As any observer of Middle Eastern politics will acknowledge, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is finally gaining serious traction. Its relevance has been noted by such varied parties as President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his right wing supporters, and activists across the world who are engaged in the struggle for Palestinian human rights. Naturally, this success has spawned a wide range of attacks against BDS by supporters of the current regime in Israel. The nature of those attacks, and the specious arguments that underpin them, starkly reveal the bankruptcy and unsustainability of the current Israeli regime and its agenda.

Consider: In the New York Times of February 10, 2014, Roger Cohen writes that although he supports a two-state solution, the goals of the BDS movement “…make me uneasy for a simple reason: I do not trust the B.D.S. movement.”  The evidence he gives for his distrust of BDS is that, “Its stated aim is to end the occupation, secure ‘full equality’ for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and fight for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees.” So far, so good.  These are all laudable goals and are absolutely necessary to any lasting, just, and comprehensive peace. So what’s the problem?  Cohen claims that the first objective of BDS:

…is essential to Israel’s future. The second is laudable. The third, combined with the second, equals the end of Israel as a Jewish state. This is the hidden agenda of B.D.S., its unacceptable subterfuge: beguile, disguise and suffocate.

 In other words, BDS can’t be trusted because it upholds the “right of return.” Cohen has no credible explanation for his leap from heaping praise on the first two goals of the BDS movement to the venom and innuendo he employs about the third: the “right of return.” That evasion is at the heart of Cohen’s own guile and subterfuge. In fact he will later, without any real explanation, condemn the first two goals as well. Let’s just focus on his problems with the third goal for now.

Let’s be clear; the “right of return” is not a creation of the BDS movement. It is a basic right enshrined in international law. Neither the BDS movement, nor any government or other organization can trade away individual human rights like the “right of return.”  These rights are grounded in the individual. They are non-negotiable except by an individual, who might (for example) exercise his or her right to accept compensation in lieu of “return.”  They are simply not, as someone like Sheldon Adelson might hope, poker chips that can be swapped by states or other players. In any case, the BDS movement is not a negotiating body nor does it have any official policy on the details of a final peace agreement.

What Cohen is doing here is simply obscuring the issues in order to revive one of the biggest misrepresentations in a long history of intellectually dishonest arguments that Zionists have used to derail real peace negotiations. That is the notion that the “right of return” is a sly plot designed to “destroy Israel.” In fact, it is a basic human right and a reasonable solution, enshrined in international law, to the kind of refugee crisis that is the typical result of a blatant ethnic cleansing project like the one that began in Palestine in 1947-48 and which continues to this day.

Cohen then further reveals the essential weakness of his argument by citing Diana Shaw Clark, (whose credentials apparently are that she wrote to him in an email) who claims that, “The anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa contained no such ambiguity…People affiliated with divestment in South Africa had no agenda other than the liberation and enfranchisement of an oppressed majority.”

Right—but also totally irrelevant. Blacks had an overwhelming majority in South Africa to begin with and though there were forced relocations within the country, mass ethnic cleansing and expulsion from the country were not employed by the White South African government. In other words, the “right of return” was never part of the BDS struggle in South Africa simply because there were no refugees to “return.”  The only plausible reason for Cohen to even cite Ms. Shaw Clark is a desire to muddy the issues.  

Cohen then betrays his essential bias by reneging on his earlier praise of the first two goals of the BDS movement when he writes (referring to the supposed ambiguity raised by Ms. Shaw Clark):

This is not the case in Israel, where the triple objective of B.D.S. (my italics) would, in Shaw Clark’s words, “doom Israel as a national home for the Jews.” Mellifluous talk of democracy and rights and justice masks the B.D.S. objective that is nothing other than the end of the Jewish state for which the United Nations gave an unambiguous mandate in 1947 (my italics). The movement’s anti-Zionism can easily be a cover for anti-Semitism.

So in the end, Cohen’s piece is just another typical case of a Zionist pleading that Israel should be exempt from recognizing Palestinian human rights or international law. His seeming support for the first two goals of the BDS movement are exposed as mere rhetoric by the first italicized phrase above, where Shaw Clark actually condemns all three goals of BDS. The sincerity of his claim that he supports the creation of a Palestinian state is called into question by the second italicized phrase: in 1947 the UN vote for partition was hardly an “unambiguous mandate” for Israel. The UN called for two states with a shared Jerusalem and equal treatment of citizens in both halves (not a specifically “Jewish” state).  To this day there is no Palestinian state and Israeli Zionists have erected a system of apartheid that affects Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the green line and which differs from that of old white South Africa only in a few technical respects. Even Secretary of State Kerry has finally recognized that current Israeli policy will only lead Israel deeper into the swamp of apartheid. This is the status quo that Cohen defends.

After his jab about ”anti-Zionism” being a possible cover for “anti-Semitism,” Cohen’s predictable arsenal of Zionist nonsense is about spent except for this observation: when it comes to any kind of peace agreement (one state or two) he writes, “Trust your neighbor?  Been there, tried that.” This is the final, biggest innuendo of all, for Israel has never truly tried peace. It didn’t try peace in 1949 when then Syrian President Zaim offered to resettle half the then existing Palestinian refugees in Syria in return for a comprehensive peace settlement (Ben-Gurion virtually ignored the offer). It didn’t really try in the Camp David Accords, where Egypt fulfilled its obligations, but Israel never did. It hasn’t seriously tried from 1948 up to the present. All this Israeli dissimulation goes back to Ben-Gurion’s policy as expressed to fellow Zionists when the 1947 partition plan was first floated. At the time, he basically said, ‘we should take this half (of Palestine) now and work on getting the rest later.’ By ‘the rest’ he didn’t mean peace, he meant the rest of the land. History aside, it is clear that under the current Likud government, the only kind of peace Israel has in mind is the outright subjugation and settlement of ALL of historical Palestine on its own terms.

As Cohen’s piece amply demonstrates, Zionists really don’t have a plausible, principled argument against the BDS movement. The weakness of his argument and the support he brings to it is truly striking. As his piece also shows, Zionists have grave concerns about the South African example that looms behind the BDS movement. That is why we must turn briefly to the dangerous and totally unprincipled efforts to stop the BDS movement by other means—callous distortions of US law.  It is no surprise that Bishop Desmond Tutu has recently written eloquently on this subject.

Published on Friday, April 4, 2014 by Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/) and entitled “US Lawmakers Must End Efforts to Curb Free Speech on Palestine,” Bishop Tutu’s article reads in part that:

I am writing today to express grave concern about a wave of legislative measures in the United States aimed at punishing and intimidating those who speak their conscience and challenge the human rights violations endured by the Palestinian people. In legislatures in Maryland, New York, Illinois, Florida, and even the United States Congress, bills have been proposed that would either bar funding to academic associations or seek to malign those who have taken a stand against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Tutu also gives clear and simple reasons for his support of the BDS movement:

I have supported this movement because it exerts pressure without violence (my italics) on the State of Israel to create lasting peace for the citizens of Israel and Palestine, peace which most citizens crave. I have witnessed the systematic violence against and humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation and pain is all too familiar to us South Africans.

Finally, he confirms the need for a BDS movement as an essential part of achieving peace. He writes that:

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime. My conscience compels me to stand with the Palestinians as they seek to use the same tactics of non-violence to further their efforts to end the oppression associated with the Israeli occupation.

The differences between Cohen’s arguments and Bishop Tutu’s are striking. If you read through Cohen’s guile and subterfuge, you see that he is really saying that we should all accept the notion that Israel is specially privileged and above international law and that, for those reasons, we should all be against the “right of return,” accept Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine as an irreversible act, and recognize Israel’s legitimacy as a “Jewish State.” Towards the end of his tortured article he makes this quite clear. He writes that Israel’s existence “as a Jewish state” is at “the core of the Zionist idea.” Then, in reference to that Zionist state ending in a transition to something more inclusive, he asserts that, “Jews must not allow this to happen.”

In other words, Cohen would have us embrace Zionist aspirations for an exclusively Jewish state all the way. In Cohen’s world, both a two state and a one state solution are off the table.  The only solution is for everyone to concede the total triumph of Zionism. There is no way that any supporter of human rights and equality can in good faith sign on to a vision that legitimizes ethnic cleansing and institutional inequality in this way.

In contrast, Tutu’s instincts and position are both moral and consistent. He simply writes that:

The BDS movement emanates from a call for justice put out by the Palestinian people themselves. It is a Palestinian-led, international nonviolent movement that seeks to force the Israeli government to comply with international law in respect to its treatment of the Palestinian people.

     That is an honest assessment by a highly principled man with personal and direct experience of apartheid and what it means to it victims. I have to say that I find it much more compelling than Roger Cohen’s tormented, ingenuous, and contradictory rhetorical gyrations. Perhaps we can find our way through this argument without reference to either Cohen or Tutu. Here are two simple, incontestable facts.

1.     When the Zionist settlement project in Palestine began in the 1890’s, Palestinians had done nothing at all to justify being deprived of their land and their way of life. Today, they live largely in exile or under occupation and they live under a set of capricious laws designed to keep them in second or even third class status in the land of their birth. US aid to Israel has helped bring about their current status.

2.     Although violence has been committed by both the Jewish and Palestinian sides in their struggle over the land, that violence is NOT comparable. Jewish violence has been directed toward taking land from Palestinians. Palestinian violence has been directed at (however poorly or inappropriately) defending their land. These two motives do not carry equal weight, either morally or legally.

Further I must make two assertions that are grounded in an overwhelming weight of hard evidence.

3.     Israel has NEVER really been serious about living in peace with its Arab neighbors—it has been serious only about accomplishing the land acquisition that is the essence of political Zionism. As the party holding disproportionate military power since 1948, it has always been able to dictate the focus, agenda and pace of “peace negotiations” in the region. Its failure to make peace is simply proof of its unwillingness to do so. The Israeli instigated breakdown of the most recent peace talks merely confirms this.


4.     The US, by constantly giving Israel military, economic, and diplomatic support has done more than any other party except Israel itself to create the situation that exists today. No just and peaceful solution in Palestine can develop as long as that US support is maintained. Yet the US government seems incapable of doing the right thing and simply cutting off aid to Israel until it changes its ways.
 
These things being true, the only viable resort that people of conscience really have are civil actions like supporting the BDS movement.  At this point, participation in BDS is not radical or controversial—it is merely good manners—the very least that any person of conscience, familiar with the history of the issue, can do.

Just a few days ago (April 24th), Roger Cohen published another op-ed in the New York Times. Here he argues that Israel can sustain its current policy indefinitely. He writes:

“Israel has the power to prolong indefinitely its occupation of the West Bank and its dominion over several million Palestinians…It is time to retire the unsustainability nostrum. Facile and inaccurate, it distracts from the inconvenient truth of Israel’s sustainable success…”

He then mouths a few platitudes about “mutual compromise” that make it appear that he really longs for peace. Unfortunately, just as in the piece I have just dissected above, it’s all rhetorical posturing. Yes, he admits that there are some downsides to Israel’s current position, but in arguing that it is sustainable, he reveals himself as someone who prefers to defer peace. He ends up dismissing the fact that occupation and settlement have decisively “morally corrosive” effects as merely “uncomfortable facts.”  Based on his previous arguments, I guess the only real rationale he could give for Israel’s need to be a “Jewish state” is that it is, well, Jewish—even though making it Jewish apparently  involves all the despicable machinery of oppression and apartheid. What an awful commentary for anyone to make about their own faith and people. Isn’t it a little pathetic that a self-appointed spokesperson for Israel simply cannot envision any version of a Jewish state that could possibly be inclusive?

Cohen never really confronts this key issue: why would anyone of conscience (Jewish or otherwise) want to sustain an apartheid system? Why should any person of conscience want to describe the imposition of such a system as a “success?” The costs of sustaining Israeli apartheid are simple, clear, direct and unavoidable. They involve spending huge sums of Israeli and American money on their respective militaries. They mean the continued distortion of Judaism as misguided adherents twist it into a creed that is increasingly focused on defending inequality and exclusion. They mean the continued distortion of US law (as warned about by Bishop Tutu) as some misguided Americans continue to put their allegiance to Israel before what is good for their own nation and its own democratic principles. They mean the evolution of Israel into an increasingly theocratic and militaristic state—if not (eventually) an outright military dictatorship. And of course they mean the continued oppression of millions of Palestinians and all the conflict and human rights violations that such oppression involves. All this is “sustainable” only if one chooses to privilege the peculiar religious perceptions and land lust of a few thousand Israeli settlers over the entire consensus on international law that the world has won at so great a cost over the last catastrophic century. These are facts and they are certainly uncomfortable. If anyone ever described the anti-Semitic violence of the last century in terms as dismissive and trivializing as Cohen uses for the actions of Israel, they would never be published in the NYT again.

At the conclusion of his recent offering, Cohen is mealy-mouthed again:

“Moving toward a two-state peace — the best outcome for both nations — cannot be based either on the myth that Israel’s current situation is unsustainable or on the myth that the Palestinian Authority, as currently constituted, represents the Palestinian national movement. It can only emerge when a majority on both sides believes, based on the facts, that painful compromise in the name of a better future is preferable to manageable conflict fed by the wounds of the past.”

We have just seen what sustainably means for Israel’s policy, but now Cohen seeks to confuse the issue further by falsely juxtaposing Israel’s “sustainability” with the “legitimacy” of the PA, suggesting that the latter doesn’t “really represent” the Palestinian people. In fact, the unity deal between the PA and Hamas makes the Palestinian side more “representative” of its people, yet this recent development (previously urged on Palestinians by the Israeli side as a virtual requirement for making peace) has now been cited by Netanyahu as (you guessed it) another reason NOT to make peace. Netanyahu of course, has already pledged retaliation for the PA’s signing on to various UN treaties that protect the rights of women, children, the disabled etc. That unilateral Palestinian move should be a cause for celebration, not retaliation. The fact that such bizarre actions by Israel go virtually unchallenged simply proves how distorted US perceptions of the situation in Palestine really are. It is this status quo that Cohen’s arguments slyly seek to justify.

 Let’s just say that none of Cohen’s stated positions do anything to help establish a majority for peace—in fact they suggest that a solution to the whole situation can simply be deferred while occupation is “sustained.” The truth is, on the Palestinian side there is an automatic majority for peace if Israel would simply meet their legitimate demands for a right of return (or compensation), an end to occupation, an end to settlements, a state of their own on real 1967 borders, and fair treatment for Palestinians within Israel. These outlines for a just and comprehensive peace are enshrined in all prior negotiating schemes starting with UN 242, a resolution that Israel once insisted that Palestinians agree to. Since Cohen disallows any positive movement in those directions his argument against the BDS movement is supremely hollow and indefensible.

On the Israeli side, the current status quo (where the US shields them from the consequences of their policy) puts no real pressure on complacent Israelis. An Israeli majority for peace won’t just happen along one day—it must be created. Only when the people of Israel are forced to shoulder the real costs of their current policy on their own, will the unsustainability of that policy become clear to them.  That is the moment when an Israeli majority for peace will appear.  At this point, barring a sudden cutoff of US aid to Israel, the BDS movement is about the only course of action that might help create this needed consensus for a long overdue peace.

 

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