. They missed their opportunities.)
It was therefore no surprise that
Mandela and the ANC endorsed Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation
Organization’s resistance for a national state of their own. This bewildered many Americans, even liberal fans of Mandela,
with their own settler-colonial blind spots, with their recovering Cold War
lenses (Mandela had also allied with Fidel Castro, for instance), and with their
limited story-book versions of history and change. We could not wrap our heads around
anti-colonial struggles allying and aligning, despite their differing
ideologies, ethnicities, and cultures.
Conversely, it was also no surprise that Israel was one of the last
states to stand by apartheid South Africa’s side.
Linguist and famed political
dissident (and one-time kibbutzim resident of Israel) Noam Chomsky does point
to one shortcoming of the South Africa-Israel/Palestine comparison. In many
ways, the Israeli system is worse, he says, because, for one, white South
Africans needed the black labor for the mines and other hard
(underpaid) labor. Israelis do not need
Palestinian labor anymore. The most
reactionary forces in Israel, in fact, want the Palestinians gone: to Jordan,
Lebanon, Egypt, or anywhere else than their home.
And so, the boycott, divestment, and
sanctions theory of change goes as such: Palestinian leadership has few cards
to push the needle in favor of Palestine.
Its people therefore cannot advocate through the “normal” political
process. Israel has the upper hand and
is not budging. Under Netanyahu, the
state has become more brazen, aligning with avowed racists and moving towards
complete annexation. The opposition Blue
and White candidate in the latest election, the former general Benny Gantz, had bragged about bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age, and so both Netanyahu and Gantz spell continued disaster for the Palestinians. Netanyahu has barely held onto power since the
election but has struggled to form a government. Meanwhile, there are no viable, competitive left parties in Israel right now, but
even if there were, it is unlikely that they would hold the state accountable
either (apartheid and annexation have occurred under Labor and Likud parties
alike). The United States, Israel’s most
important ally (to the tune of $3-4 billion each year in military aid) will not hold Israel
accountable. Trump has jumped headlong
into Bibi’s arms. His administration has cut UNRWA funding. He quit UNESCO because it recognizes Palestine. He has unilaterally
recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (in contradiction of long-standing,
“two-state” “final status” negotiating parameters). He has given approval to Israel’s annexation
of Syria’s Golan Heights (Netanyahu grossly repaid him by doing the very thing
Trump loves most: putting the Trump name on a new settlement).
Netanyahu made campaign promises to annex a third of the occupied West Bank.
Democratic presidents for the most part have not held Israel accountable
either (it was actually Republican George H.W. Bush who last attempted to
actually hold Israel accountable).
Many candidates in the 2020 Democratic field have rightly criticized the
Netanyahu government, but Netanyahu’s despicability also provides an out: he is
low-hanging fruit; you can criticize him and appear to be woke-ish without
having to weigh in too much further on the issue (Sanders is easily the biggest critic in the field, but even his critique is not all that progressive). The topic is one of the rare gems that brings
both parties together. Congressional
Republicans and Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, fawn over each other
to not hold Israel accountable. The
United Nations Security Council can hardly hold Israel accountable, with an all
but assured US veto. In January 2017,
the most the Obama administration did to hold Israel accountable was to abstain on a Security Council measure condemning the settlements.
It was the bare minimum—upholding the US’ own long-standing (and still
very pro-Israel) policy and international law that prohibits settlements—and even
that sent the hawks of both parties and of major networks stark-raving
mad. Following the non-vote, John Kerry
gave a speech that was relatively strong in its criticism of Israel, especially
for a sitting Secretary of State, but it was too little, too late. Sure, Obama and Netanyahu did not get along,
but that personal-relationship, palace-intrigue journalism obscured the larger,
ongoing, US-abetted injustices.
In lieu of any of these entities holding
Israel accountable, Palestinian civil society has called on international civil
society to nonviolently boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.
*
BDS falls into two main categories:
one, against products made in the occupied territories, taken from the occupied
territories, or supporting the occupation; and two, the broader cultural boycott against many things
Israel. For example, some activists
choose to boycott Sabra hummus because of its alleged business ties to and
support of an elite Israeli Defense Force (IDF) unit.
And furthermore, people choose to conduct strategic secondary boycotts
of sellers of Sabra. Or,
SodaStream. SodaStream had a factory in
an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and this caused a rift between Oxfam and one of its celebrity “ambassadors” Scarlett Johansson. That is, for the 2014 Super Bowl, SodaStream planned to run an ad which featured Johansson, and so Oxfam (under pressure
itself) asked her to reconsider, but she chose the ad instead. In the end, the commercial was not aired, but
not because of any sympathy for Palestinians but because Fox Sports did not want to tick off Pepsi or Coke. The Israeli military employs Hewlett-Packard technology in its
occupation, and so consumers choose to boycott HP. BDS activists have targeted Airbnb, which had
listed homes in the settlements.
Under pressure, Airbnb changed its policy, but it was a temporary victory. Due to an unreasonable, vicious reaction, the
company reversed policy back: it has listings in the settlements. But, it now says it
“will take no profits from this activity in the region...Any profits generated
for Airbnb...will be donated to non-profit organizations dedicated to
humanitarian aid that serve people in different parts of the world.” Thus, charity and philanthropy win out over
justice and courage, and now we can all stay on occupied Palestinian
land, once again.
Ireland’s lower house voted to ban settlement goods.
The Presbyterian Church moved to divest from three companies who do business with the occupation: HP, Motorola, and
Caterpillar. A Canadian court ruled that wines from the West Bank cannot be labeled as “Made in Israel." This last example is not a boycott per se,
but the labeling informs consumers who wish to buy responsibly. These are some of BDS' small victories.
Then, there is the larger BDS
campaign that targets Israel more broadly.
Musicians such as Lorde, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox, Roger Waters, Chuck D, and Brian Eno have elected not to perform in Israel as part of the cultural boycott. In fact, after Lorde decided to cancel her
concert, the two teenagers who urged her to boycott were fined by Israel for their political activity. JLo and Madonna, on the other hand, continue
to perform there, and BDS attempts to persuade them, or the Eurovision festival,
to change course. Academics, such as
those in the American Studies Association, are part of the larger
boycott.
There has been healthy, vigorous, and tactical debate between these two camps.
For example, Noam Chomsky remains opposed to an all-out boycott, of
which he questions the efficacy of. And, he broaches the possibility of it backfiring.
Nevertheless, he states:
I am opposed to any appearance in Israel that
is used for nationalistic or other propaganda purposes to cover up its
occupation and denial of Palestinian human rights. I’ve been involved in
activities to hold Israel accountable for its international law violations
since before the BDS movement took shape. While I have some tactical
differences with the BDS movement, I strongly support the actions and continue
to participate in them.
And, here, Mehdi Hasan challenges him on the
question. Chomsky, in response, raises
the $3 billion elephant in the room: if you’re boycotting Israel, shouldn’t you
also boycott the enabler, the United States?
His question raises a fair point, as
I personally go back and forth about the efficacy of the larger cultural
boycott but while I wholeheartedly support the settlements/occupied territories
boycott. (Noura Erakat challenges the occupied territories-only boycott, in great detail and at great length, because for Palestinians, it’s not just about
the occupied ‘67 borders, but it is the larger settler colonial ‘48 borders, i.e.
all of Israel.)
*
“Hold Israel accountable?” "Why only hold Israel accountable?" the question
is often asked. Marco Rubio, when not
clamoring for war with Venezuela earlier this year, led efforts against BDS with Senate Bill 1—the very first
piece of legislation that apparently needed to be taken up after the government
shutdown. On the other side of the
aisle, Senator Cory Booker and minority leader Chuck Schumer, likewise, have pledged to defeat BDS
because, they say, “It focuses unfairly, singularly on Israel.”
Does the BDS campaign focus only on
Israel? Well, yes, this BDS campaign does focus only on Israel. That’s kind of the point. The South Africa boycott campaign focused
only on South Africa. That was the point. The Montgomery bus
boycott focused on Montgomery, not Birmingham or Mobile.
“Why not boycott other countries?”
people ask. “There are other countries
who abuse human rights. Why focus only
on Israel?” Depending on the source,
that can be a fair question. Chomsky, as
mentioned above, has asked the “What about the US?” question. Scholar and long-time Palestine-advocate
Stephen Zunes has argued that another BDS-type
movement should target Morocco, which is occupying Western Sahara. Morocco, like Israel, is a US ally, and it
will receive $16 million in US aid this year.
Western Sahara, like Palestine, is an internationally recognized “non-self-governing country under foreign belligerent occupation." But the lesser-known Moroccan lobby
apparently has considerable sway in Washington, DC, like the Israeli lobby does.
“What about boycotting Egypt or
Saudi Arabia?” some detractors of BDS ask. These could be fair questions, too, but
often, they operate as disingenuous straw-men arguments—classic “what-about-ism.” Jake Tapper of CNN tried to corner Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on that very type of question. Tlaib, Palestinian-American, is an advocate
of the BDS movement. She replied that,
yes, she would be for those boycotts, too, if civil society in those places
called for respective BDS. While Egypt
and Saudi Arabia are not occupying other lands in violation of international
law, their governments regularly and grossly commit human rights abuses. (I, like Tlaib, might personally might
participate in such a boycott.) Or now,
what about India, as it appears to be moving
towards annexation of Kashmir?
India-Kashmir might be a more fitting analogy alongside Israel and Morocco. These could all be fair questions. But, the Jake Tappers and corporate “blob” cable pundits and the national
security hawks in Congress and think tanks and PR firms, I would wager, would
be just as unwilling to go along with those theoretical boycotts as they are
with the Israeli boycott because the very same corporate, military-industrial-tech-complex, media, phosphate, extractive
industry interests would stand to lose money in boycotts of those places,
too. Especially as the leaders of
Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and other states have formed a curious,
post-ethnic, post-religious, post-ideological, strong-man-centered, almighty-dollar-driven power bond
in the region, I do not envision much enthusiasm for any of those boycotts there. But, I would gladly stand corrected if Tapper
et al. were to lead that (authentic) charge.
What about China? Especially in regards to the treatment of its
Uighur population or in regards to Tibet or potentially in regards to Hong
Kong? Also fair. But, I would argue that we in the US at
least have a more direct responsibility and thus more agency to pressure our
allies who receive US aid than we do to China and our non-allies. Furthermore, could you see the business
interests in the US (and the media and congressional channels they pepper)
going along with a China boycott? Just look at the NBA trying to navigate the Chinese political waters.
But ok.
Or, Iran—our
and Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s arch enemy (since 1979) and definitely a human rights offender? Ok, definitely fair too. But, one, we are already sanctioning Iran (although not necessarily for the right reasons);
two, we do not give billions of dollars to Iran in aid; and three, when Iran was
our ally—with “our sonofabitch” the Shah in charge and not the ayatollah “sonsofbitches” currently in charge—we were happy to look the other way in regards to human
rights abuses and keep the dollars and weapons flowing.
*
BDS has been in the news in recent
months, even casual observers might have noticed. Over the summer, the Israeli government, at
Trump’s tweeted behest, denied entry to Tlaib and fellow Congresswoman Ilhan
Omar because they are both supporters of BDS.
(Israel later relented on Tlaib, to let her see her grandmother in the
West Bank on “humanitarian” grounds and on condition she not speak out; Tlaib
didn’t agree to the conditions and did not go.)
There have been a number of legal
and political attempts to shut down BDS efforts. BDS proponents, conversely, argue that these
attempts are in response to the movement catching steam. Twenty-seven states (including New Jersey)
have adopted anti-boycott laws, including five executive orders passed by
governors. Against civil liberties
groups’ advice, Andrew Cuomo signed such an order in New York when he couldn’t get it passed
through the legislature. In Texas, aPalestinian-American speech pathologist was fired for refusing to sign apro-Israel, anti-BDS oath.
But then a federal judge temporarily blocked the law.
Tangentially, other not specifically anti-boycott bills/laws that are
ostensibly bills/laws to fight anti-Semitism are being used to shut down
criticism of Israel. One such bill being
considered in New Jersey is S4001/A5755,
which could allow school districts and other jurisdictions to equate criticism
of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism (I wrote to our union, the New Jersey Education Association, to ask it to speak out like CAIR-NJ and other civil liberties/rights
groups have done, as it concerns potential free speech and academic freedom
conflicts, but I did not receive a reply.)
On the federal level, there was
Rubio’s previously mentioned Senate Bill 1. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Bernie Sanders, however, released a joint
letter calling for an end to such anti-boycott legislation. Feinstein and Sanders don’t support BDS, but
they support people’s right to BDS.
Similarly, organizations like the ACLU do not take positions on the boycott
per se or even on Palestine, but for
first amendment reasons, they support people’s right to boycott and to not be
criminalized or penalized for it. And
then, ahead of an anti-boycott bill in the House, Omar, Tlaib, and Congressman John Lewis co-sponsored a resolution affirming the right to boycott.
Lewis, like most Democrats, has been a staunch Israel-defender over the
years and is not a proponent of BDS, but he knows a thing or two about the importance of boycott
and nonviolent protest.
*
The classic retort—or “pre-tort”
rather, often before looking at any of the evidence or arguments—is that BDS is
anti-Semitic.
Is anti-Semitism a threat? Yes, certainly (and, it is one that I will
never have to face). Incidents of anti-Semitic harassment and killings have risen in recent years.
There is certainly some anti-Semitism on the left, where Israel is sometimes
conflated with “Jews worldwide,” and then both are blamed for wide-reaching conspiracies,
but the
evidence shows that most attacks and harassment committed in the US these days originate from right-wing extremists, such as the Charlottesville
marchers, Cesar Soyoc and his bombs,
the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooter, and the Chabad of Poway
(California) shooter. I don’t want to
conflate anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but in today’s America, Jews and
Muslims share a lot of the same predators.
These outright killings and blatant
harassment aside, does anti-Semitism exist in the BDS movement? Probably, in some corners, as it exists in some corners of the broader
Palestinian struggle, from the Arab/Muslim world to the Western world. Several years ago, when I was teaching a
global studies course at a small Catholic college, I was about to start a
two-day lesson on the conflict when a colleague warned me, “Be careful with
Peter. He’ll probably be with you [i.e.
sympathetic to the Palestinian cause] but for the wrong reasons.” And “sympathize” he did! It required some shutting down and correcting
the record. For Peter, “The Israeli government”
became “the Jews.” “There is a bias towards the Israelis and against the Palestinians in U.S. mainstream media” became “the Jews control the media.”
(This Peter, by the way, had developed a strong anti-Semitism over his
college years, instilled in him by an Opus Dei professor with a bizarre
theology-world view, who was eventually asked to move on. Peter actually liked Muslims—I had expected
him not to—because they were, in his view, generally more devout and practicing
whereas Jews were generally more secular.
And, it was secularism, apparently, that had brought down our civilization. In an essay later in the semester, he argued,
“It is well known that abortion came from the Jews.” The Catholic Church, in its Opus Dei and
non-Opus Dei forms, has much to answer for its centuries of incubating
anti-Semitism.) A friend’s grandmother
watched news of the 2011 Gaza freedom flotilla with great interest. To my friend’s surprise, she expressed
sympathy with the people of Gaza. A
couple minutes later, she ruined it: “I never liked those Jews anyway.”
Anti-Semitism has deep and layered roots.
Large and small slights abound, and they must be condemned. Most importantly, they are factually wrong, and they put people in danger. Secondly, for
those trying to make the evidence-based argument for Palestine, they are
distractions.
Yet, when criticism of Israel is by
definition equated with anti-Semitism, the term loses its historical and current meaning.
Anti-Semitism has been weaponized in many cases to shut down criticism of Israel.
In fact, according to the US right, you can be actually anti-Semitic,
i.e. anti-Jewish, as long as you support Israel, and the Israeli right seems ok
with this. Omar is accused of peddling the Jewish dual-loyalty trope and is dragged through the coals, but when Trump and other Republican leaders (and
some Democrats) do the same, it can be overlooked due to their support for Israel. And in an Orwellian twist, many
Jewish activists and academics who advocate for Palestine, from Holocaust
survivor Hedy Epstein to Peter Beinart to Norman Finkelstein to Rebecca
Vilkomerson to Noam Chomsky are labeled as “self-hating Jews” (in lieu of being
called anti-Semitic), while Christians United for Israel (CUFI)—the largest
coalition of Christian Zionists—can actually articulate an eschatological future where Jews are “left behind” but are not
equally condemned because they support the state of Israel. CUFI is the source of support and “reasoning”
behind many conservative, Christian members of Congress and their strong support for
Israel.
Meanwhile, special, vitriolic
charges of anti-Semitism have been saved for African Americans who speak out in
support of Palestine, from Angela Davis to Marc Lamont Hill to Michelle Alexander to Cornel West to William Barber to
Alice Walker. But, for some of these
African-American icons, they see the parallels between the treatment of their
people and the treatment of the Palestinians, and that is why they speak out
and “break the silence.”
*
To call for BDS is not to ignore the
mistakes and crimes of particular Palestinian actors over the years, whether
they were committed in the name of nationalism, Marxism, or Islamism. It is not to condone or ignore violent
actions of the PLO, the PFLP, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad. It is not to ignore the often bad faith of the neighboring Arab states. It is not to question
Israel’s “right to exist.” (Although, I
would argue along with Youseff Mounayyir that the question “Does Israel have
the right to exist?” is often asked to obfuscate the important questions:
The truth is that no state has a “right to
exist” — not Israel, not Palestine, not the United States. Neither do Zimbabwe,
Chile, North Korea, Saudi Arabia or Luxembourg have a “right to exist.” States do
exist; there are about 200 in our world today, even though there are thousands
of ethno-religious or ethno-linguistic groups.
And these states don’t exist because they have a “right” to. They exist
because certain groups of people amassed enough political and material power to
make territorial claims and establish governments, sometimes with the consent
of those already living there and, oftentimes, at their expense….it is humans,
not states, that have a right to exist. This includes all people: those who identify as
Israelis and Palestinians alike, along with seven billion others. People also have a whole set of other rights
— human rights, which states cannot deny. These include the right to free
movement, the right to consent to being governed, the right to enter and exit
their country, the right not to be tortured or collectively punished, and so
on. It is by guaranteeing these rights
and only by guaranteeing them that states derive their moral legitimacy; it is
not from some mythical “right to exist” or even the historical need of their
people, but rather from the extent to which their policies respect the rights of people.)
In my immediate post-navy days, when
I was getting into A People’s History of
the United States and critical histories and politics, I used to think that
I had to, in a sense, find fault with every US action ever and defend every US
victim or “enemy." By extension
then, I thought I had to defend or rationalize everything Palestinian, for
instance. Afraid of nuance and gray matter, I rushed headlong into a different ideology, which was the opposite of what I grew up with but just as blinding. There are ideologues and nationalists in the struggle to be sure, but
BDS itself is a non-nationalist, human rights-approach, which in the end
includes Israeli human rights.
To call out Israeli human rights
abuse is not to ignore human rights abuses done by the Palestinian Authority or
any other Mideast neighbor to its people.
It is not to ignore gross examples of patriarchy and abuse committed by
some individuals in Palestinian society, such as the recent “honor killing” of a young woman, Israa Ghrayeb, after she posted a video of herself and her fiancé. You can hold
two truths at the same time. You can
condemn both the Israeli occupation and Palestinian crimes of patriarchy—be they
state- or non-state-led, be they often or seldom—at the same time. Criticism of power and powers is not zero-sum.
Tangentially, BDS and criticism of
Israel is not to argue that I, as a white liberal, would rather live in Syria
or Iran, for instance. Benjamin
Netanyahu regularly employs this convenient, circular logic to shut down
criticism of Israel by arguing that Israel is the “lone democracy” in the
Mideast (Lebanon sort of is a democracy, by the way, and Iraq post-2003 US
invasion and Tunisia post-Arab Spring are trying.) “Would you rather live in Syria?” he
apparently asked (Arab Israeli) Member of Knesset Aida Touma-Suleiman when she criticized him in the parking garage after the nation-state law was passed and he was giving triumphal press interviews (she shared this anecdote on the
North Jersey stop of her Jewish Voice for Peace-sponsored speaking tour last
summer). Would I rather live in Syria?
That’s not the question, Bibi.
But from passing such laws and shutting down criticism of such laws,
his state becomes less and less democratic.
Likewise, “pinkwashing” often obscures the occupation. During an
appearance on The View, Pete
Buttigieg took the bait of a question from Megan McCain, who has oddly and dramatically tried to co-opt anti-Semitism. Buttigieg’s appearance was shortly after
Ilhan Omar very soberly, very reasonably argued that we should call out Israel (and
Saudi Arabia) for its human rights abuses like we do with Iran. Buttigieg pandered to her question, which was about Omar's remarks: “People like me [i.e. openly gay] get strung up in Iran, so the idea that what’s going on is equivalent is just wrong." True, if I were a gay (non-Arab, non-Persian) man, I’d probably prefer
to live in Israel too, if I only had two choices. It’s a worthy side discussion, but it’s not
the point. You can condemn the Israeli
occupation and condemn the homophobia of other state and non-state neighbors of
Israel at the same time. (Tlaib and Omar have rightly condemned the treatment of the LGBTQ community in Palestine, for instance.)
To call for BDS is not even to propose a solution. There is the
oft-mentioned two-state solution touted by the likes of Netanyahu (depending on
the day and whom he is speaking to) and mainstream Israelis (at least between
the Oslo accords and this current rightist surge), Bill Clinton, George W.
Bush, Barack Obama, and even occasionally Trump. “Two state solution”: it is the pro forma response of most of the
foreign policy establishment when asked for its thoughts on the region. The late Israeli novelist Amos Oz argued for a two-state solution in the way a novelist would:
To me, reconciliation
means a political settlement. If I had to entitle my vision vis a vis the Arabs
in general and the Palestinians in particular, I would say make peace not love.
The name of the game for Israelis and for Palestinians, as I see it, is a fair
and decent and painful divorce rather than a honeymoon bed together. I think
Israelis and Palestinians should separate land and assets, divide the land
between the two nations and live in peace like two ex people rather than try to
reconcile in the way of living together. The conflict between the Israelis and
Palestinians is not a family dispute. It's a dispute between two families.
Polls show that a majority of
Palestinians still actually support a two-state solution, even as that means
conceding most of historic Palestine (and most of its arable land and water
sources) to Israel. But with ever
increasing and entrenched Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem and the West
Bank, a viable two-state solution is becoming less likely. What kind of Palestinian state would there be,
as home demolitions and land confiscation continue? Therefore, more and more Palestinians and
some progressive Israelis and international actors are calling for a one-state
solution, with equal rights for Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians, like how
there are equal political rights for both white and black South Africans. But, most Israelis do not want this, as you
might imagine, because that means Israel would no longer be a “homeland for the
Jewish people” or as the Netanyahu right would prefer to say and see, Israel
would no longer be “a Jewish state.” BDS
doesn’t call for one solution over another.
Once the vast power imbalance is adjusted, the solution will have to be
worked out.
Currently there is one-state. It is one-state apartheid. What the BDS movement attempts to do
is leverage economic and social power to right the
imbalance.
*
When I was in college, in the middle
of the second intifada, which was very violent and bloody (and also,
counterproductive), I used to think and say quite patronizingly, “If only the
Palestinians had a Martin Luther King,” or, “If only they had a Nelson
Mandela.” This seemed like the right
thing to say against that backdrop of violence.
However, these sentimental musings
of mine were both simple and insulting.
“If only they had an MLK” does an injustice to both the African-American
struggle and the Palestinian struggle.
Regarding the African-American struggle, it ignores the centuries of
resistance to slavery and then decades of resistance to Jim Crow well before
King came on the scene. It ignores the
thousands lynched and the thousands involved in the mass movements against
American apartheid. It also blatantly
papers over that MLK was ignored, resisted, and hated in many white circles—and
not just in the South.
“If only they had a Mandela” ignores
the mass movement of people behind him and the martyrs and the ones who didn’t
make it out of Robben Island. It also
sugarcoats our ugly history, when in fact we were “partners in apartheid” and
resisted the anti-apartheid struggle until the very end. And, rightly or wrongly, effectively or
ineffectively, Mandela and the ANC did call for violent resistance at points
when nonviolence was not working. His
face was in my high school hallway in the ‘90s, but he remained on the US terrorist list until 2008.
And finally, “If only they had an
MLK (or Mandela)” does injustice to the Palestinian cause. On mainstream media outlets, we only hear
about Palestinian resistance when it comes in the form of Hamas rockets and
suicide bombers. Every day, however,
since the nakba,
Palestinians have been resisting nonviolently. Once in a while, these nonviolent efforts
reach mainstream attention. Famously,
Palestinian women led the nonviolent resistance of the first intifada. Famously, the 2010 Freedom Flotilla attempted
to nonviolently bring aid and attention to blockaded Gaza. Israeli commandos violently boarded the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara and killed nine people. The flotilla then was downplayed and mocked
by much of the international media.
Subsequent freedom flotilla attempts to Gaza have run into similar
roadblocks. Famously, the Friday March
of Return protests began last spring and continue today. Hundreds of protesters (and some journalists and medics) have been killed by Israeli forces.
In between, less famously, everyday Palestinians find ways to resist,
from Ahed Tamimi and her 13-year-old journalist cousin to Emad Burnat of the
Oscar-nominated Five Broken Cameras
to dabke dancers on campuses and in the line of snipers. While we await “their MLK” or
“their Mandela,” we are not listening and not seeing. Even when Palestinians have dedicated their
lives to learning and teaching and nonviolently continuing the struggle, news
reporters obtusely ask them “What about Hamas?“ or, “Doesn’t Israel have a
right to exist?” or, “Why do you teach your children to hate?” To which, Rafeef Ziadah and the poets
respond, “We teach life, sir!”
And famously, Palestinians and their
sympathizers are now participating in a nonviolent boycott, divestment, and
sanctions campaign against Israel. Yet,
people are losing their shit over it.
Well, here is your “MLK” or your
“Mandela.”
*
Trump and his crew are beyond the
pale. He is nihilistically cruel toward
and ignorant of the Palestinians (and so many other groups). He operates in his own version of reality
(TV), where he is the “King of Israel." He is either being played or playing us. The Republican Party has made the grand
Faustian bargain to stand with him, and for the most part, it no longer seems
to be motivated by facts or compassion.
We must continue to condemn Trump’s ignorant rhetoric and racist
policies and to challenge his GOP sycophants and attempt to unseat them from
power. But here, I invite the white
moderate, the white liberal (liberals of color tend to get it more easily), and the “progressive except Palestine” (PEP), or
even the political neophyte, to consider this case for BDS. (While MLK certainly condemned overt white
racism, he found the white moderates in a way more frustrating than the overt racists:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have
been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the
regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride
toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but
the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice;
who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive
peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with
you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct
action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for
another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly
advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow
understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute
misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more
bewildering than outright rejection.)
In the week that Tlaib and Omar were
denied permission to travel to Palestine, Bill Maher blasted the BDS movement
on his show Real Time with Bill Maher as a
bullshit purity test by people who want to appear woke but
actually slept through history class….
It’s predicated on this notion, I think—it’s very shallow thinking—that the
Jews in Israel, mostly white, and the Palestinians are browner, so they must be
innocent and correct, and the Jews must be wrong. As if the occupation came right out of the
blue, that this complete peaceful people found themselves occupied.
I often appreciate Maher’s biting
criticism and crass humor on other topics.
However, his critique of Islamist militancy and Islamist patriarchy—sometimes
rightly placed—has spilled over and conflated with all things Islam, and by
extension, all things Arab and thus Palestinian. He sees Israel as the secular, liberal
democracy in a sea of religious zealots. But, each day, Israel becomes less liberal, less democratic, and
less secular, as mentioned above. This
is not about Maher, of course, but if Mandela is our stand-in for black South
Africans (preferably played by Morgan Freeman), then Maher is my stand-in for
the white liberal. And I take issue with
everything he said regarding BDS. As a
history teacher, I would argue the exact opposite. If we stayed awake in class and actually knew
our history, Bill, we would see the injustice.
No one is arguing that the Palestinians are perfect or “pure”
victims. History is messy. Moreover, in said history class, we would see
that change happens outside of television talk shows and LA and DC and New York (and
outside of rock concerts, too, for that matter).
And, as for a way out of this mess, BDS isn’t about “purity.” It’s about action. It’s about not waiting any longer. It requires making choices, maybe losing
money, convenience, perhaps even friends.
The BDS milieu, like any materialist politics, is thick and messy. There is vigorous debate between the
settlement-only-boycott and the larger cultural boycott. There is nothing pure or saintly about
it. It is a dimly lit path forward out
of a terrible, untenable present. Next
steps—if we can get there—will be hotly debated.
Otherwise, Bill, what would you have
the Palestinians do? What are you—we—going
to do about it? Condemning Trump and
Netanyahu should be the bare minimum.
Meanwhile, every day, more Israeli settlements are built, more
Palestinian homes are demolished, more Palestinian land is confiscated, more
Palestinians are killed, harassed, and imprisoned. This Palestinian insecurity, in turn, builds
up more resentment and leads to Israeli insecurity. What would you have the Palestinians do? And their Israeli allies? And the international community? As we wait for “their MLK”? Or as we wait for some tepid peace summit or some laughable real-estate fire-sale masquerading as peace summit?
Maybe you’ve decided that you’ll
focus your boycott only on the settlements. Maybe you’ve decided to support Palestine
another way, aside from BDS. Or maybe
you’re actually going to build up the Morocco, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or
India, or China—or US?—BDS movement. Or
maybe you honestly think that “constructive engagement” is better and you are
not just saying so to keep business as usual.
Or maybe there’s some other cause you’re interested in and need to
devote your time to. Or you need to
learn and reflect more. Ok. But, don’t dismiss this movement so
easily. Talk is cheap. There is a cost to doing the right
thing. Doing right costs us, among other
things, our purity.
In response to the Maher rant,
Rashida Tlaib suggested on Twitter boycotting Maher’s show. I don’t believe that’s the answer. Maher then responded, “Some people have one move only: boycott. Cancel.
Make-go-away. But here’s the thing, the house voted 318 to 17 to condemn the
#BDS movement, including 93% of Dems. Does Tlaib want to boycott 93% of her own
party?”
No, Bill, but her party does need to
catch up. If not support BDS, then
support people’s right to BDS, like Feinstein and Sanders do. But, Maher, by accident, did get one thing
right. Some people do only have one
move: boycott. That is, at this current
moment, Palestinians do only have one move: boycott, divestment, and
sanctions. The failures of the normal
political processes have left them no other choice.
*
I don’t believe Yasser Arafat will
or should be in the hallways of US schools in the future—maybe Naila Ayesh or Ahed
Tamimi instead—but should we ever get to some truth and reconciliation, to a
post-apartheid future, what stories will we tell ourselves? What did we do before it was cool and easy to
be on the right side? What did we do
with our “power of one”? Did we “support
a man like Bishop Tutu and his request for economic sanctions against South
Africa (or Palestine)”? Did we “play Sun
City”?
Am I buggin you? I don’t
mean to bug ya.
